Compliance issues?

Employees in the trenches are tired of management talking to them like non-compliant kids. Instead, ask them to think with the curiosity, courage and clarity of kids. Here are ways to elicit anti-fraud compliance by understanding operating environments, clearly stating instructions, avoiding proscriptive rules and more.

In-house anti-fraud and compliance teams in multinational companies have a tougher job now than ever. Barely a month goes by without some new regulation, legislation or guidance issued. Most teams are now covering every facet of fraud: corruption to conflicts of interest, anti-trust issues to anti-money laundering, privacy concerns to whistleblower regulation, and so on. They’re investigating fraud across increasingly diverse but nationalistic emerging and established markets.

Naturally, this results in a constant churn of policies, procedures and training. The busy people in frontline markets don’t always read, or welcome, this stream of rules and edicts from the head office (HQ). Those are the people I work with. In the past decade operating across Asia, I’ve counseled hundreds of people facing extortive, unethical and/or conflicting demands from local stakeholders — often public officials or clients — who don’t care for the U.S. or European laws and barely respect their own.

Too many top-down directives have caused fatigue. The folks in the trenches are tired of HQ management talking to them like non-compliant kids.