Compliance Today - October 2022

Recognize the power of empathy

In her book The Empathy Edge: Harnessing the Value of Compassion as an Engine for Success, brand strategist Maria Ross discusses how “empathy can increase financial success, productivity, and retention” and yield overall “positive behaviors” in the workplace.^[2] Taking this mindset one step further in applying it to the world of compliance, we must contemplate how we can, essentially, put ourselves in our stakeholders’ shoes. By better understanding their perspectives, pressures, and drivers, we can leverage those to gain their support, bolstering our efforts to refine our programs while managing our ever-evolving compliance risk landscapes.

In the last decade, empathy has been increasingly recognized as a critical tool in effectively influencing others and driving performance in business, so much so that many large corporations now incorporate empathy training into their leadership development programs.^[3] A 2011 study of 6,731 managers from 38 countries by the Center for Creative Leadership uncovered strong performance by empathetic bosses, saying they “effectively build and maintain relationships.”^[4] These findings translate well to the role we play as compliance professionals. What better way to convince stakeholders to genuinely embrace compliance than foster relationships through empathy? Compliance, after all, is largely about people. Understanding your stakeholders’ perspectives when attempting to influence them to adopt compliant behavior or support your program will best position you for success.

Make it easy

If an organization’s compliance program is designed well, compliance should not just be the responsibility of the individuals in the compliance function but rather an integral part of everyone’s job. That said, given the various pressures in the business and limited resources, even the most fundamental of activities are driven by compliance programs. Training, policy and process development, audit responses, corrective action plan development and execution, or even simply pausing to raise concerns when they arise, can prove quite taxing. Candidly, it can be quite burdensome to those internal clients with broad responsibilities not squarely in the compliance function and who may view compliance as a barrier to their success instead of a support function or differentiator.

This is where empathy comes into play yet again. By helping to make compliance easy for your stakeholders, you enhance your ability to drive compliance performance without being “that annoying compliance person,” placing even more demands on the business. Making your training materials practical and succinct, offering policy and procedure development assistance and tools, clarifying roles and responsibilities in the audit process, and ensuring your team is friendly and accessible to your business partners are part of the process.

Here are a few of the things you can do to make compliance easy for your clients and, in doing so, foster a more transparent and compliance-driven organization:

• Make your training materials practical and succinct.

• Offer policy and procedure development assistance and tools.

• Clarify roles and responsibilities in the audit process.

• Ensure your team is friendly and accessible to your business partners.

• Simplify the process for raising concerns.

Gain credibility and build trust

It is human nature to put up barriers to ensure survival when you feel threatened. Frequently, compliance professionals may appear threatening to particular stakeholders, especially those whose roles inherently implicate significant compliance risks for our organizations. In the World of Work Project’s “Five Dimensions of Trust in Sales,” expertise is cited as a primary driver for building trust.^[5] If an individual can demonstrate high levels of expertise concerning the product, in this case, compliant behavior, and answer any questions that a client may have, our clients will place greater trust in us.^[6] Suppose we recognize that our positions may sometimes be perceived as threatening out of the gate. In that case, we can position ourselves as guiding partners to our stakeholders—not only as compliance experts but as leaders who want to support them in ethically reaching their goals. Ensuring we are well versed in existing and emerging compliance risks, collaborative with subject matter experts throughout the organization, knowledgeable and aligned with the organization’s strategy, understanding of the various pressures of the business, and strategic in our approach to collaborating to come up with pragmatic solutions, we can more easily gain our stakeholders’ trust and, ultimately, a seat at the table.

Your effort to build credibility by being service-minded will lead your stakeholders to ask for input in advance, hear you out when you escalate a concern, and become increasingly supportive of efforts to promote your compliance program within your organization. When your stakeholders regularly come to you, instead of the other way around, you’ve hit the jackpot for a sustained awareness of emerging risks for your program to help address, improving actual effectiveness of your compliance program.

Communicate, both ways, all the ways

Let’s face it, many of us in the compliance profession are rather set in our ways. We have things we want to accomplish in our compliance programs and know exactly how we want them to be done. Because of this, we may have found ourselves trying to force our agendas on people in our organizations rather than listening and understanding what will truly work for them. Fostering an environment in which open, two-way conversation is welcome will further help you earn your stakeholders’ trust. For example, the more time you spend communicating with your stakeholders, the more you will learn about their unique choice of language and functional/departmental acronyms and jargon. Use their language in your communications so that your stakeholders have no doubt about expectations, but also be open to the possibility of there being more than one way to accomplish something and flexible enough to adjust your approach when given feedback. Where possible, offer your stakeholders guardrails that they must stay within rather than an exact path they must follow.

Internal clients (within your team)

For those of us fortunate to have a team to support our compliance endeavors within our organizations, adopting a servant leadership mindset in our daily interactions with them will go a long way in enhancing the team’s performance. You will be hard-pressed to find a compliance leader anywhere who believes their function is appropriately staffed to accomplish all they feel must be done to adequately manage risk within their organizations. This frequently leads to having a compliance team that feels overworked, underappreciated, and at high risk of burning out.

By being more understanding of your team members’ perspectives and challenges, the work they are doing, and the resistance they may be experiencing within your business, you can improve overall engagement and drive your team’s productivity and effectiveness. But remember to show appreciation for their efforts, roll up your sleeves to help remove obstacles they encounter. A 2015 Global Empathy Index noted that the top 10 most empathetic businesses among 160 generated 50% more earnings than the bottom 10.^[7] Compliance is clearly not a function that can be led from the proverbial ivory tower. As compliance leaders, we must be empathetic toward our teams, promote (and demonstrate) work-life balance, take steps to make their lives easier, pitch in whenever we can, and let them know that we have their backs when they are challenged, to keep our teams motivated, engaged, and happy.

Internal clients (within the same company)

How many of us have walked into a room at work only to have someone say, “Better stop talking about that, compliance is here”? While this is often said in jest, unfortunately there are many times when there is some grain of truth to the mentality that compliance is not welcome at the table.

While our go-to approach to making compliance happen in our organization may be to force it on the organizations we are in, operating with more finesse and understanding will go a long way to getting that seat at the table and driving compliance program effectiveness. We must recognize that our colleagues who work in operations are under a tremendous amount of pressure to meet key performance metrics and achieve quality results, often with fewer and fewer resources. We must design programs that are sensitive to this and are minimally burdensome on—and, dare we say, even beneficial to—operations. It will make our operational partners more receptive to adopting the compliant behavior we want them to have. Appreciating that our colleagues in finance are very much focused on the bottom line, and that compliance is typically an overhead cost, we need to work to build financial cases for the initiatives we are driving. Presenting business cases and cost-benefit analyses for resources we request or projects we propose puts the work we are attempting to accomplish in their terms and will assist in developing stronger appreciation and support from our friends in finance.

Also within our organization are corporate service functions such as legal, human resources, risk management, clinical quality, and audit services that face very similar challenges as compliance. Appreciating that you don’t have to go at it alone and cultivating relationships built on trust and a common goal of both ethical and compliant behavior will make allies out of these essential groups of internal clients. When collaborating to tackle a high-risk concern, connect with these partners in advance to ensure mutual alignment before you take your respective seats at the table. Having more than one voice in the room with a consistent message will drastically impact your results, even if it’s imparting a message that others may not want to hear.

External clients

While “external clients” can take on many different meanings, for the sake of this example, we will examine external clients in the truest sense of the term, namely, paying customers. Compliance professionals in a business process outsourcing (BPO) organization find themselves uniquely managing risk-sensitive operations, often for companies operating in high-risk segments in the healthcare provider or payer space. This requires establishing and maintaining constant alignment with our clients’ compliance programs and leaders while still managing compliance risks appropriately for our own business.

In this role, we must understand our clients’ perspectives. In some cases, they may not even like the fact that their organizations have outsourced work to your company, so they may be resistant to collaborating with you at the outset. Being cognizant of their mindset, demonstrating you are knowledgeable in your compliance practice, and helping them understand your sincere desire to partner with them in their efforts to appropriately manage compliance risks for their organizations will go a long way. It will earn credibility, build trust, and drive compliance program effectiveness for the services your company is providing. Once you have gained your client’s trust, ensuring consistent, transparent, and frequent communication will help you maintain it. Like many other types of relationships, cultivating trust and collaboration will take a lot of time and continued effort; however, it will forge a long-lasting, mutually beneficial, trusted partnership that can be a differentiator within the increasingly competitive world of BPOs.

Patients

Having once worked as a compliance professional at a hospital in one of the most litigious zip codes in the United States, I became quite seasoned at working with very upset patients and their family members. This is where empathy and two-way communication can be extremely powerful. Having been patients yourselves, you understand they put a lot of faith in the healthcare system to provide safe, quality care and handle their most sensitive information. It positions you to appreciate the drivers behind why they may be upset when something goes wrong or is mishandled.

Sometimes simply letting the patient know that you empathize with their perspective and want to hear them out can successfully de-escalate an otherwise potentially volatile situation. Calmly listening to the patient, showing you genuinely care, letting them know you will investigate their concerns, and then getting back to them when you say you will can truly make a difference in whether a patient concern further escalates or is addressed to the patient’s satisfaction.

While a very simple notion—putting yourself in the patient’s shoes, thinking about how you would want the situation to be handled, and acting accordingly—will go a long way to appeasing an otherwise disgruntled and dissatisfied patient.

Physicians

Let’s face it, for many of us, doctors can be some of our most challenging stakeholders to work with. They are integral to the business we are in, so it is vital we work with them as partners. Unfortunately, our compliance objectives sometimes may conflict with how they want things done. While not foolproof, our understanding of their positions and perspectives can go a long way in influencing physicians to do the right thing. Physicians are highly educated and very intelligent, so demonstrating you are well-informed and knowledgeable on the topics at hand will help you earn their respect and, ultimately, their trust. Aiding them to recognize that you want to work with them to reach a solution—not just telling them what needs to be done, but genuinely hearing them out and understanding their concerns—can build the type of rapport that is essential to shared progress and problem-solving.

Our working relationships with physicians are something we must work the hardest at building and maintaining. However, employing empathy and earning trust can often lead to physicians becoming some of the strongest and influential supporters of your program.