Tag: Kathleen Edmond

Winding Down From Compliance Week

My head is full of compliance goodness after spending 2.5 days at Compliance Week 2010. The Mayflower Hotel is a great place for a conference this size, with plenty of places to run into people.

Substance

The agenda was full of great substantive information from fellow compliance professionals. There were sessions on metrics, social media, corporate governance, ROI, organizational structures and communications. There were lots of closed door sessions that have not made their way into the blog, where compliance professionals could have more open discussions without the presence of media or vendors.

On top of that, we heard some great perspectives from top government officials, like Lanny Breur, Gary Grindler, Shelley Parratt, Barney Frank and Luis Aguilar.

Of course the best part of any conference is being able to interact with your peers. This was a great gathering of people in the compliance field.

Matt Kelly, Francine McKenna and Me

Old Friends

For me, it was great to once again spend time face-to face with old friends like Scott Cohen, Matt Kelly, Bruce Carton, Francine McKenna, Melissa Klein Aguilar, Bill Piwonka, Carole Switzer, Kathleen Edmond, and Scott Giordano.

New Friends

One of the great things about have a blog, or micro-blogging on Twitter is being able to get in touch with people prior to meeting them in person and then staying in touch with them.

Here are some of the Twitterati I was finally able to meet face-to-face:

tfoxlaw Tom Fox
@tfoxlaw
http://tfoxlaw.com
David Seide
@davidSeide
Scott Mitchell
@mitchell360
Doug Jacobson
@tradelawnews
Doug Chia
@dougchia

Of course, I met more people who don’t blog or use Twitter. It’s just harder to keep those weak ties.

Behind the Scenes

Gina Imperato, Elizabeth Busch, Anne Frey-Mott, Beckie Jankiewicz and the rest of the Event Studio team did a great job of running the conference, getting the attendees where they need to go and making the speakers look good.

Next year

…..

Social Media and Compliance

Compliance, ethics, and legal executives at Johnson & Johnson, Best Buy, and The Travelers Companies will provide details on their social media policies, programs, and experiences, focusing on a variety of cultural, legal, and disclosure-related issues.

    Featuring:

  • Johnson & Johnson Senior Counsel & Assistant Corporate Secretary Douglas K. Chia
  • Best Buy Chief Ethics Officer Kathleen Edmond
  • The Travelers Companies, Inc. SVP, Chief Compliance Officer & Group General Counsel David Baker
  • Compliance Week Columnist; President, Docket Media LLC; Founder and Editor, Securities Docket, the ubiquitous Bruce Carton (moderator)

I introduced Bruce and the rest of this panel. Then I helped to control the rambunctious crowd.

Travelers is using social media for complaints. You make a claim through their iPhone app. They also use it as a tool for customer service and advertising. They will push out an update on Twitter and Facebook when a catastrophe van in the area of a natural disaster.

Doug is active in social media so he can look at how the company could use social media. Currently their prime use is for their retail products. They are going to where their customers are hanging out. They use the JNJ BTW blog to publish current events at Johnson & Johnson. They are using the corporate twitter (JNJcomm) account to push out information from the shareholder meetings.

Doug highlighted a list of legal, compliance, reputational and logistical issues to consider when a company steps into social media.

Kathleen created her blog to help educate her workforce about what could get you fired. Retail companies have a huge employee turnover. The industry average is close to 100%. If someone is going to tell her story, she wants to be the person to tell it.

Best Buy has lots of social media outlets: Twelpforce, CEO’s Whiteboard, CEO’s Twitter, CMO’s Twitter, CMO’s blog.

She also used internal social media to help develop policies. She used an internal wiki to get feedback on potential policies and issues. She thinks feedback from employees is important in developing good, enforceable policies.

There is the fear of litigation. What you say could cost you and subject you to a lawsuit. Of course, if it’s effective it can save you lots of money by avoiding the bad situations.

It’s tough to work in a conservative company when facing something as innovative as social media.

One company assemble a social media task force to draft a social media policy. They managed to create a user reference manual to give detailed guidelines to the employees.

The audience expressed some concern about the improper disclosure of company information. The panel pointed out that social media is merely a newer avenue for disclosure. People have been able to improperly disclose information for years.

One of the panelists stated that they do block access to social media sites. Another pointed out that employees could just go to their mobile phone or find other ways to waste time.  It seems silly to block access to the sites if you are using the sites to market your company.

An interesting audience question was whether a privacy failure at a social media site would impact the company. Could you be tainted by a Facebook failure. It seems remote.

How do you manage the boundaries between personal and professional uses of social media. Make it clear that you are not stating the company position. Don’t use the company name in your handle or profile name. It’s @dougchia, not @J&JDougChia.

Materials:

David Baker:

Doug Chia

Kathleen Edmond

Interact 2010:Governing Social Media

The folks at Mitratech were nice enough to send me to Miami to talk at their annual Interact 2010 conference to talk about social media and compliance. This was the session description:

Governing Social Media: How to Monitor, Manage and Make the Most of Employee Use of Social Media

  • Doug Cornelius, Chief Compliance Officer, Beacon Capital Partners, LLC (that’s me)
  • Kathleen Edmond, Chief Ethics Officer, Best Buy
  • Scott Giordano, Director, Product Marketing, Mitratech
  • Janice Innis-Thompson, SVP & Chief Compliance Officer, TIAA-CREF

Corporate Communication takes on a whole new meaning in a world of social media, where employees can freely post their views and spread documents, photographs and even videos across the globe with a click of a mouse. Companies that are ahead of the curve not only have established policies regarding use of social media sites by their executives and employees, but also are finding ways to use social media to their competitive advantage. Join our panel to hear about the risks and rewards that a well managed approach to social media can bring.

Here is the slide deck from our panel discussion:

Governing Social Media

Governing Social Media: How to Monitor, Manage and Make the Most of Employee Use of Social Media

Join me, Kathleen Edmond, Chief Ethics Officer, Best Buy, and Janice Innis-Thompson, SVP & Chief Compliance Officer, TIAA-CREF, as we discuss compliance and governance issues of web 2.0 and social networking.

“Corporate Communication takes on a whole new meaning in a world of social media, where employees can freely post their views and spread documents, photographs and even videos across the globe with a click of a mouse. Companies that are ahead of the curve not only have established policies regarding use of social media sites by their executives and employees, but also are finding ways to use social media to their competitive advantage. Join our panel to hear about the risks and rewards that a well managed approach to social media can bring.”

Our Session: Governing Social Media: How to Monitor, Manage and Make the Most of Employee Use of Social Media

Compliance Bits and Pieces for December 11

Here are some interesting stories from the past week.

Tis the Season! Where are the gifts from vendors?? from Kathleen Edmond, Best Buy’s Chief Ethics Officer

This time every year we send out reminders to our employees that we do not accept gifts from vendors. At the same time we send letters to our vendors asking that they don’t send our employees any gifts. I usually get questions from employees, and even some vendors, about why we we have this policy.

Second Circuit Defines Employers’ Obligations in Sexual Harassment Claim by Daniel Schwartz on the Connecticut Employment Law Blog

The Second Circuit’s decision in Duch v. Jakubek (decided on Friday, December 4th)… discusses what to do with a supervisor who purposely ignores evidence of sexual harassment. And the court concludes that the supervisor should have known that a female subordinate was being sexually harassed and should’ve done something about it.

Magyar’s Magnum Opus from the FCPA Blog

Magyar Telekom’s SEC disclosure last week about its internal investigation into fraudulent contracting practices could have been short and bland and very ordinary. A typical corporate blank wall. Instead it was abundant in length and detail  — one of the most rewarding public disclosures about an internal investigation we’ve ever read. It appeared in the company’s SEC Form 6-K, Report of Foreign Private Issuer, filed December 3, 2009 here.

Did An FCPA Enforcement Action Contribute to a Foreign Coup? by Mike Koehler in the FCPA Professor

In April 2009, DOJ announced (see here) that Latin Node, Inc. (a privately-held telecommunication services company headquartered in Miami) pled guilty to violating the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions in connection with improper payments made to officials in Honduras and Yemen in order to obtain and retain business. The criminal information (see here) details Latin Node’s efforts to obtain and retain business with Hondutel (the Honduran government-owned telecommunications company) and charges that despite recognized “financial weaknesses” in Latin Node’s proposal, Hondutel ultimately selected Latin Node for the agreement because of various improper payments Latin Node made or authorized to various Honduran “foreign officials.”

FCPA Ending its ‘Most Dynamic Single Year’ With a Bang By Dionne Searcey for The Wall Street Journal Law Blog

Two Florida executives of a Miami-Dade County-based telecommunications company, the president of Florida-based Telecom Consulting Services Corp., and two former Haitian government officials were charged in an indictment unsealed yesterday for their alleged roles in a foreign bribery, wire fraud and money laundering scheme, DOJ has announced.

Why You Shouldn’t Take it Hard If a Judge Rejects Your Friend Request by Ashby Jones on the Wall Street Journal Law Blog

Late last month, the Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee issued an advisory opinion on the use of social networking sites by Florida judges. (Hat tip: Legal Profession Blog.) This little rhetorical appears early in the opinion:

Whether a judge may add lawyers who may appear before the judge as “friends” on a social networking site, and permit such lawyers to add the judge as their “friend.”

ANSWER: No.