[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi everyone, it's Julia Boyes. You've got questions and we've got answers. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of BELA Asks.
Ethisphere's Business Ethics Leadership alliance, or BELA as we like to call it, is a community of organizations that committed to maturing their ethics and compliance programs and strengthening their ethical culture. They do that by looking at resources, data, getting thought leadership, getting peer connections, attending events and more.
We think it is great for every organization to be a BELA member, but we know there's no competition in compliance and we are not interested in gatekeeping best practices.
So we take BELA Asks where members ask their concierge questions that we can give them answers to in a podcast format.
Today we are honored to be joined by Ethisphere's Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Chair of Bella, Erica Salmon Byrne. Hi Erica, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Julia, thank you so much for having me. It's great that this program keeps going because our Bella members keep having questions.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: I know, right? We have a great one today and we'd love your feedback. One of our Bella members recently reached out asking how do I build a new skills and capabilities matrix for ENC departments?
[00:01:27] Speaker B: I love this question, Julia, for a couple of different reasons.
One, it tells me that this is a Bella member that is thinking strategically about the types of skills that they need to have on their ethics and compliance team in order to meet the company's objectives for the coming years. They're probably engaged in some strategy work. Maybe they listened to Bill and I talk on a prior. Bella asks about building a 135 plan for your ethics and compliance team and now they're thinking to themselves, okay, how do I look around corners and think about what might be needed? So a couple of thoughts. One is you probably across your organization somewhere have some skills matrices that you can build on that already exists. So definitely check in with your HR team just to ask, do they have scorecards? Do they have skills matrices that you can think about in terms of what you might need on your team? Because ultimately that's what you're headed for. What are the mix of skills, backgrounds and responsibilities that I need to have on my ethics and compliance team to make sure that I'm well positioned position to meet the company's needs for the future? So look to your internal partners to make sure that you have a sense of what might be there already. Then take a step back and look at your strategic plan. What are you hoping to accomplish in the next year? What are you hoping to accomplish in the next two years. What is the company chasing? Right. What are some of the things that you might be engaged in? Maybe you've got a strategic plan for the organization that involves a lot of mergers and acquisitions, and you don't have anybody on your team that's done that work.
Well, you better get on that. Maybe you've got a situation on your team where you're going into a new jurisdiction. You don't have anybody that speaks that language. What's your plan to make sure that you have that piece covered? So those are just kind of a couple of thoughts. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that you want to look, obviously at what the skills are that exist on the team right now. So make sure that you've got a good sense of that, and you can compare that with the data that we have in the sphere on the types of backgrounds that E&C team members traditionally bring. So maybe you need a communications person. You want to go make the case for that. We can give you some benchmarking data on it. So, in other words, you know, kind of think about your existing team, think about where the company's headed and what you might need to be able to meet those strategies and objectives, and then think about how you might close that gap. You might need to make an argument that you need to add to your team, and that's where the benchmarking data can become so important.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Awesome. And, Erica, I feel like with people focusing on their annual plan for 2026, this is a really good time to do some of that work.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. It's a great time to be doing some of that work. You know, one of the things that we've been asking companies a lot about, Julia, over the course of the last couple of months is the way in which they think about skill sets on their board of directors from an ENC perspective and a strategic perspective, fundamentally speaking, this is the exact same work, Right. You're doing that same mapping of what are my risks, what is my background, who's going to be able to help me, you know, close this particular gap? And if the, you know, the answer is, well, hey, I need a Portuguese speaker, because we're going to have a lot of focus on Brazil, then, you know, you know what you're going to chase at that point.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Erica, thank you so much for joining us today, and we can't wait to see you again.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, Julia, thank you so much for having me. It's. It's one of my favorite things that I get to do as BELA Chair is to come in and give our perspective on these particular questions. And I look forward to the next one where you and I get a chance to do this all over again. So to those BELA members out there listening, please keep the questions coming, okay? Because it gives me a chance to come back.
All right.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Thanks, Erica. Take care.
If you're interested in more conversations like you heard today, subscribe to our YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcasts. Additionally, you can find more resources on ethisphere.com resources. And if you're interested in learning more about what a BELA membership looks like, write to us at
[email protected] and most importantly, if you have a question that you would like answered on BELA Asks, reach out. We would love to feature your question and get you an answer. I'm Julia Boyes, and this has been BELA Asks.
