2007 Hotline Benchmarking Report Helps Execs Assess Ethics and Compliance
The Security Executive Council (SEC) has released the 2007 Corporate Governance and Compliance Hotline Benchmarking Report, the second annual version of the only report that compiles corporate hotline data to provide statistics on the nature and number of hotline reports, anonymity, awareness and follow-up. The report gives responsible executives a benchmark against which to assess their own governance and compliance hotlines.
The 2007 benchmark advances last year’s report in many significant ways. More than 90,000 reports were added, bringing the total number of companies represented to more than 650. The analyses are now broken down to examine trends over time to allow executives to plan for changes in patterns and behaviors. This year’s report includes analysis by business sector, allowing readers to compare the different elements of their hotline programs with others in their industry. It also tracks outcome and disposition of incident investigations and makes note of the number of instances in which no data was provided by investigating companies.
Finally, the 2007 report expands the use of annual rate data (rate of incidences per 1000 employees) in its analyses to make gradual changes more obvious and to control for data variations between industries and business sizes. For the year 2006, the report found that a rate of 8.3 incidents was reported per 1,000 employees overall (regardless of incident type or company size). Smaller organizations showed a general decrease of incidents reported over time, while larger companies showed a general increase over time.
“This report has value for all functions in the corporation that deal with compliance and inappropriate business conduct,” says Bob Hayes, managing director of the Security Executive Council. “The strength of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley and increased attention from Boards of Directors to reducing brand and image risks make this report an even more valuable tool in managing internal programs.”
The 2007 Corporate Governance and Compliance Hotline Benchmarking Report is available for download at https://www.SecurityExecutiveCouncil.com/sec/hotline.
About the Security Executive Council
The Security Executive Council (www.SecurityExecutiveCouncil.com), formerly the CSO Executive Council, is an international professional membership organization for leading senior security executives spanning all industries, both the public and private sectors, and the globe. Its members seek innovative issue solutions and documentation of model core security programs. The council uses professional staff and a distinguished faculty of former CSOs and content experts to develop strategic services and products for members and security practitioners in general. Its vision is to deliver cost-effective solutions that are unavailable from any other source.
