We revamped this classic blog by our founder, Ricardo Pellafone, with fresh new insights!
If your org celebrates compliance and ethics week, we've got four activities to engage your employees the right way (spoiler alert: crossword puzzles did not make the list). But before you start planning, consider the following logistics to avoid common pitfalls.🎯
Should you even have games?
“Other companies are playing games. Shouldn’t we?”
Your point is? | Source: Warner Bros. Studios’ One Crazy Summer via Giphy.com
Well, maybe—here are some potential pitfalls of playing games with your employees during compliance and ethics week (or any time, really).
Relevancy
Often, one-off activities have nothing at all to do with your business processes. Having your employees do a crossword puzzle, word search, or other activity that isn’t directly relevant to their work can make it seem like ethics and compliance is superfluous. You don’t want people to think compliance is an add-on. Compliance is a regular and important part of business operations.
Brand Impact
If your program is new and not everyone is familiar with the compliance team, you could play games solely for brand awareness, but don’t do this for all eternity. While games can ensure people know who you are, these types of activities could make them take the compliance team less seriously. That’s bad for your brand, and could hamper future efforts to manage risks.
Cost
While ethics and compliance week games can bring a sense of comradery and culture, you need to keep in mind that every employee who takes part is being pulled away from their job. This tactic has a real cost to the business. Is it worth the lost time and productivity? Make sure any activities you do during the week have benefits that outweigh the cost of your employees’ time. (Quick math: pulling away 1,000 employees for just 30 minutes, based on the average salary and benefits provided by the Department of Labor, will cost your org over $36,700! And that doesn't account for lost productivity.)
Also, remember to think about your own budget. Some of these are relatively inexpensive, but make sure you’re not spending money that needs to be used to mitigate actual risk.
Location- or Site-Appropriate
Think about where you’re going to do this. Games or other group activities can be great in one location, and fall completely flat in another. Make sure you’ve connected with the managers and leaders at each site to ensure the activities make sense and will add value for the audiences at those locations.
With those caveats in mind, if you decide to move forward with some sort of activity during ethics and compliance week, we have four to share with you (two new; two oldies but goodies). These work because they require employees to perform a real-world compliance skill to "win."
Photo Hunt
🚩 Risk areas: various
⏲️ Prep time: around an hour
📝 What you need: an empty desk, a camera or smartphone, a bunch of spare office supplies, masking tape or labels you can write on, various other items relating to your company’s risks.
💡 Instructions: Grab a spare desk and clutter it up with office supplies so it looks in-use. Add elements that should be red flags for risks (see examples below) and take a picture. Then, distribute the picture by email/newsletter/internal social and ask employees to send you all the risks they spot. You can reward the best answer (or answers) with a prize.
The stuff you put on the desk should correspond to the risks you’d like to highlight, but here are some examples and the risks they address:
- A bag from a high-end store, gift basket, or something similar with a note that reads “From your/To my favorite agent/official/vendor” in easily readable lettering (gifts and entertainment / anticorruption /conflicts of interest; depends on how you phrase it)
- A document that has “confidential” or some other related indicator on it (privacy/confidentiality/competitor info)
- A product with a label marked “prototype” (confidentiality/IP)
- A machine part with a sticker marked “ITAR” or “dual-use” (trade control)
- A document marked “competitor price list” (competition)
- Some test tubes labeled “Alan Smithee” or “Jane Doe” (privacy)
- A bunch of thumbtacks, some facing up, and close to the edge of the desk (EHS)
Don’t forget to put some red herring items on there, too—have everyone on the team contribute a random personal item from their desk to avoid making the risks too obvious and help build compliance-critical-thinking skills. For example, if you use the sample picture above, at least one person will think they need to report that toy turtle because it's the wrong color or something like that.
This game works pretty well with an international workforce since it requires little-to-no translating, and it transfers easily to real-world risk-spotting.
Pro tip: This activity can be conducted with on-site and remote employees, and on-site employees can submit their responses right on the spot!
Golden Ticket
🚩 Risk areas: intellectual property, confidentiality
⏲️ Prep time: 15 minutes
📝 What you need: a few co-conspirators, a chocolate factory (optional), an in-person workforce
💡 Instructions: Create a fake confidential document and print it out. It should look like your most important types of documents, but be VERY CLEAR in the header that it’s a training doc.
If you don't have this type of document, grab an editable PowerPoint version of the one below right here.
To kick things off, send an email to employees letting them know that you’re leaving these documents (a.k.a. the "golden tickets") in strategic places throughout the office during ethics and compliance week. Ask them to be on the lookout, and when they find and report them (according to whatever your process is for doing that), they will win a prize.
Basically, you’re going to be like Willy Wonka, except not terrifying. | Source: Warner Bros. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory via Giphy.com
Next, print out a bunch of these golden tickets and number them so you can keep track of how many you have and how many get reported. Drop them off at key places where you’re concerned about confidential information being left unattended or stored inappropriately—such as on or by a printer, or in a trash can instead of a shred box—and wait for them to be reported. If you’re in charge of multiple sites, you’ll need to recruit co-conspirators to handle this at the site level.
After they’re all reported or enough time has passed (don’t wait too long!), send a follow-up email announcing the winners, and use this opportunity to remind your teams about best practices for handling data the right way.
Helpline Awareness Game
🚩 Risk areas: speaking up, retaliation
⏲️ Prep and follow-up time: 60-90 minutes
📝 What you need: your helpline
💡 Instructions: Invite others in your org to test your helpline during a specific time period (e.g., one week). Before doing so, reach out to your helpline provider, let them know the helpline will be tested, and add a reporting category of “contest entry” or the like if possible. This will make for clean reporting data.
Provide your org with the link/email/phone number to the helpline, what category and/or what very specific wording to use (e.g., “I’m submitting this question in the hopes of winning a prize.”). This will ensure that (1) all parties know this is a test, and (2) you can remove the data before reporting your helpline stats to the board. Respond to every entry that comes in.
At the end of the week, take all submissions and randomly choose one person as the prize winner. Then, share the results of the test and remind everyone to use the helpline if they ever have a concern. If you're a Design Club member: detailed instructions, kick-off and close-out emails, metrics to consider, and some of Broadcat’s speak-up icons are all included in our Template for a Hotline Awareness Game!
At the end of the week, employees will be more familiar with your helpline and how to use it.
Suggestion Box for Operationalizing Compliance
🚩 Risk areas: various
⏲️ Prep time: 15 minutes
📝 What you need: an email account (and maybe a form builder)
💡 Instructions: Invite others in your organization to submit ideas for how to operationalize compliance by using the email template below or drafting your own. Give employees a week or more to submit their ideas.
At the end of the entry period, review all submissions for feasibility, choose the best ones, and provide a prize to the people who shared them. Bonus! You'll end up with a whole list of other ideas you can implement at a later date.
Email template:
Subject: Make your job easier and win a prize!
We know it's impossible to memorize every policy and procedure so we're looking for ways to provide guidance right when you need it.
Think about your daily tasks: Are there any areas where checklists, decision trees, or other resources could streamline your work and reduce errors? This might look like:
- an attachment or link to a decision tree in an automated email
- a reminder poster on the wall where it's needed most
- a checklist that must be completed before the next step
Share your ideas: Over the next week, submit your suggestions [to EMAIL ADDRESS or FORM URL]. We'll select a few to implement right away. And if we pick your idea, you’ll get a [REALLY COOL PRIZE].- [Your Name]
As you roll out these ideas, mention they came from compliance and ethics week submissions. As employees see how much it makes sense to operationalize compliance, they’ll come to you with more ideas, and your metrics will reflect the benefits!
A Note on Prizes
Give good prizes! Skip the gift cards, branded company swag, and employee pizza parties. Instead, give nice awards like fancy noise-canceling headphones or tumblers that keep drinks cold until the end of time. No knockoffs! 🚫
Think about it: If you establish a rep for giving dud prizes, no one will participate next year.
Other prize options are making a donation to an company-approved charity of their choice or offering time off to volunteer in the community.
How did it go? Take stock.
After your compliance and ethics week ends, take a look at your data. Did employees learn anything they’ve applied to their day-to-day jobs? Are they more likely to speak up if there is an issue? Do they know your team?
And, importantly, how are you going to spend the other 51 weeks of the year?
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Want to find out more about our Compliance Design Club? Find out more by watching our Design Club video tour!