How to Foster a Speak-Up Culture and Track the ROI
Let’s face it – high performing organizations rely on employees to spot risk and bring attention to issues. Risk and compliance professionals need to create a speak-up culture for employees so they can solve organizational problems. Unreported concerns or late reporting of incidents creates cost and the dreaded investigations backlog.
Creating a Culture Where Employees Speak Up
Creating a speak-up culture means creating a psychologically safe workplace that normalizes employees reporting concerns early. It also means developing effective situational awareness training that focuses on building core skills that not only help employees uphold company policies, they raise the worker up to the level of interested stakeholder, personally invested in the health of the company.
On Thursday April 4th, 2024, Janine Yancey, Founder and CEO of Emtrain, and Shannon Walker, Founder of WhistleBlower Security and Executive Vice President of Strategy at Case IQ held this webinar. They discussed how programs like compliance training, workplace safety and violence prevention, and employee voice can connect and transform through skills development and competency building.
Key learning goals:
- How global organizations are bringing compliance together with skills-based learning to create a speak-up culture and resolve issues of trust.
- The complex requirements of a workplace violence plan.
- How to leverage compliance training to generate a risk heatmap, exposing concerns early and ahead of reported incidents or complaints.
- How correlating employee sentiment to claims and workplace investigations trends can transform the sunk cost of compliance training into ROI.
Benefits of Creating a Speak-Up Culture
By creating a speak-up culture, we can strengthen employees’ sense of ownership. Paired with skills, employees are more likely to empower risk mitigation earlier and more often. In such an environment, employees are not merely observers but active participants in shaping the ethical landscape of their organization.
This culture encourages open dialogue, promotes transparency, and builds trust across all levels of the company. Employees feeling safe to speak up fosters harmony, increases satisfaction, and reduces turnover. A culture of openness deters misconduct by ensuring swift issue resolution.
Organizations that successfully cultivate this culture not only demonstrate their commitment to ethical business practices but also position themselves as attractive employers for talent who value integrity and transparency. The resultant alignment of employee and organizational values further solidifies the foundation for sustainable business success, proving that a robust speak-up culture is an indispensable asset in today’s corporate world.
Training Solutions for a Speak-Up Culture
In today’s dynamic corporate environment, fostering a speak-up culture is not just beneficial; it’s essential for survival and growth. Whistleblowers play a pivotal role in unveiling misconduct, fraud, or crime within an organization, safeguarding its integrity, and ensuring a healthy workplace culture. Emtrain’s innovative training solution, “The Basics of Whistleblowing,” is designed to empower employees with the knowledge and confidence needed to act when they encounter unethical behavior.
This course goes beyond the basic definition of whistleblowing, delving into its significance in maintaining transparency and accountability in various sectors, including healthcare, social media, and beyond. By illustrating real-world scenarios, Emtrain makes the concept relatable and underscores the crucial role whistleblowers play in our society to create a speak-up culture.
Key Enhancements in Emtrain’s Whistleblowing Training:
- Interactive Learning: Emtrain uses interactive modules to engage learners, making the training memorable and effective. Through scenarios and quizzes, employees not only learn about whistleblowing but also apply their knowledge in simulated situations.
- Legal Frameworks Decoded: Understanding the legalities surrounding whistleblowing can be daunting. Emtrain simplifies these complexities, explaining the legal protections for whistleblowers and the organizational policies that support them. This knowledge equips employees to report concerns without fear of retaliation.
- Empowering Ethical Reporting: Emtrain’s training emphasizes the development of critical skills for effective reporting. Employees learn to clearly report concerns via proper channels for prompt, serious action.
- Supportive Environment: Emphasizes the need for a setting where employees feel valued and safe to speak up. It discusses strategies for leaders to foster such an environment, reinforcing the culture of transparency and integrity.
- Metrics and Follow-up: Emtrain offers analytic tools to measure training effectiveness and track cultural shifts and incident reports. This data helps in continuously refining strategies to enhance the speak-up culture.
This training, coupled with the insights from industry experts like Janine Yancey and Shannon Walker, provides a clear roadmap for organizations looking to enhance their speak-up culture. Ultimately, embracing such a culture leads to tangible benefits, including improved risk mitigation, reduced investigation backlogs, and a positive impact on the organization’s ROI. By prioritizing a culture where employees feel safe and valued in speaking up, organizations not only protect their integrity but also position themselves as leaders in ethical business practices.