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To foster strong business ethics, put your money where your mouth is!
By Lauren | June 16, 2009
It’s my privilege to be a member of the Society for Corporate Compliance and Ethics, a non-profit organization that trains and supports certified compliance and ethics professionals. (Yes, I’m one of them.) SCCE provides reams of great materials on business ethics and, from time to time, conducts surveys to see how well companies are running their ethics and compliance programs.
Recently, SCCE teamed up with the Health Care Compliance Association to sponsor a survey asking how much companies were doing to incent ethical behavior in their executives and line employees by tying compensation to compliance. The disappointing answer? Very little. The survey revealed that less than half of the companies responding included compliance or ethics metrics in their employee evaluation programs. Worse than that, a whopping 76% of respondents admitted that compliance and ethics metrics had no significant impact on their employees’ bonus or incentive compensation awards.
Oh come on, people!
If a company is serious about business ethics, it’s essential to make sure that employee salaries and bonuses are awarded, at least in part, in recognition of ethical behavior. Telling employees that you want them to be ethical, but paying them for achieving targeted profit margins without regard to how they got there, is about as broad a wink and a nod as you can deliver. As Jerry Maguire so famously put it, “show me the money!” And when you do, I’ll show you where your real priorities are.
Topics: Business Ethics, Corporate Governance, business communications, ethics |
June 17th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I appreciate the kind words. By the way I would like to break a story on your blog. A press release is going out in a day or two about SCCE’s new advanced certification. It will start with this……
Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional-Fellow (CCEP-Fellow)
Advanced Certification for Compliance and Ethics Professionals
Compliance Certification Board (CCB) – 10 years of certifying more than 2500 Compliance and Ethics Professionals
There will be much more information available shortly. In one hour there will be a detailed handbook available on Corporatecompliance.org under the certification tab. Feel free to mention it in your blog.
Roy Snell
CEO SCCE
June 25th, 2009 at 3:53 am
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