Stay Informed with Our Engaging Ethics and Compliance Blog

Economic downturns create workplace misconduct If you haven't been to a gas station lately to fill up your vehicle, consider yourself one of the lucky ones. For those of us needing to fill up our vehicles, it's definitely hitting us harder in the wallet. Have you noticed how much quicker the dollar amount gauge moves when pumping gas (and how little is actually going in). Let's not talk about the price of avocadoes either. My favourite fruit has become a little too expensive.

Fraud Recovery: 10 Techniques for Instant Success! No organization wants to wake up to find itself the center of unexpected liability or unwelcomed scrutiny. That vulnerability is more significant with the increased occupational fraud stimulated by today's challenging economy, especially if your resources are stretched thin. Fraud costs everyone more if ignored, and your organization is not immune from it.

"Companies that invest in ethics reap an enormous return. Better workplace ethics cut business risks by reducing the chance that serious ethics problems will throw companies off course and distract them from their core business" ERC CEO Patricia Harned In the latest National Business Ethics Survey from ECI (Ethics & Compliance Initiative), it's no surprise that an organization's culture, leadership, and values-based ethics and compliance program makes a huge difference in increasing an employee's willingness to report workplace misconduct. Employees feel free from retaliation! The survey, conducted on large organizations of 90,000 or more employees, shows that with an effective values-based ethics and compliance program, employee reporting of wrongdoing increases by 61 percent. These such program also decrease retaliation by as much as 93 percent. The likelihood of retaliation against reporters is also lessened in instances where employees believe that individuals at all levels of the organization are held accountable if they violate company standards or the law.

Why do some good employees commit fraud? We've seen in the ACFE's Report to the Nations findings that the higher the perpetrator's level of authority, the greater the fraud losses tend to be. It goes to say that many white collar crimes aren't committed by 'hardened criminals', but instead these crimes are being committed by people who are under severe pressure from management or shareholders.