If you believe corruption does not exist within your business, you might be in for a shock. Corruption is never far, wherever there is money and influence. No matter how large your company is, no matter how small it is, there is corruption to some degree within it.
Every business owner or CEO needs to be aware of the various ‘ins’ where corruption could be floating around and how to deal with it. The benefit to doing so, is a higher public trust, avoiding harsh penalties and possible legal action, and protecting your employees. Let’s take a look at how you can minimize and also prevent corruption.
Anti-corruption training
Corruption is not in your face, it’s usually subtle. This is why many employees and even bosses of enterprise, don’t actually recognize when they are being corrupt or dealing in corruption inadvertently. The best way to bring yourself up to speed with the latest laws, regulations and corruption techniques that could be used against you, is to undertake anti-corruption training.
At the learning bank they have a brilliant anti-corruption training course for businesses. They will train your employees to spot and avoid bribery attempts, spot nepotism within their own and other partner organizations. When dealing with clients, you’ll know how to prevent getting caught up in liable email exchanges, unwarranted payments, and giving favored treatment, etc.
In the boardroom
We all know that the C-suite has one foot in the normal everyday business culture, and one foot in the high-flyers exclusive club. The latter is where most of the corruption occurs. It’s when CEOs get together and they rub elbows a little too closely, when you might fall into a trap. During a boardroom meeting, you should have your own minute taker.
Never go into a boardroom meeting with anyone, without having someone note everything that is said and done. If a CEO from another company wants to include you in some kind of ‘lucrative’ deal that has nothing to do with your partnership, don’t engage with their talk. Make sure you clearly say you do not want to be involved in anything you don’t know or approve of. Should this be taken further, you have the minutes to prove your pushback.
Conduct review
Before you get involved with another brand or third-party person, you should always do a diligence check. It’s called a conduct review, whereby you will hire someone or perhaps commission someone in your own company, to undertake an investigation into the integrity of the other party. What kinds of deals have they done? Who are they involved with now? Have they ever been fined, sanctioned, or even penalized for conduct that regulators found inappropriate? This could be doing things like bribing, corporate pressure, IP theft, blackmail, etc.
Corruption is never far from your business. It may already be inside it. These are some of the things you should do as soon as you can, to prevent your brand from being smeared with a corruption scandal and losing money due to fines and drops in sales.
