March Madness, Year Round

Written by Ryan McConnell and Michelle Jee

As college basketball fans begin to adjust to the end of this year’s March Madness, Ryan McConnell and Michelle Jee of McConnell Sovany propose a new way companies can build a risk-based approach to anti-corruption compliance: anti-corruption bracketology.

It’s that time of year. The first order of business after Spring Break and St. Patrick’s Day is to email your co-workers about the annual NCAA tournament bracket. Company employees will spend five minutes filling out the bracket, playing for a cash prize or bragging rights and spend countless hours during the work day watching basketball streaming on their work computers. The tournament bracket competition is not sanctioned by the company, but is a lot of fun and builds relationships within the organization. How else would you know Ned, the IT guy who works three floors away and who won last year by picking Louisville, based on their Angry Bird mascot?

This year, as companies are revising their anticorruption programs to try to ensure a risk-based approach to compliance, the NCAA tournament presents a monumental opportunity. Instead of hiring some costly third party to assist in this effort, the NCAA tournament presents a free way to conduct an internal compliance assessment to identify your company’s anticorruption risks at a market level by using an anticorruption risk assessment bracket. See an example on the next page.

The complexity of your bracket will vary depending upon the size of your operations and type of business. The bracket model on the next page is just a starting point, and you may consider including some non-risk areas to see how they perform and whether your employees know their anticorruption stuff. For instance, include an antitrust type risk in your bracket to see if employees pick it as the top anticorruption risk.

You also need some instructions to go with your compliance bracket. These should be modified and adjusted to conform to the company. A good place to start might go something like this (subject to local law governing gambling and the like):

1. The company has officially sanctioned an NCAA tournament bracket this year. The employee who wins the tournament will receive a $1,000 cash prize or gift cards. (Having an official, company-sanctioned tournament will make it harder for that guy in accounting to prey on employees with little knowledge of college sports by encouraging them to pick teams based on the school colors – you know who you are).
2. In order to participate in the NCAA tournament bracket this year and be eligible for the $1,000 prize, you must complete the attached anticorruption risk assessment bracket by choosing which corruption risk areas in your operation/country/business unit pose the greatest risk. Paying or providing “anything of value” to someone else to complete your bracket automatically disqualifies you from the tournament.
3. Completing the compliance bracket entitles you to watch one NCAA tournament game on company time, unless an SEC team goes undefeated in the first three rounds, then each employee who completes the anticorruption bracket can watch three games. (Employees will do this anyway, so with this admonition you can try to limit them to one game instead of watching the entire tournament).
4. You must submit both the anticorruption bracket and the tournament bracket before the first tournament game begins. You must choose an anticorruption risk area and NCAA BB winner for each bracket. The winner of the NCAA bracket will be decided by multiplying the number of correct predictions of winning teams in each round by a weighting formula for each round (here those accounting guys come in handy). With the anticorruption bracket there are no right or wrong choices – we are all winners for filling out the compliance bracket.

This email should preferably be sent by someone in operations (an executive would be terrific). If the email is sent by the Chief Compliance Officer or General Counsel, employees will think it’s a trick and not respond. If you really want to make it fun, ask employees to pick a mascot for the Chief Compliance Officer and General Counsel and then publish the results with the winner of the tournament as part of a free BBQ lunch for employees who chose something dignified, like Eagle or Lion. Any employees who choose Honey Badger should be similarly rewarded and recognized.

At the end of the tournament, employees will be one step closer to appreciating anticorruption risk in their daily work environments and will have played a hand in helping the company adopt a risk-based approach to the compliance program. And the underground NCAA tournament (with competing brackets and formulations) will end. Employees will be happier (and more aware of compliance concerns) and the company compliance program will be more effective. Good luck with your brackets.

Author Biography

Ryan McConnell and Michelle Jee are lawyers at McConnell Sovany LLP – a boutique compliance and litigation firm in Houston, Texas. McConnell is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in Houston and currently teaches corporate compliance, criminal procedure and trial practice at the University of Houston Law Center. Jee is a graduate of UHLC whose practice focuses on global compliance issues ranging from data privacy to anticorruption. To find out more about the firm, visit www.mcconnellsovany. com. Email the pair your anticorruption bracket to [email protected] and maybe Jee will tweet about it – @mcconnellsovany.