Nikkei Research Compliance Management Assessment Program

Our team of experts, with experience and knowledge of more than 3,500 companies in Japan and overseas, provides support from survey design to implementation of measures.

We support you with these concerns you may be facing.

• Although running training, not sure whether compliance awareness is improving.
• Our surveys did not capture the true honest feelings of the employees and cannot picture the actual situation.
• What kind of actionable measures should we take, based on the results of the employee sentiment survey?

We provide full support from the designing of awareness surveys to sharing insights internally and the implementation of improvement efforts for resolving issues.

Service Features

[ 1 ] Collecting honest responses

• The credibility and trust of us, the Nikkei brand, make respondents provide real intentions and detailed opinions, not raised in hotlines.
• Rich and honest comments are gathered through open-ends. (One client, a major manufacturer, had the volume of written words increased by 15% compared to other vendors.)

[ 2 ] Tailor-made survey based on a proven framework

• Multilingual surveys are available.
• According to your issues and hypotheses to explore, preserving past questions for continuity, measuring the effectiveness of improvement efforts, or such, the questionnaire can be optimized freely.
• Various ways of survey participation are possible; via computers, smartphones, and paper-based.

[ 3 ] Visualizing issues, training, and workshops

• Prioritization of issues by comparison with benchmark data based on the responses of 100,000 employed workers in Japan and overseas.
• Feedback report that is easy-to-understand and easy-to-use.
• A "discussion sheet" is included to induce interactive communication based on the survey results.
• Support workshops across sites and departments, to make employees understand better the current situation, define the approach toward improvement, and integrate with actionable measures.

Framework

The survey enables a multifaceted understanding of compliance issues for management.

1. The actual situation: compliance awareness and employees' behavior
2. Risks that are surfacing
3. Organizational culture that triggers risks

The survey questionnaire is ordered in a way where employees can clear their understanding of compliance and prompt their real honest feelings as they go through. Generally, they answer on a 5-point scale from "Strongly agree" to "Strongly disagree." They can answer easily and intuitively, reducing their response time.
Survey items can be optimized according to the company's issues and hypotheses. Questions can also be customized by locations and segments (domestic, international, group subsidiaries, etc.) or other specific areas of interest.

Analysis and Reporting

A bird's-eye view across the company, to look for the problematic areas

■Key points
Organized cross-tabulation showing the results of the overall total and each segment.
Highlighted where to pay attention and what problems to identify.

Pointing out top priority issues

■Key points
Prioritize issues within the organization by showing the current compliance risks, organizational culture formulating risks, and rankings of negative responses.

Departments in high-risk

■Key points
Plotting the results of "compliance risk" and "organizational culture" by each segment (department, position, etc.) to grasp the relatively high-risk sections within the company at a glance.

Promote acquaintance and make accountable to everyone

■Key points
Feedback results in an easy-to-understand format, comparing one's belonging department with the company's overall average, group companies, benchmark data, etc.
A "discussion sheet" for stimulating internal discussions over the results.

Workshops and training

The term "compliance" is constantly changing, not only by changes in laws but also by social demands. The ultimate goal of education is to cultivate "knowledge" that makes one aware of changes and to change their "actions". To do so, changing employees' "mindset" is a prerequisite. Without their change of mindset, knowledge will not be efficiently achieved and will not lead to a change in actions. Workshops can help improve employees' awareness. Following the change of mindset, training to gain rich knowledge will induce changes in their behavior.

Case Studies

TIS Inc. | Industry: System integration

■Background
The company positions compliance as its top priority for increasing corporate value. To improve their compliance level, they felt the need of grasping employees' real honest voices.
They wanted to have a tracking survey, to align with its newly established "Compliance Code of Conduct".

■Survey Results
The results were close to what they'd imagined, making it confirm the direction of their initiatives to be on course.
Issues were discovered such as the potential risk of busyness in the workplace and lack of awareness of the whistleblower system among younger employees.

■Utilization
Surveys are essential for the PDCA cycle to improve the compliance level. Plans to continue.
Recognized that conducting the survey was a great opportunity for employees to become aware of compliance and take it into their account.

POLA ORBIS HOLDINGS INC. | Industry: Chemicals

■Challenges
The company has nine brands with different business models, which comprise various risks.
As the company expands globally, understanding the differences in laws, regulations, and cultures of each country and region is necessary.

■Survey Design
The employee survey was conducted by the Human Resources Department and the compliance survey was conducted by the CSR Department at the same time.
The survey covered 4,000 employees at 10 domestic and 8 overseas locations.

■Results and Utilization
Identified potential risks by the severity of "more than complaints but less than accusations," and determined the "somewhat" figures (quantitative data) into "confident" alerts.
Carefully prioritize issues by comparing the results with Nikkei Research benchmark data.
Report and share at the Group CSR Committee and review progress quarterly.

Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. | Industry: Pharmaceutical

■Background and Objectives
Measure the penetration level of compliance initiatives.
Check the awareness of the whistle-blowing system, which had a small number of reports.
Investigate the situation over harassment, in which the number of consultations has increased.

■Survey Results
There was a disparity in the level of awareness of the whistle-blowing system among units.
While no severe problem of harassment overall, detailed issues were found at the granular level of branches and sales offices.

■Utilization
Successfully resolved the issues identified in the survey results and made aware company-wide of the whistle-blowing system.
Sharing the results of the awareness survey focusing on harassment to leaders of business headquarters, business locations, and sales offices. Discussions were held over specific issues and treated as personal matters.

If you are interested in our services, please feel free to contact us.