Early Warning Signals
We’ve all certainly watched the weather to get an indicator of how to prepare for tomorrow. Almost everyone knows what a tornado siren is or has seen a hurricane tracker. A tornado siren saves lives, a hurricane tracker prompts evacuation. Even a weather report informs how we dress or reminds us to bring an umbrella. All of these, and many more early warning signals, are designed to help us avoid catastrophe.
The same logic holds true in managing threats related to human resources or ethics incidents. All too often, companies consider their preparation complete when they implement systems and processes to react to issues after they have occurred, rather than turning their attention to the early warning signals that will allow them to be proactive and adjust course when needed.
There are several best practices that companies can leverage to move into a much more active role and be able to see threats before they are reported. At ETHIX360, we tell our clients all the time that the three worst ways to find out you have a problem are to see it on the news, read about it in the paper, or receive a subpoena. As we are all aware, if that is how you learn, all you can do is react and try to stop the bleeding.
The majority of reported incidents are not reported the first time they happen. In fact, most aren’t reported on the second or even third time. On average, across a variety of incident types, it is the fourth occurrence that drives the employee to report the incident. This lack of reported information means most incidents that should be considered related never are. (There is a future blog post on that topic coming up, but I digress…)
Proactive Case Management
What can organizations do to be proactive and try to get in front of issues before they become incidents? Here are four areas to consider:
What are your employees worried about? The first opportunity that too many companies miss out on is gaining insight into what issues most concern your employees. With the right technologies in place, this is easier than you may think. For example, is your policy management system integrated with your case management system? Do you have visibility of the most searched policies? What about the most frequently violated policies? If employees are searching for a particular issue frequently, it is generally because the policy is not clear or not well known. In either case, when employees trend up in searching a specific topic in policy management, that is a powerful leading indicator of issues that will increase as a result of those searches. Are the searches for discrimination based on religious bias suddenly on the rise? The likely culprit is more and more employees experiencing that discrimination and trying to understand if their rights have been violated. Keeping your eye on this allows you the opportunity to clarify policy or publicize your company’s stance to ease tensions.
Are your exit interview results integrated with your case management system? When you conduct exit interviews internally, the departing employee is much more apt to play it safe and say, “I found a job closer to home,” “a job with better pay”, or “better hours.” You wish them well and they are on their way, believing they are preserving their reference in case they need it in the future, but you may have an abusive manager who just potentially got away with harassment or discrimination and is much more likely to repeat the behavior.
We have found that the employee is much more likely to honestly reveal their reason for leaving when conducting 3rd party exit interviews. That reason is all too often something worthy of investigation. Our 3rd party exit interview solution, Reflections, allows our clients to integrate their exit interview results directly into their case management system. The data they gather from anonymous interviews act as early warning signals for their company, alerting them to potentially disastrous issues that they may not have been aware of if the departing employee was not offered the option to anonymously share their reasons for leaving.
Are you monitoring relevant social media posts? According to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, more than one-in-three American labor force participants (35%) are Millennials, making them the largest generation in the U.S. labor force. That number is getting larger – expected to eclipse 75% by 2025. Millennials have been much more apt to post negative comments about their employers on social media platforms like GlassDoor rather than use traditional reporting systems, especially programs centered around a live operator call center. Just because they as a group resist telephone reporting doesn’t mean they don’t witness incidents or suffer them directly; they just tend to go to non-traditional tools to talk about them.
If your case management system is not actively monitoring social media for issues worthy of investigation, you likely have a potentially serious gap in missing issues and allowing them to go unaddressed and fester. At ETHIX360, we tell our clients that the more they know, the better of a company they can become. Our EyesOnLine tool allows our clients to monitor the social media outlets they care about and quickly address the issues being reported. Understanding your workforce’s concerns fully by broadening your idea of a traditional reporting system will help you identify warning signs of wrongdoing within your company even faster.
How often do you review benchmarking and trending analyses? Broadening your perspective is a very powerful weapon in the battle against negative behavior in the workforce. Does your case management solution afford you the ability to do on-demand analysis against other companies in your industry? Or is it something you look at once a year? What about averages across all industries? For example, if your company is experiencing 8.5 reports of sexual harassment per thousand employees, but the rest of your industry is less than 4, you have the opportunity to get in front of a tsunami of reports by addressing the issue purposefully with awareness training. Looking at your internally trending analysis will allow you to determine whether the incidents of harassment are increasing or decreasing.
ETHIX360’s case management solution, CaseTrac, offers robust analytics and reports that will allow you to dive even deeper into the trends and patterns of issues being reported to your company. By drilling into your data and analyzing trending while keeping the perspective of benchmarking, you can get in front of issues by using your case management system as an early warning signal and not just a historical archive.
There are certainly other opportunities to consider as well, but these tend to be the four we see most companies ignore or simply not have available due to limitations in the technology they have deployed to manage their HR and ethics compliance programs. Most of our engagements begin with a risk assessment and vulnerability audit to help clients understand how they can benefit by making sure their early warning systems are in place to reduce the issues they face proactively, rather than only responding once the issue has been reported.
The ETHIX360 blog brings you weekly updates on all things human resources and compliance.
MEET THE AUTHOR
J Rollins is the co-founder and CEO of ETHIX360. J is a well known leader and innovator who has served on senior leadership teams ranging in responsibility from Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, SVP of Product Strategy and Chief Operating Officer.
ABOUT ETHIX360
At ETHIX360, our goal is simple: to provide an affordable, flexible, and comprehensive answer to employee communication, policy management, corporate training and case management on issues related to corporate ethics, code of conduct, fraud, bribery, and workplace violence.
