SCCE Conference Highlights-Special Edition

The SCCE Compliance and Ethics Institute Conference in Chicago on September 24-27, 2016 is the stage for this podcast. Eric Morehead, host of Compliance Beat was in attendance at the SCCE conference, along with 1700 compliance professionals and shares conference highlights and emerging trends in this Special Edition.  The profession continues to grow and expand and more importantly people want to continue to grow and learn as they find themselves responsible for compliance issues. Trends A surprising & interesting trend is to now find newly appointed compliance officers or professionals wearing multiple hats. It’s fair to say in the past, especially in larger organizations, the trend was to apply more resources and have people that had compliance as their sole responsibility. This may be anecdotal, but it seems there is some retrenchment there. Could we be seeing this change due to lack of resources?  One benefit at least–someone is now nominally in charge of the program. But on the flip-side could be wearing so many hats they may not have the time or expertise to devote fully to compliance. As an exhibitor, Eric spent many hours in the exhibit hall at the SCCE conference, this allowed him to spend quality time with both vendors and service providers. One of the trends in the hall seems to be consolidation, which makes it feel like there are fewer choices. One example of this is Hotline services, in previous year there were many large providers. That’s not to say, that consolidation has caused any decrease in customer service, it’s just that choice is a good thing. In larger companies, you need to have some additional choices, especially when RFP’s are required. It was still good to see quite a few, newer and small organizations offering innovative tools and services. Many like Morehead Compliance Consulting were 1st time exhibitors. A continuing trend involves training. The 45-minute training is disappearing unless mandated by statutory requirements. Training is becoming shorter in length, think of it as bite-sized pieces with more engagement, humor and entertainment. This does cause some concern for companies that are just not comfortable yet with mixing humor with compliance issues, they aren’t sure if this diminishes the importance of this issue. But, overall think many companies are realizing the value. Another trend that came up was integration. It was common thread in many of the sessions. It was great to see the overall maturity of many of the programs. Companies have the basic pieces in place, but now are trying to get more integrated, trying to partner in a way that hasn’t been done in the past. They are starting to realize the importance of partnering with the employees in all departments–the “boots on the ground” so to speak. You many not have been at the SCCE conference, but would love to hear any feedback on any trends you are seeing in the industry.  Be sure to reach out and say Hello. [email protected]  https://twitter.com/eric_morehead https://www.facebook.com/compliancebeat/