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The compliance tick is not enough
October 29, 2020
2
 min read

The compliance tick is not enough

Article arguing that mere compliance checkboxes are insufficient for genuine corporate integrity.
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Was this a compliance problem to begin with?

When we engage with prospects and new clients, apart from the excitement and the thrill of engaging with a new organisation and being able to talk about the benefits Whispli could bring, we’re also focused our attention on hearing specific keywords and behaviours. This helps us identify the best approach from a configuration perspective. One of the pitfalls we see clients fall into is that their interest is focused primarily on setting the platform up quickly or hesitating about receiving too many reports.

What this does is help indicate that we can provide some guidance on the problem they are really trying to address. I’m talking about addressing the root cause of why compliance is needed to protect people and businesses.

 

How Whispli can help

You see, for many, a solution like Whispli is a means to achieve that tick of compliance. To some degree, it’s one of our most important catalysts, but it’s something many people want due to their belief that this is a requirement that needs to be filled. However, viewing it that way doesn’t address the reason why there’s this need for compliance in the first place.

The data across our clients shows that since January 2020, conversations have increased between employees and their organisations and consistently, on average, employees have saved 50% of their reports as a draft before submitting them to their organisation (at any one time).  What this indicates is that people want to have a discussion with their organisations, and it’s less about submitting a report and more about having that conversation. 

A system like Whispli allows clients to have that two-way conversation. While this may result in greater effort related to facilitating and advising on those conversations, rather than being concerned about the amount of effort, the focus should be on what the consequences could be if the conversations did not occur in the first place. 

As we’ve written about before, employee silence is an issue that many organisations face. This silence is what we need to look at addressing. Unfortunately, looking at any solution merely to give you the tick of compliance is only halfway to the right solution. Many solutions offer the most robust case management platform and offer the “most efficient” way to become compliant. What we recommend is putting the lens of reason over this and understanding that the compliance side is a side effect of an underlying problem, which is that people find it hard to speak up, and that this silence (specifically around wrongdoing) has become the reason why there are now laws around protecting these people. So rather than looking at this as a compliance problem, it’s time to start looking at this as a solution to help increase communication and transparency among your employees.

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