Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Here at Ethisphere, we believe there is no competition in compliance, which is why we're using this show as a platform to answer high level questions about business integrity that have been posed to us by the members of the Business Ethics Leadership alliance, or bella. Bella is a global ethics and compliance community that provides exclusive access to helpful data, benchmarking events and other resources to advance your ENC program. It also provides a concierge service by which members can submit questions around best practices, and our internal experts will provide an answer, plus helpful resources with more information.
Many of these questions are particular to a specific company's needs, but many more of them speak to challenges or opportunities facing ENC professionals everywhere. So in this episode, we're going to answer one such question as part of our ongoing mission to make the world a better place by advancing business integrity.
And joining us once again to answer your questions is Bella chair Erica Salmon. Erica, as always, it's great to have you back in the program. Thanks for joining us.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Absolutely. Bill, it is my pleasure to be back. It's good to see you.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Well, this time we have a communications question and it reads, how can I build the business case for an embedded and dedicated communication specialist within our ENC department?
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Yep, great question.
And I'm really delighted that this particular Bella member is thinking about this particular set of skills on the team. So the first piece of my answer, as is often the case, Bill, is about the data. So the first thing you do is you log into the sphere, which is of course our, our data platform, and you look at the backgrounds that are on your peer ethics and compliance teams, and those backgrounds are going to change depending on what industry you're in. So if you are in, you know, a highly regulated industry, for example, you might see different backgrounds on the team than if you are in a less highly regulated industry. And my experience has always been when it comes to staffing in particular, there are, there's nothing as persuasive as peer practices. So absolutely, go take a look. Because communications is one of the backgrounds that we ask about. And it, along with data and analysis are the two fastest growing skill sets on teams. So lots of organizations are adding this particular skill set to their team from an ethics and compliance team perspective. The other thing I would say is think about why you want this skill. So we know, Bill, you and I talk about this all the time. The communications triangle is message, messenger, modality, right? Those are your three M's when it comes to thinking about communications.
Who is better positioned to really think about modality? And messenger better than a communications person? I would say no one. And what we know from both the available research on adult learning styles as well as the available research on our abysmal attention spans right now, you know, the latest stat that I saw is you have about 9.7 seconds to grab somebody's attention.
So if you are not, as an ethics and compliance person thinking about how do I effectively structure my communications to grab the attention of my employees as quickly as possible, then the chance that your messages that are so important are actually landing with your employees has gone down.
So making sure that you have somebody on the team who understands who are my employees, what is my best way to reach those people, how do I know if it's working?
You know, the number of ethics and compliance professionals that I talk to who haven't gone to the IT team to turn on data metrics on their comms continues to surprise me. So you need somebody who understands what metrics are available to me. How do I know if these things are working?
And then how do I effectively create communications that even if they are not customized to my employee base, feel customized to my employee base? Those are the kinds of skills that someone with a comms background is going to bring to you. Now, I'm sure there are people out there listening to you and I, Bill, who say, that's great, Erica. In this macroeconomic environment in particular, the likelihood of me being able to add a team member is less than zero. Totally get it right.
Then it's about building a relationship with the comms folks that you do have in your organization. So even if you don't have a dedicated communication specialist on your team, in your hire, in your org chart reporting to you, you can build bridges with your communications specialists and ask for their help.
Ask, you know, use some of the examples that you and I, Bill, talk about all the time on efficacy reacts of situations where employees didn't have the information they needed to be able to do, you know, make the right decisions. And then the comms team had a complete firestorm that they had to deal with from a crisis management perspective.
Remember, your communicators inside your organization are also your crisis team.
And so if you can do something that keeps them from having to crisis, that is, that is time well spent.
So use that line of argument to try to get some time on the, on the calendar of some of your communications teams so that they can help you structure the right kind of communications that are going to hit all three pieces of that communications triangle.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Erica, do you mind if I ask
[00:05:31] Speaker B: A follow up question, Bill, I had been trying to finish my sentence as quickly as possible because I could see on your face that you had a follow up question and you were dying to ask it.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: I'm easy to read. Sorry about that.
Look, you had this. I really enjoyed the part of your answer we talked about. Look, in this environment, adding someone to staff may be impossible. So we need to really work on those inroads with the communications department.
But let's imagine that you do have the budget, you can add that person. Right. And now you have a dedicated communications person on your team. Most likely you're also going to have that formal communications team as well.
This shouldn't happen. But we all know this does happen sometimes where turf lines start to develop and feelings can get hurt because one department is like, why do you need your own when you can't just lean upon us? So do you have any advice for a team where they do get that embedded communications professional and how do they make sure that the relation with the larger communications funct outside of E and C is strengthened by this development? Not complicated.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Yep. And part of it, Bill, is going to be that argument that I mentioned about crisis mitigation. So it's going to be about planning carefully with the broader communications team around the kinds of communications that you want to be sending out. Particularly because in all likelihood, at least some of what you need communicated is going to be better communicated by a messenger other than the chief compliance officer. Right. So I will I remind everybody the three points on the communications triangle are message, what is in it, what are we communicating? What do we care about what you know, what are we asking people to do? Modality, how are we doing it? Is it email? Is it video, is it talking points at a meeting and messenger? And so in all likelihood, if you've got senior leadership team members that you want carrying your water with a particular message, that's going to go through somebody on the broader comms team. And so those relationships are going to be critically important. They're critically important as far as a control function partnership is concerned.
And so using somebody else's misfortune to talk about the work that has been created for the comms team that can be avoided through better employee communications is one of the fastest ways to get from here to there. So that would be my recommendation, Bill, is look for a peer that's had a problem. Look for a situation in the news. Look for, you know, look to organizations where you can see their PR team is scrambling, spending money on outside, you know, PR folks all of those kinds of things.
That's going to be one way that you grab the attention of your comms team to be able to say, look, help us help you so that we don't end up with this reputational impact because an employee has made the wrong choice.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Well, once again, the Bella community has sent us a fantastic question, and once again, you delivered a fantastic answer. So thank you so very much for coming back on the program and sharing your insights with us.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: Yeah, no, Bill, it's 100% my pleasure. I mean, the Bella community is made up of the smartest people who just ask the very best questions. So it is. It's a lot of fun to get to do these with you and to surface the insights that the Bella community allows us to surface because they are thinking so deeply and so carefully about the work that they do.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: 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 right away.
This has been another Bella Asks episode of the Ethicast. Thanks so much for joining us. We hope you've enjoyed the show. For new episodes each week, be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And if you haven't Already, please follow ETHASphere on LinkedIn as well to learn more about how we help organizations measure and improve their ethics and compliance programs.
Together, we can make the world a better place by advancing business integrity. That's all for now, but until next time, remember, strong ethics is good business.
