Compliance Perspectives: Amii Barnard-Bahn on Working with HR [SCCE Podcast]

In my consulting work with executives and their leadership teams, we work together to build strong cross-functional relationships and effective leadership practices. In this podcast with SCCE's Adam Turteltaub, we explore the challenges that can arise between compliance and HR - functions that share many of the same challenges in gaining sufficient resources and getting a seat at the table. Take a listen or read the transcript to find out how compliance and HR (and other key colleagues like audit and legal) can build a powerfully effective working relationship.

Click below for the podcast. To read a transcript, scroll below.

Recorded on August 7, 2018.

Adam: Welcome to the Compliance Perspectives Podcast. I'm Adam Turteltaub from the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and Healthcare Compliance Association. Joining me today from the Bay Area, Northern California is Amii Barnard-Bahn. Amii is an executive coach and leadership consultant with a deep background in HR and compliance having served in one of her many roles as a Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer for U.S. Pharmaceutical for McKesson. Amii, thanks for taking the time to talk to us today.

Amii:   Happy to. Thanks, Adam.

Adam:  As I mentioned, you work in both HR and compliance. What does compliance typically not get about HR?

Amii:  Well, I'd say the first thing that we don't get sometimes is how much alike we are. Like compliance, HR often struggles to have a seat at the table, they may not have the resources to fulfill their mandate, and they often are challenged to get leadership to do the right thing. I find that having gone back and forth that we should have tremendous empathy for each other. That foundation of empathy can lead to trust, which is key to all relationships. It feels like we both are the unsung heroes of the organization in terms of protecting corporate reputation.

Amii:  Getting back to your original question, what compliance doesn't get about HR is that compliance is only a part of what HR does, and HR's mandate is a lot broader. So if you're working with HR, and you only focus on compliance and what could go wrong, that could be viewed as myopic in the HR world. HR has a mandate to support the culture that attracts the best and the brightest. We've got a mandate to support culture that encourages ethical conduct and compliance with the law. These two things are not incompatible, but we start from different places.

Adam:  Yeah. What's funny is as you're mentioning that, it's interesting that something that resonates in my career is that I think back when I work to an advertising agency talking to a client one day who said, "Look, Adam. I appreciate all the effort you put into the advertising but it's only 10% of what I do with my time. I can't think that way." I think it's a good thing to always remember that just because we have a lot in common doesn't mean we also have other things we got to get to. What does HR typically not get about compliance?

Amii:  Well, depending on the organization, I've been in organizations where HR failed to appreciate the importance of compliance and how that relates to their work and what they can get done if there's a problem. A major compliance breach will negatively impact reputation, which damages HR's recruitment efforts and retention of the best and brightest, and money for fines is going to be paid out instead of bonuses, and that it can lead to restructuring an organization.

Amii:   I think of compliance and HR, having been in both worlds, I find that they're two different cultures with two different languages but with an overlapping mandate. Broadly speaking, HR and compliance tend to attract two different kinds of people. I've hired and recruited for both types of teams. HR business partners specifically tend to value a connection with people, and they often have gone into the profession to help others, and so making a personal connection is the top value. They often tend to be “Feeling” people on the Myers-Briggs scale if you're familiar with that.

Amii:   Compliance people in general, tend to value knowledge, what's right, what's accurate. They may value technical skill and expertise above relationships. We tend to be "Thinkers" on the Myers-Briggs scale. When you think of those values, values drive everything we do, so if functionally, HR and compliance generally have different values, this can lead to value judgments that we make that can create a seemingly impenetrable wall. Each side from their vantage point authentically says of the other, “They just don't get what's important here.”

Adam:  Yeah. That's often a problem where people just think different ways. What do you find as most successful in clearing up the confusion on helping the team work together other than recognizing sort of these thinking, feeling differences?

Amii:  There's a great quote by Teddy Roosevelt. “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” HR and compliance need to have each other's back. They're much stronger together. Things you can do - number one, get clear on your common ground, how much you have in common, what the goals and objectives are, which … really putting it at a 50,000-foot level is to have a healthy workplace.

Amii:  Then, number two is investing in the relationship. We've talked about that throughout this conversation but really getting to know HR as a business like you would any client. Know their business cycles. Understand their employee life cycle touchpoints. Know their goals, mandates, and their struggles. That enables you to align your goals with theirs. Then, you can understand their challenges so when you ask for something, you really understand the cost and pain point of what you're asking them to do. You're much likelier to get to yes and an enthusiastic yes if you've conveyed that you get their world and you know the cost and impact of what you're asking.

Amii:  The other thing is to have their back. HR needs support more than compliance thinks. There's one study that was slightly alarming that showed that one in five HR people would not report misconduct and felt ethical pressure to compromise their organization's ethical standards, policy, or the law. Having been in HR, I've been there. HR knows where the skeletons are buried. They know how the company works, how management decisions are made. They're often in the room where it happens.

Amii:   I think of HR as the canary in a coal mine of organizational risk. What does it say about the effectiveness of our compliance programs if HR – who is boots on the ground with this type of stuff - doesn't feel comfortable coming forward if there's an issue? It's important to extend support.

Adam:  Yeah. I think that was definitely one of those things where it does send off alarm bells if even HR feels hesitant to come forward with these issues. Your advice about understanding their role and responsibility is I think a really good one. I mean, we talk a lot in compliance about getting to understand the business but by the same token, there's other parts of the organization that compliance depends on like HR but also internal audit, legal, fraud that spending some time better understanding their goals would be probably quite helpful for the compliance team.

Adam:   Now, one other issue that sometimes comes up as a challenge of tracking HR issues that come in via the helpline. Oftentimes, maybe most of the time these days, compliance is in charge of the helpline. You get the calls in that are basically my boss and I aren't getting along, or an issue like sexual harassment, which may be handled by HR instead of compliance. Bottom line is it's something that HR needs to deal with but compliance wants to track and make sure the issue gets handled so that the caller will feel comfortable coming forward when there's an actual compliance issue and also, you want people to be able to say, "Hey, when I called the help line, I actually got a response and people followed up." How can compliance help HR understand this dynamic of responding to these calls and getting back to compliance of what happened?

Amii:   I think starting at the top with, look, we want a healthy workplace. We have that as a common goal, so we want people to feel comfortable coming forward. I think if you set a common vision and gain alignment with HR around that, then you can also set as a behavior standard that you've got to ensure that issues are handled promptly, thoroughly and fairly, consistently to meet the compliance mandate and to engender trust throughout the organization for HR's standpoint.

Amii:    If you do that, then I think there's just some infrastructure that needs to be put in place like a RACI chart is often what I've worked on with HR and compliance in my organizations where it's really clear. Do an inventory of every type of issue that could come in including those kind of low lying interpersonal stuff that doesn't rise to a compliance challenge but could be when you dig deeper, right? Sometimes, people just don't know the magic words to say to articulate it or they're testing it out. They're not sure, and that's why as compliance professionals, I think it's important to educate HR about that.

Amii:     If you know who's on first, who's got it, and then you have a standard of behavior around how this should be handled and why, and that's documented, I think that can be important. I do think there's a certain amount of recruitment, Adam, that needs to go on. You need to recruit HR to the common goal. HR can get really fatigued. Talking from personal experience, HR's on the front lines of every employee issue possible. Fully a third to a half of the issues that come in on an open door helpline are not compliance issues, and so HR has to fight a natural urge to become numb to some of these in case one day, a real compliance issue arises involving those employees.

Amii:   I think there is a certain amount of that. If you can keep that ultimate goal in mind and remind HR that … I think that employee relations issues are the broken windows of compliance. So if we don't handle the low lying issues well, it can be a gateway to much more serious compliance issues. So if you can make that connection for HR, find the least cumbersome way to partner with them on this, stay out of the weeds … You can't make it about sounding like you're telling HR how to do their job. I think you have to keep it at a very high level with goals and tangible customer service objectives.

Adam: Yeah. It's definitely nobody likes to be told how to do their job. It's good advice for everything in life, in all of our interactions. Now, we talked a lot about what compliance and HR have in common, how they need to work together, but sort of the flip side to that is there's always the risk of turf battles. This is my issue. No, it's not. It's my issue. How can compliance best avoid turf battles with HR?

Amii:  I think the first thing is to have clear roles and responsibilities knocked out. In my teams, I've literally sat down and just whiteboarded it. "Hey, this is what our mandate is. What's yours?" and then just knock through because then you get a Venn diagram. My goal is to always have a Venn diagram of, "Okay, what's mine? What's yours? Where do we overlap?" so that it's very clear ahead of time - before there's a problem around ownership or who has the role for what.

Amii:   If you do that ahead of time, that proactive management in a spirit of shared goals, that's helpful. Then, really building a strong relationship with the person. Like any good marriage, it requires work from the heart and staying in touch with them so that you have that foundation, so when a turf battle arises, you've already built trust and candor to work through that issue in a healthy way. Again, those shared aspirational goals are really important.

Amii:   Oftentimes, when we can't figure out why someone doesn't support us, it's because we're not able to see it from their perspective. If someone's fighting you on an issue, there's always a hidden competing concern that they have that they legitimately feel is more important. If you have the trust and a candid relationship to be able to talk to that person or figure it out, then you have something. Then, you go, "Aha. Okay. This is what's blocking them. This is what they're interested in." Then, you can talk about it. It's amazing how hidden some of these are, and sometimes, people don't even know why they're blocking something until you can talk about it. Creating a psychological safety zone to talk about these issues, surface them and work on them can be a great way once you do get into a turf battle. Of course, those are just a part of life.

Adam:  Right. I think you made a lot of good points there including the just ongoing importance of something I remember learning years ago, which is always talk from the listener's perspective, not from yours. Think about what they want to hear, what they're going to respond to, not just what you need to say. Well, Amii, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and talking from the perspective of compliance officers and giving them the perspective of HR folks too.

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. I'm Adam Turteltaub from SCCE and HCCA saying I hope we were able to expand your compliance perspective.

Amii Barnard-Bahn (amii@barnardbahn.com) is an executive coach and strategic advisor to leaders, their teams, and boards. Amii is a frequent author and speaker on leadership, thriving workplace cultures, and reputation risk management. Reach out at www.barnardbahn.com @amiibb

#scce #compliance #hr