The 7 Elements of an Engaging Compliance Week Activity

While companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on staff engagement, recruitment, and social media advertising[1] – we at Vivant Behavioral Healthcare took a different approach and spent just $250 on Corporate Compliance and Ethics Week. As a result, our staff engagement increased by 136%, referrals for employment increased by 30%, and staff spread the word about our culture to three times more social media users in one week than our organization had ever impacted in an entire month.

Since inception, Vivant Behavioral Healthcare (Vivant) facilitates a fun competition between local sites for Corporate Compliance and Ethics Week. These competitions commonly take the form of a staff awareness or reinforcement demonstration – dress up days, scavenger hunts, mascot designs, and other insular activities. In the past, we have been challenged with an uneven playing field, with winning sites often benefiting from size and more available resources than competitors. This year, we wanted to do something different, which supported long-term benefits for our staff and simultaneously aligned with our strategy of building brand awareness about our critical treatment services.

As the chief compliance officer, I engaged our head of marketing to assist, which had the bonus of Marketing being a champion for compliance.  Plan development started off simply – we generated a list of desired outcomes and experiences for our staff, which included promoting competition, providing a more level playing ground, celebrating pride in our brand, connecting with community, and being thoughtful about budgets.

With those desired outcomes in mind, next, we needed an idea. In order to gain alignment and build excitement, we used internal communication channels like our intranet site, our group chat functions, and good old fashion townhall meetings to create two-way avenues for communication.  We acknowledged our staff are more creative than we are, and thus began crowd-souring ideas. Within a week, we landed on the idea of a “Social Media Showdown,” an idea and name provided by two frontline staff. The Showdown would involve the sites using each of their respective social media pages to (1) post compliance/ethics-related content during Corporate Compliance and Ethics Week and (2) to encourage their staff and community members to engage with and share the posts.

Next, we had to establish guidelines to support our goals.  In order to continue stoking competition and excitement, we outlined nine specific guidelines, a timeline, and a reward (mostly bragging rights). The simplicity of this approach provided our sites with a framework for the competition, while not stifling creativity and still leaving it very open-ended for each site to use the concept in a way that best fit their services and local community. In addition, we could leverage our greatest resource – our staff – to comment, share, brag, tell friends, and show pride in their workplace in an organic and authentic way.

After toasting our brilliant plan, we outlined a formal communication strategy (I was working with a marketer after all). We identified stakeholders who needed to be “informed,” or notified of the rules and logistics of the competition, and those that needed to be “stoked,” or fired up and prepared to engage. About six weeks before the kick-off of competition week, we facilitated our first live teaser communication, followed two weeks later by an email teaser to leaders and all staff. This teaser included templates and resources for further stoking staff and developing content. Two weeks out, we hosted a live prep session with the Social Media Ambassadors (personnel with one of those “all other duties as assigned” clauses in their job) for each site.  In the lead-up to the competition, we received the occasional clarification question, such as, “Does this post content count as compliance/ethics themed?” We did our best to respond immediately to all inquiries related to the campaign to keep up the creative momentum.