[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, everyone. You've got questions and we've got answers. Welcome to another Bella Asks episode of the Ethicast.
The Business Ethics Leadership alliance, or bella, is a global ethics and compliance community that provides exclusive access to helpful data, benchmarking events and other resources to advance your ethics and compliance program. And with Bela's concierge service, members can submit any question regarding ethics and compliance and our internal experts will provide an answer, plus helpful resources with more information. And while we invite everyone watching and listening to join bella, we also know that there's no competition in compliance, which is why we're using this program to thematically respond to high level questions from the BELLA community for the benefit of E and C teams everywhere.
And joining us once again to answer those questions is Bella chair Erica Salmon Byrne. Erica, as always, it's a delight to have you on the program.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Well, Bill, thank you so much for having me back. And thank you to the BELLA members who keep sending in questions. So I have a reason to come back.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Well, our next question is a program question and it reads, how do I know if my E and C team is adequately staffed or funded?
[00:01:15] Speaker B: This one gave me a chuckle, Bill, when I saw it come in, because I have yet to meet a SECO who believes that their program is either adequately staffed or adequately funded.
So I'm not sure there is sort of that, that nirvana answer for this one. But here are a couple of maybe signposts along the way. So the first one, of course, is risk based. When was the last time you conducted a risk assessment? Have you thought about how your risks might have changed? How often are you evaluating those risks in today's environment in particular, where you would, you know, you read the news in the morning and three hours later everything you've read is outdated. I would say that if you are not engaged in near continuous updating of your compliance risks, that you probably are understaffed. You know, if, if you can't engage in near continuous updating of your risk assessment, then that would be a place where I would say you're probably under resourced. So definitely starting with, with the risks. Right? What does your sanctions risk look like? What does your terrorist risk look like? What markets are you in that might be potentially disrupted? How can you leverage other control functions to support your staff's activities if you are in fact under resourced? So really thinking about your, the risks you are facing today, the risks you think you might be facing tomorrow, and then doing a skills matrix, if you will, to say, do I have the right skills in House for the risks that my organization is facing. If you have a lot of employees, for example, that are working in manufacturing sites, how are you communicating with those folks? Do you have the right comms person or person with the right kind of comms background to be able to address the needs the program has? So this is a less of a kind of a pure number perspective and more of a do I have the skills on my team necessary to be able to really effectively do the work that we need to be doing to be able to effectively mitigate risk? So thinking about risk assessments, thinking about skills matrices, who's on the team? Do I need somebody with AI experience? Where's the movement in the business? So what is the strategy of the organization? Can I, for example, tap a pool of money that the finance team might have created to underwrite AI initiatives? Can I borrow somebody from another part of the business? Because I'm building a dashboard that leans into data analytics. So those are some of the things to ask yourself on that staffing piece. On a more meta level, in terms of, you know, am I adequately staffed and resourced? Asking yourself the question of, is there a pocket of the company that I never hear from? Is there a part of the business that doesn't feel the work I'm doing? Because that is another way of getting at this question of resourcing. And of course, benchmarking is super important here. Right. You know, you can come into the sphere, which is of course, our data platform. You can look at the staffing side and budget levels of your peer companies. You can get a sense of whether you're radically behind your peers. But even if you go in with that information, the response from the team at your company is probably going to be great. Bill, what would you do with that additional headcount? Right. You're telling me that you're under budget. Okay, if I, if I give you 50,000 more dollars, what are you going to do with that money? And so having those answers before the ask is a really important piece of this. So that takes you, of course, back to the skills on the team, the things you're trying to achieve, and the risks the company is facing. Because at the end of the day, that's really the work you're doing as a compliance and ethics professional. Is, am I effectively mitigating risk as the company continues to navigate increasingly turbulent geopolitical waters?
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Erica, as always, thank you so much for your insights. We really appreciate it and we appreciate you coming back on the show. Thanks so much.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Oh, bill, it is 100% my pleasure. And to all those Bella members out there, keep the questions coming so that I have a reason to come back.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: To learn more about Bella, Visit@the sphere.com Bella to request guest access to the Member Resource Hub and to speak with the BELLA Engagement Director. If you have a question that you would like answered on this program, contact the Bella Concierge Service and we'll get to work on it for you. I'm Bill Coffin and this has been another Bella Asks episode of the ethacast. If this is your first time listening, we're we hope you've enjoyed the show. For more content like this every week, please subscribe to this program on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also check out full episodes of the show as well as many other free resources at the Ethisphere resource
[email protected] resources thanks so much for joining us. And until next time, remember, strong ethics is good business.
