For those taking on responsibility for reviewing a company’s compliance program, along with using the DOJ’s updated guidance, NAVEX Global recently issued its Risk & Compliance Hotline Benchmark Report — providing another resource to help see how a company’s risk and compliance program stacks up. The report includes data gathered from over 3,200 of NAVEX’s customers and looks at data using median or midpoint rather than averages to reduce impact from outliers. It’s a 60-page report, so it’s chock-full of data. Here are some high-level data points:
– Median hotline/incident reports per 100 employees remained steady at 1.4 – but 19% received 5 or more reports per 100 employees
– Case closure time increased from 40 to 45 days, a 13% increase – the report says best practice average case closure time should be 30-32 days – about 20% of customers take 100 days or more to close cases
– Extended time to close cases may indicate organizations aren’t prioritizing reports or they may not have enough resources to resolve them – the report advises companies to address both potential issues to boost credibility of the compliance program
– Analysis showed that 31% of reporters speak up in 9 days or less after an incident occurs – but 20% of reports come in 60 days or more after an incident occurs
– Delays in reporting incidents could be due to fear of retaliation, lack of awareness or availability of reporting systems and the report advises companies to identify possible causes because delays make it more difficult to close an investigation
-Lynn Jokela, TheCorporateCounsel.net June 10, 2020
