Why Automate the Employee Ethics and Conflict Disclosure Processes?
The benefits of workflow automation go beyond capturing sensitive information quickly and securely. Without a robust workflow automation tool to engage employees in a certification workflow, legal teams often send surveys out but cannot easily identify those surveys’ success. For example, it can be difficult to identify who has not responded to a request for certification, but workflow automation tools often have audit trail functionality and data analytics capabilities that enable legal teams to filter those who have yet to respond. Moreover, workflow tools can build in escalation paths, solving for potential problems before they come up. For example, when an employee forgets to respond to the request, the workflow can automatically send a follow-up email – either to the employee in question, or, depending on the needs of the team, to that employee’s manager.
When employees respond to these forms and attest to business relationships with other companies, the back-end logic of the workflow can automatically determine how to characterize these relationships. Does it constitute a conflict of interest, or is it irrelevent to the organization? Depending on the answer, the workflow can trigger additional layers of intervention, by alerting managers or legal of possible concerns or suggestions on how to manage uncertainty.
Routine certifications of compliance can be frustrating, but they don’t have to be. Workflow automation offers a path forward that enables legal teams to easily create and distribute surveys that can be executed and managed automatically, triggering alarms for additional support only when needed. With sophisticated data analytics, these quarterly certifications don’t just ensure compliance, but do so with as little hassle as possible.