Compliance Bricks and Mortar for July 25

Victorious - The Art of Cycling — *Book de Tour* by Greig Leach

These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.

What an Employment Lawyer Can Learn From Minecraft (or Not) by Daniel Schwartz in the Connecticut Employment Law Blog

Minecraft is teaching a whole generation of “kids” (and not so “kids”) about the value of teamwork in a corporate culture.

Moreover, there is now a large segment that will have this joint experience together. A generation that will come up building things and doing things online in a joint way that many of us will just not understand. At all.

Bribery: Ethical Failure and Competitive Failure by Chris MacDonald in The Business Ethics Blog

That, of course, is one of the big problems with bribery as a business strategy. It doesn’t always work. You may drop an envelope full of cash on a foreign official’s desk, without knowing that someone else has already dropped off an even fatter envelope. And given that bribery is illegal everywhere — even in places where it is reputed to be common — it’s not like you can go complaining to the police that you’ve been cheated. It’s really an extreme case of buyer beware.

Did Dodd-Frank Work? by Joe Nocera in the New York Times

There are many aspects of the law on which Democrats and Republicans disagree. But there is one area in which the two sides are largely in agreement: “Too Big to Fail” is still with us.

Accommodating Employees’ Religious Beliefs: A Primer on “Sincerely Held” by Jared Lucan in the Connecticut Employment Law Blog

While not explicit in the statutory framework, it is also illegal for an employer to refuse to accommodate an employee’s religious belief or practice that may run contrary to an employment requirement, unless such accommodation would cause an undue burden on the operation of the employer’s business.

Sounds simple enough, right?

So what’s the problem? Well for most employers, the problem is determining whether an employee’s religious belief is bona fide. In other words, is the employee’s religious belief “sincerely held?”

Indeed, if a religious belief is not sincerely held, then an employer does not have to provide an accommodation.

Code of Conduct, Compliance Policies and Procedures-Part I

For the remainder of this week, I will have a four-part episode on your Code of Conduct and anti-corruption compliance policies and procedures. In today’s post I will review the underlying legal and statutory basis for the documents as a foundation of your overall anti-corruption regime. In subsequent posts, I will review how to go about drafting your Code of Conduct and anti-corruption compliance policies and procedures and how to assess, review and revise them on a timely basis.

Code of Conduct, Compliance Policies and Procedures-Part II