Portland, OR (Feb 16, 2018) – Complí, the automotive leader in workforce compliance and regulatory solutions, has unveiled a new resource to help dealerships uncover the harassment risks in their own dealership through a free risk calculator.

Organizational conditions are the most powerful predictors of whether harassment will happen in the workplace. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) identified 12 risk factors that can increase the likelihood of harassment in your dealership. Complí developed a calculator that lets dealers rate their workplace on each factor. After assessing your dealership on each of the 12 risk factors, the calculator creates a custom report that assesses your dealership’s risk and provides a roadmap for taking proactive measures to reduce harassment in your workplace.

“Every dealership organization has its own culture, compliance program, business model, and organizational conditions that may or may not encourage harassment. It’s certainly not a one-size-fits-all model,” said Kynzie Sims, JD, CCEP, Content Product Manager at Complí. “Based on the EEOC’s research, we’ve developed an assessment to help you identify your organization's unique risk factors, and we can provide you a roadmap for taking proactive measures to reduce harassment in your dealership organization.”

Harassment does more than affect one person, it drags down a dealership bottom line. The fines associated with harassment should be sufficient motivation for any organization to take the problem seriously. The indirect costs of harassment, however, dwarf anything we can clearly calculate. Managing claims and investigations holds captive departments’ time and resources. Victims and bystanders often report difficulty concentrating on and engaging with work. Employee engagement and teamwork plummets while rates of tardiness and absenteeism increase.

For more information on Complí, please visit www.compli.com. To take the free risk assessment and receive your custom report, please visit  http://go.compli.com/harassment_risk_calculator.

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About Complí:

Complí provides a cloud-based solution that manages compliance activities across your workforce. Consolidate all of your compliance initiatives across your organization into one easy-to-use system for your employees and your managers. Deliver defensible proof of compliance to your auditors and executives to keep cool, calm, and compliant.

Media Contact:

Laurie Halter

Charisma! Communications

503-816-2474

Laurie@charismacommunications.com

Ten years ago, the biggest romance on television was an office romance: The Office romance. Every week, millions of viewers watched coworkers Jim and Pam flirt, grow close, and cast pining looks toward each other, until—FYI: spoilers ahead—the two shared a kiss and eventually dated, got married, and had children together.

The Office remains charming and hilarious—not to mention instructive for workforce compliance, in terms of what not to do—but it’s difficult to imagine that Jim and Pam’s relationship would play out the same way if the show aired today. The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have brought new attention to the pervasive problem of sexual harassment in the workplace. Many people are beginning to reevaluate workplace conduct they would have considered “harmless” flirtation just a few years ago. While Pam and Jim entered their relationship consensually, a writing team in 2018 would need to reckon with the message they could be sending would-be Jims who use a fictional love story to justify their behavior toward unreciprocating Pams. Then again, we have Michael Scott as counterpoint.

Point is: employees at all levels need to be aware that real life is not a sitcom. There are real power dynamics and real experiences of harassment and assault to take into account.

If you’ve been reading our ongoing series about workplace harassment, you understand the magnitude of these issues. Given the current climate, it’s no surprise that office romance has reached a 10-year low, as CNBC reports. But with Valentine’s Day ahead, now is the time to pay special attention to the distinction between workplace camaraderie and workplace harassment, and to stay vigilant in addressing behaviors that may cross the line.

Here are 3 articles to read before you think about breaking out the candy hearts:

Valentine’s Day is a great day to express your love for the people who mean the most to you. It’s also a great day to break sexual harassment laws, writes Lahle Wolfe. At The Balance, Wolfe shares some practical tips and considerations for ensuring your workplace remains a respectful, compliant, and non-humiliating environment on Valentine’s Day. Her advice? Keep those expressions of love outside the office whenever possible. Skip the cards and gifts, especially for people who work for or above you.

Read the article: Sexual Harassment Laws and Valentine's Day

“Valentine’s Day has played a major role in some rather bad judgment calls by supervisors and subordinates alike.The holiday seems to give some people the impression that they have license to make moves they normally wouldn’t, all in the name of love, loneliness or who knows what.”

That’s according to Society for Human Resource Management knowledge manager Shari Lau, who believes we should see this week as “National Sexual Harassment Training Week.” In an excellent column from a couple years back, Lau gives advice to employers about how to conduct anti-harassment training, institute an equitable office dating policy, and handle Valentine’s Day at work.

Read the article: A Dangerous Affair

Are hugs appropriate in the workplace? A recent Florida Today article posed the question to several business owners and HR professionals. Some welcome hugs from their colleagues; others prefer handshakes. Consistency matters, too: if a hugger only hugs female employees, a sexual harassment claim may not be far away. In short, whether hugs are appropriate depends on whom you ask. And that, by itself, means the answer is “probably not.”

Read the article: Is the 'business hug' headed for extinction? Mixed opinions on when to go beyond the handshake

To read this article and determine the sexual harassment risk at your place of business, please visit http://go.compli.com/valentines. 




 

Although we typically define executives by their ambitions, their anxieties can be equally telling. If you’re losing sleep over handling cyber security threats, keeping your business strategically agile, or creating and maintaining a positive organizational culture, for instance, I’d venture a guess that you’re a high-ranking director or board member.

Wait, how do we know that? No, we haven’t been hiding in your bushes or reading your email drafts. Each of these concerns—cyber security, business strategy, and corporate culture—were overwhelmingly common among respondents of the National Association of Corporate Directors’ 2017-2018 Public Company Governance Survey.

CFO reports that the “survey results showed that only 37% of board respondents felt ‘confident’ or ‘very confident’ that their company was properly secured against a cyberattack” about “five percentage points less than a year ago.” At the same time, “[s]eventy-one percent of directors indicated that their boards must better understand the risks and opportunities that will affect performance and drive strategic choices over the next 12 months.”

But in an overall fascinating read, this section is what really stood out to us:

“Eighty-seven percent of directors said they had a good understanding of their companies’ tone at the top, but only 35% of directors said they had a good understanding of ‘the mood in the middle,’ and just 18% of them indicated they had a good grasp of the health of the culture at lower levels of the organization.

While directors generally were confident that management could ‘sustain a healthy corporate culture during a period of performance challenges,’ 92% of directors said they relied totally on reporting from the CEO about the health of organizational culture.

According to the survey, it was rare for a director to get a direct take on corporate culture  from functions such as internal audit (39%), compliance and ethics (30% ), and enterprise risk management (20%), ‘which possess a much deeper and perhaps more independent perspective on the strength of the corporate culture than the CEO does,’ according to NACD.

That’s why the CFPB specifies board oversight as one of the 4 key components of a compliance management system (CMS).

Believe it or not, Compli’s workforce compliance solution is engineered to help our clients address each of these big, scary concerns. In fact, we’ve written—recently!—about how Compligo enhances cyber security, enables better strategic decision-making, and helps organizations measure their cultures and turn up the tone in the middle. In short, our platform takes the uncertainty out of compliance. It all adds up to fewer anxieties, more ambitions, and, of course, better sleep. Learn more here.