The Opportunity
As COVID-19 has increased the virtual recruitment of new employees, our customers have seen an increase in the need to conduct pre-employment Code of Conduct certifications and conflict of interest disclosures using cloud-based tools.
Best Practices
As the overall hiring process is increasingly automated, so too should ethics and compliance programs. Asking potential employees to download and print PDFs or paper documents and then manually distributing those documents for review and approval is not only inefficient, it shows prospective employees the lack of automation and investment in technology by the company. The “manual” approach also wastes valuable time and resources of the compliance team. With today’s technology, it is easier than ever to onboard new and prospective employees. You can:
- Simplify Access and Completion. Provide secure links allowing new or prospective employees to complete their certification, and any associated disclosures, in minutes.
- Expedite Review. Automatically circulate certifications and disclosure forms to the right people for comment and review.
- Enhance Communication. Communicate with the new or potential employee in real-time to get any comments, questions or insights documented in the system.
- Mitigate Risk. Determine why a new or prospective employee may not be willing to certify to the Code or if a conflict truly exists and, where it does, determine if controls can mitigate them or need to move on to another candidate.
- Complete Record. If the candidate is hired, quickly and easily associate it with that person’s compliance record for future follow through.
Benefits
Implementing a pre-employment certification and disclosure process delivers significant benefits to the organization and the compliance program.
- Reduce Risk. Get potential conflicts of interest on the table early reducing potential risk to both the company and the employee.
- Set the Tone. Set the tone for new and prospective employees that the company takes ethics and compliance seriously.
- Build Relationships. Provides a quick and easy opportunity for the ethics and compliance program to build a stronger pre-employment relationship with employees.
- Improve Efficiency. Reduce time and effort allowing employees to focus on the job with some of the basics out of the way.
- Close the Gap. As more fully discussed in our article on the closing the “Disclosure Gap,” reduce the time between the underlying business activity (in this case, the hiring decision) and the actual certification and disclosure.
- Enhance Data and Insight. Deliver great insights and data analytics that show trends in employment and recruitment behavior.
Next Steps
As you work to implement your pre-employment certifications and disclosures, we are happy to share our best practice forms and workflows to support you.
