On January 12th, Zimmer Biomet reached a $30 million settlement with the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission over business activities in Mexico. A few days later, an $800 million multijurisdictional settlement was announced with Rolls-Royce. That case involved the United Kingdom, the United States and Brazil, with the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) taking the investigative lead. Clearly, enforcement agencies around the globe remain committed to aggressively investigating and pursuing bribery cases.
In years past, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) was the primary enforcement tool for anticorruption efforts around the world, and companies were wise to focus their resources on that legislation. As the Rolls-Royce settlement reminds us though, other countries are actively pursuing enforcement of their own laws. Simply covering the requirements of the FCPA in ABAC training is no longer practical or advisable.
Our clients are in the process of developing or strengthening their ABAC programs, and training is an important part of their efforts. With the overall volume of compliance training rising every year, we offer a few tips for maximizing the impact of ABAC training.
- Address common concepts one time. Training should be structured to first address the common concepts across all anticorruption laws. For example, most laws define a “bribe” and a “foreign official” similarly and most define the same type of actions as illegal. In addition, most laws do not absolve companies of responsibility of actions conducted by third parties. There is no need to cover each of these concepts in conjunction with each law. Doing so makes the content redundant, and only serves to make the training more cumbersome and frustrating for the learners. By presenting this common content from a wider perspective, in context of all bribery laws and principles, you establish a base of knowledge as the starting point, before delving into the particulars associated with each of the laws.
- Address specific laws individually. The nuances from country to country are plentiful and can be tricky. For example, learners need to know that the FCPA includes a “books and records provision,” and the UKBA punishes a company for failure to prevent bribery. After the common concepts are sufficiently covered, training then needs to address the specific aspects of each law, separately. Otherwise, those details will be lost in a sea of definitions or concepts that the learners were already presented in relation to other laws.
- Reinforce key concepts and laws via micro-learning. On-going reinforcement is key. When developing training plans, integrate micro-learning tools like mini modules and learning sprints (mini assessments) across the learner’s timelines. As an example, topics that affect how the learners conduct their daily business activities need to be addressed through scenario-based, more targeted tools, not just in the foundational training.
As the list of global anticorruption laws has multiplied, we’ve put the principles into practice and updated our Compliance Foundations™ module, Global Anticorruption Laws, with the content restructured to maximize learner engagement. If you’re in the process of developing, or updating, your global anticorruption training, we’re happy to share a content outline of our module and speak with you about our experience. Just contact my colleague Dan O’Connor at doconnor@nxlevelsolutions.com.
Thanks for reading!
Lauren Barnett
Compliance Content Specialist
PharmaCertify™ by NXLevel Solutions
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