Catherine Boerner (cboerner@boernerconsultingllc.com) President of Boerner Consulting LLC, New Berlin, WI.
The first thing I think of now when a hospital compliance officers express the need to update their code of conduct or their compliance program is to involve the hospital’s marketing department. If you don’t have a marketing department, it might be the public relations or communications department.
The compliance department should really involve professionals trained in the messaging who have the skill sets to help promote the compliance program. This can be extremely helpful for not just written documents like the code of conduct getting a fresh new look but also the information about the compliance program on the intranet and/or internet websites.
It might be good timing to give your compliance program a fresh new look and also have the marketing/public relations department help you develop messaging strategies to promote the hotline and even give a fresh new look to the annual compliance and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act training.
There are so many expectations and skill sets needed to be a successful compliance officer. Marketing the compliance program may be one area that could benefit from assistance. It might even be part of the reason a compliance program is not effective anymore. It could be in part due to the messaging failing and employees losing trust or interest in the value of the program.
There are many ways to add a new look to the program, such as putting a new compliance officer’s picture and phone number on the hotline poster to add a personal touch, raise awareness, and encourage a connection.
You might even want to explore new branding of the compliance program beyond just a new look. This would be good to discuss with the marketing department to get its ideas on ways to brand or rebrand the program. It is always good to start with a discussion of new employee orientation and how the description of the compliance program comes across. It might be time to make the compliance program stand out a bit more with a new brand and/or logo or something to help remind employees what the compliance program stands for and make the messages memorable.
I often like to use the analogy of compliance officers putting “smoke detectors” in every department of the organization, among the directors and managers, to monitor compliance risks so they will go off before there is any real “fire” (i.e., a large compliance issue). I would love to see a smoke detector logo for a compliance program (just a thought)!