14 Ideas to Spice Up Compliance and Ethics Week
/Are you ready for Compliance and Ethics Week?
Compliance and Ethics Week was first celebrated in 2005 and since then, many companies have adopted it to highlight the importance of compliance and ethics. It’s a chance to bring people together to understand the contours of the program while hopefully injecting some fun.
This year Compliance and Ethics Week is scheduled for November 7 – 13 2021.
For the second year running, many Compliance and Ethics Week activities will need to be done virtually. That creates tremendous challenges. After all, it’s difficult to do “cupcakes with compliance” if no one is in the office to share them.
Here are some ideas, all of which can be done virtually. They’re divided into four categories:
Competitions
Win prizes
Gifts
Media
Let’s dig in!
Competitions
Everyone loves a good competition. Pitting colleague against colleague or team against team is a tradition as old as humanity itself. Use this powerful instinct to get people involved. You can do this with…
1. Compliance Competitor Online Business Simulation Game
Spark Compliance offers a fantastic business simulation game for high-risk employees called Compliance Competitor.
Teams compete through complex, multi-compliance and ethics-laden scenarios to get the highest revenue, best stock price, and lowest fines. It trips people up because none of the answers are completely right, leading to intense discussion. Best of all, it’s completely customizable for your company.
Watch the video to find out more and schedule a demo here.
2. Scandal Quiz
Who doesn’t love a good scandal?
One way to get folks involved is to create a scandal quiz to test people’s knowledge of the compliance and fraud-related scandals in the news. From Bernie Madoff to outrageous GDPR violations, you can keep the news junkies entertained and allow them to flaunt their knowledge.
You can also include questions relating to your company. For instance, “how many whistleblower complaints did we get in the past 12 months?” You can run the quiz online via survey tools (SurveyMonkey, Survey Anyplace) and give a prize for the highest score.
The Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics has put together a great starting place with sample questions which you can access here.
3. Best Tagline/Meme Overlay
To get people’s minds thinking about compliance and ethics messaging, hold a competition for best tagline, or put out a series of pictures with a call to action to describe what is being said.
Make sure compliance is judging them privately as some employees may come up with less-than-acceptable-for-work answers!
Take the cleverest answers and publish them on your intranet site or in a company-wide email. People’s creativity will surprise you and employees will enjoy seeing their co-worker’s senses of humor.
Win a Prize
People love winning a prize. From lottery tickets to raffles, folks love hearing their name called or their winning numbers read out.
4. Social Media Commentary
Throughout Compliance and Ethics week, put daily compliance and ethics-related posts on your company’s internal social media site. Whether it’s Yammer, Facebook for Business, or simply an internal blog, prepare your content and get set for comments.
Write the name of each commenter on a raffle ticket kept with the compliance officer. At the end of the week, pull the names of the winners of the prizes. People can enter multiple times by posting throughout the week, which will keep engagement high.
Want even more engagement? Record the moment when you pick the winners and post the video to your internal social media site.
5. Responding to Your Survey
Create a survey to have employees tell you about their experience with the compliance program. This doesn’t have to be a formal E&C survey – after all, it can’t be anonymous if you’re entering people in a prize drawing for completing it!
Giving people a chance to share their opinions with you can give you insight into how you can improve your program. They’ll be much more motivated to do so if there’s a potentially a prize attached.
Top tip: make the survey short – 5 questions or less – so that people finish it.
6. Reposting or Sharing Compliance Content
If you’re posting content throughout Compliance and Ethics Week on your social networks, give a raffle ticket each time a person shares compliance-related content or re-shares the posts by the compliance and ethics department.
Put a rule in place that tickets are assigned only for shares that include some sort of comment or question rather than a straight share without further effort. This will extend the reach of your posts on your internal system and show employees that others are engaged.
Gifts
Most people are delighted when they receive a gift. Little things cleverly presented can be a major mood lifter. See if you can get budget to send any of the following (especially to people working from home):
7. Jam
Get a custom label that says, “Compliance is my jam.”
8. Mugs
Purchase mugs with the phrase, “Compliance is my cup of tea.”
9. Chocolates/Candies
Order little boxes with candies in them that says, “Compliance is sweet.”
10. Reusable Bags
Order reusable bags with the phrase, “Ethics is my bag.”
11. Order Cooler Bags
Order re-freezable ice bags that say, “Compliance is cool.”
There are many companies that sell these types of customizable gifts at low prices when ordered in bulk. For example, check out 4imprint.com or Vistaprint.com.
Fun Media
There’s a reason so many people watch funny videos on YouTube. Everyone enjoys being entertained, especially when it’s a quick distraction from all-day meetings. You can use this to your advantage by finding fun media to share. This may include:
12. Videos
Check in with your eLearning training provider to see if they have any short videos that could be sent to the company via email or posted to the internal social media sites. The Broadcat, True Office Learning, Real Biz Shorts, and Compliance Wave have variations of these types of media.
You can also search out YouTube videos if your company allows it. Try this one to start, because who doesn’t love a compliance musical tribute?
13. Memes
Most of us have a favorite meme that’s a picture with a funny or ironic statement overlayed onto it. Memes are great because they can be added as a visual to email or posted to your internal social network.
Matt Kelly of the website Radical Compliance has a fantastic collection of memes that are free to use, as does Resonate Pictures.
14. Internal TV
Many companies have an internal television station that can be used to disseminate messages or other content. If your company has this, make content for Compliance and Ethics Week.
This can include a short video message from your CEO, trivia about risk and scandal, memes (see above), or information about the speak-up hotline. The internal TV station can also play videos from outside providers.
Well, there you have it!
With a little pre-planning, the week can create a buzz for the program that lasts all year. So, what are your plans for the Compliance and Ethics Week?
