By Adam Turteltaub

You may not realize it, but your compliance program has a brand. Line employees and management all have a host of impressions about the compliance department that color how they respond to what you say and do. A strong brand means that your actions are more likely to be appreciated. A weak brand means it’s a very steep uphill climb.

Adam Balfour, Vice President & General Counsel for Corporate Compliance at Bridgestone Americas and author of the book Ethics & Compliance for Humans, is an advocate for compliance teams making the effort to invest in creating a strong, positive brand that communicates the value of the program.

As a part of that effort, compliance teams need to move beyond simply building awareness to ensuring that the brand resonates and is relevant to the organization. To do that he advocates taking a people centric approach and using three methods of motivation:

Start with why. Don’t just tell them what to do. Tell them why they need to do it beyond “the law requires it”.

Emphasize group safety. Share what others in the organization are doing and use community as a motivator.

Use incentives. The US Department of Justice is calling for them, and they can be very helpful, even non-monetary ones.

Finally, leaning on his United Kingdom roots, he encourages compliance teams to think like soccer midfielders, players who can both defend and attack.

Listen in to learn more about how you can strengthen your compliance program’s brand.