Effective training enables your organization to comply with all legal requirements, thereby avoiding costly lawsuits, audits, and fines.
Ethics
It takes only one employee, or even an agent of your company, to commit a crime, and your entire company may be held liable. Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, with liability your company may face very large fines, a 5-year probationary period, recompense for the victim of the crime, and more.
There is good news, though. You can reduce your organization’s fines in such instances by showing that you have established an effective compliance and ethics program in your company. To do this, you must train your employees at all levels, along with your agents, on ethics. According to the Federal Sentencing Commission, an organization that has an effective compliance and ethics program can reduce its fines for a criminal conviction by as much as 90 percent.
The Federal Sentencing Commission states that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines apply to all organizations, whether publicly or privately held and of whatever nature, such as corporations, partnerships, labor unions, pension funds, trusts, nonprofit entities, and governmental units.
Yes, you do have the budget and time to train managers and supervisors with BLR’s® 10-Minute HR Trainer. Try it at no cost or risk. Get details.
The Guidelines distinguish between what training is required of large versus small organizations, because the resources available to create compliance and ethics programs will vary by the size of the company. Small organizations are required to train their employees with less formality and fewer resources than large companies. For instance, in small companies, employees may be trained in informal staff meetings. Monitoring can be accomplished during regular walk-throughs or by continual observation during the general management of the company. In addition, personnel on staff may conduct the training, rather than hiring trainers outside the company.
Specific issues that should be covered in ethics training include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:
- Holding a second job
- Authority of employees to grant discounts to customers
- Gifts (there may be a limitation on receiving all gifts or gifts over a certain value)
- Whether employees may have personal financial dealings with or invest in companies that supply materials to or buy materials from your company
- Office romances
- Confidential information
- How to use company funds
- Privacy policies
- Whether employees’ families may take advantage of employee discounts
- Whether employees may use fictitious names while conducting business
- Harassment of all types
- Employees performing acts of hospitality toward public officials
- Bribery
- Prohibitions on all illegal activity
- Kickbacks
- Performing outside work that competes with the company
- Insider information
- Borrowing or lending money
- Recruiting employees to work for another organization not related to the company
- Conflicts of interest
- Campaign contributions
- Investigations of ethics violations
- Disciplinary action for ethics violations
Additional Training Your Company Should Provide
In addition to the topics above, you should also consider the following types of training: orientation, training for new supervisors, refresher training for experienced supervisors, literacy, diversity, sales, customer relations, various work skills, management skills, computer skills, new technology, production methods, communication skills, workplace law, and cross-cultural training.
Train your line managers with BLR’s 10-Minute HR Trainer. There won’t be time for classroom boredom. Try it for free.
Effective training enables your organization to comply with all legal requirements, thereby avoiding costly lawsuits, audits, and fines. Training also enables your employees to make the most of their investments by developing knowledge and skills that make them more productive and efficient; learning to use equipment and technology properly and effectively; learning to work in ways that avoid accidents, lawsuits, and government fines; and developing communication, teamwork, and other skills that enhance their contributions to the organization.
To train effectively, you need a program that’s easy for trainers to deliver and that requires little time from busy schedules. Also, if you’re like most companies in these tight budget days, you need a program that’s reasonable in cost.
We asked our editors what they recommend for training supervisors in a minimum amount of time with maximum effect. They came back with BLR’s unique 10-Minute HR Trainer.
With this training resource, we’ve provided an easy-to-manage program that lets you train in discrete, 10-minute chunks. It’s a program that’s easy for you to deliver and that requires little time from busy schedules. And it’s remarkably affordable.
As its name implies, this product trains managers and supervisors in critical HR skills in as little as 10 minutes for each topic. 10-Minute HR Trainer offers these features:
Trains in 50 key HR topics under all major employment laws, including manager and supervisor responsibilities and how to legally carry out managerial actions from hiring to termination. (See a complete list of topics below.)
Uses the same teaching sequence master teachers use. Every training unit includes an overview, bullet points on key lessons, a quiz, and a handout to reinforce the lesson later.
Completely prewritten and self-contained. Each unit comes as a set of reproducible documents. Just make copies or turn them into overheads and you’re done. (Take a look at a sample lesson below.)
Updated continually. As laws change, your training needs do as well. 10-Minute HR Trainer provides new lessons and updated information every 90 days, along with a monthly Training Forum newsletter, for as long as you are in the program.
Works fast. Each session is so focused that there’s not a second’s waste of time. Your managers are in and out almost before they can look at the clock, yet they remember small details even months later.
Evaluate It at No Cost for 30 Days
We’ve arranged to make 10-Minute HR Trainer available to our readers for a 30-day, in-office, no-cost trial. Review it at your own pace and try some lessons with your colleagues. If it’s not for you, return it at our expense. Click here and we’ll set you up with our 10-Minute HR Trainer.