November 1, 2016

Survey Says: Compliance Programs Work

How do you know if your compliance program is working? While one aspect is managing compliance incidents, another critical metric to look at is whether the program is also preventing incidents from occurring. That’s a difficult thing to measure, since the vast majority of employees are unlikely to report violations that they didn’t commit.

Nonetheless, a new survey of compliance professionals conducted jointly by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association reveals that the majority of compliance programs are successfully preventing violations.

Though there are no doubt countless near-misses that compliance professionals will never know about, the ones that are reported still overwhelmingly show the positive impact of compliance programs on preventing incidents from occurring.

Below, we’ve rounded up 4 of the key findings from the report:

Even without knowing the exact number of incidents prevented, the survey findings show that compliance programs add significant value for organizations by effectively preventing violations.

Large organizations and healthcare organizations prevent the most incidents.

While 83% of all compliance professionals said that their program had prevented one or more incidents in the past two years, those in large organizations and in the healthcare industry were more likely to say an incident had been prevented. 86% of healthcare organizations and 95% of organizations with 5,000-30,000 employees were aware of an incident that had been avoided.

While organizations with less than 5,000 employees reported preventing 10 incidents or fewer, 48% of organizations of 30,000+ said 11+ incidents had been prevented, and 12% reported preventing over 100 incidents.

Compliance training works.

82% of the compliance professionals surveyed said that training on a compliance topic had led to at least a slight increase in the number of inquiries and reports. Once again this was particularly in large organizations where 89% said training had led to actions that prevented violations from taking place.

The jury’s still out on the effectiveness of compliance audits.

69% of larger organizations reported that compliance audits had revealed misconduct at least some of the time, compared to just 56% of all organizations.

However, the report authors indicate that this doesn’t account for other benefits of audits, including potentially discovering gaps in the compliance program and process, or the possibility of audits deterring wrongdoing.

Prevented violations far outnumber prosecutions.

With 83% of compliance professionals reporting at least one violation prevented, and 46% reporting six or more in the last two years, the authors extrapolate that this number of potential incidents far exceeds the number of violations caught by regulators.

Even without knowing the exact number of incidents prevented, the survey findings show that compliance programs add significant value for organizations by effectively preventing violations.

Compligo, our workforce compliance automation program, can transform your compliance program. From managing policies and communication, to tracking and deploying the training that can prevent incidents from ever occurring, Compligo saves you time, money, and hassle. Learn more here.