NAVEX Global, the leader in integrated risk and compliance management solutions, announced the release of its 2020 Definitive Risk and Compliance Benchmark Report. Based on a survey of over 1,400 risk and compliance professionals, the analysis showed a strong correlation between risk & compliance (R&C) program performance and strong, ethical cultures.
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“As risk and compliance professionals, we need to ensure all levels of leadership, including the board, understand this. We must also ensure our programs have the right focus and organizational support needed to succeed in building and maintaining that trust.”
Specifically, respondents who rated their program’s performance as “good” to “excellent” were 4.6 times as likely to work for organizations they also believed acted ethically most or all of the time. Self-reported organizational trustworthiness was also highly associated with program maturity, which is an additional key indicator of strong R&C program performance.
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Not surprisingly, the majority of respondents indicated that regulatory requirements were the primary driver of program decisions and their approach to risk mitigation. But the analysis also showed that meeting regulatory requirements alone is unlikely to enhance program performance. The report clearly indicates that improvement, and ultimately trust in the organization and its leadership, is highly associated with prioritizing workplace culture, tone from the top and, importantly, R&C program automation.
In a surprising finding, only two years after the #MeToo movement consumed the dialogue in boardrooms and compliance meetings, the topic has been generally deprioritized in R&C programs. While this does not indicate the issues central to the #MeToo movement have been solved, it does demonstrate that R&C programs frequently react to the changing priorities of stakeholders as current events unfold.
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