First of all, I never thought I'd see the day where I'd use the word "cannabis" in one of my blog posts, let alone, the first word in the subject line. But yet, here we are. In Canada. Where consuming pot will be legal on October 17, 2018. Are your policies up to date on cannabis use on or off the workplace?

How effective is 'zero tolerance'? Well likely only as effective as a company allows it to be. 1) Should it be part of a company's policies? 2) How believable is it? 3) Should it be removed altogether?

The short answer is, keep it simple! Nothing draws the audible release of the breath of dread more than pages and pages of text riddled with big long sentences. Let's face it, nobody gets excited about reading pages upon pages of hard to understand policies. Yet company policies tend to live in their own world of expectation and apprehension. They live somewhere on a company's intranet, nobody knows where. Everyone has seen them at least once, but couldn't recite any content. Yet they are very important for a company to have.

In today's world of 'social media everything', a frustrated ex-employee can do a lot of damage to a company's reputation after leaving. When a really good employee decides to move on, well that's part of business, even if it really sucks! But you want to make sure that an employee's experience right up to their last day is nothing but positive. This is how a company culture thrives when employees decide to move on. There are right and wrong ways to handle an employee who has resigned. Managers are going to face employee resignations sooner or later, so it's best to have the most professional, and honorable approach when it does happen.

It's a scenario many ethics professionals find themselves in. When implementing a whistleblower hotline, comparisons are made between internally run systems, and outsourced third-party programs. What would be the easiest? What would be the cheapest? What will get the job done?

We're pretty proud to be a Canadian based ethics reporting services provider. Based in West Vancouver in Beautiful British Columbia, most Vancouverites tend to concentrate on their own corner of the world. With a milder climate, an ocean and mountains in our back yard, we sometimes forget there's a great expanse of forest, lakes, and endless Tim Hortons between us and the Atlantic. So, to change things up a bit, have a bit of fun to celebrate Canada Day, and in keeping with the usual ethics and fraud themes, we've found some strange Canadian laws that are still in the books. Some of these had us saying 'Wow, eh? Didn't know that!' And they may have you blowing the whistle on your neighbours!