Looking for more opportunities to partner closely with your colleagues in other functions to impact business results? With so many changes hitting employees, we communicators have a chance to positively affect employee behavior and effort by partnering with our colleagues in Compliance.
CEC’s research has found that employees worldwide have experienced more than 3 major changes in the last two years, and they are expecting more change. CEB’s Compliance and Ethics Leadership Council, a sister organization to CEC, has found that these changes, or “career moments,” negatively impact employees and occur frequently, increasing risk. Career moments such as acquisitions, layoffs, changes in leadership, changes in employee roles, and pay changes are happening to many employees – 83% of employees experienced at least one career moment in the last two years. Each moment will increase observations of misconduct and decrease perceptions of integrity.
And this is where Communications comes into play and can make a real impact. With the right channel, timing and message, communications and compliance executives can partner together to significantly reduce the impact of these events. By targeting these career moments and identifying what drives employee behaviors, we can help tailor our communications to increase the impact of compliance activities.
One company that we have seen do this well is Avery Dennison — to help drive compliance with the code of conduct, Avery’s communications team uses its understanding of employees’ behavioral motivators and finds that employees are more likely to engage with the code of conduct if it is organized around their day to day activities and relationships with colleagues. Communications leverages this knowledge to help the compliance team refresh the code of conduct and present it in a more interactive, engaging way, to spark dialogue among employees. Certainly, that sounds more attractive than just another compliance training, doesn’t it??!!
Now, if you’re worrying that you don’t have the slightest idea about what your colleagues in the Compliance function care about or what problems they’re trying to solve, CEC has created a cheatsheet to help you sound smarter on the topic and add value in those conversations with your compliance colleagues. Use this as a conversation guide to discuss with your colleagues potential drivers of desired employee behavior and how you can tailor your communications to inflect those drivers.
Read more about the findings of the Compliance and Ethics Leadership Council around career moments and share it with your compliance colleagues together with your ideas about how you can help. Also check out CEC’s Building a Change-Ready Organization to learn how to increase employee agility in times of change.
CEC Related Resources:
Building a Change-Ready Organization
Change Management Resource Center
Avery Dennison’s Audience Pulse Check
Building a Culture of Compliance
CEC Related Blogs:
Are Your Communications Boring Employees?
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