FIFA post-scandal reforms: how long will it take to repair the damage to their reputation?

FIFA post-scandal reforms: how long will it take to repair the damage to their reputation?

FIFA has announced a set of reforms designed to repair the reputation of the beleaguered organisation following the scandal which erupted last May, and safeguard it against future corruption.

The reforms, which were passed unanimously by the Executive Committee, are concerned primarily with limiting the authority of FIFA’s ‘top brass.’ They include presidential term limits, the separation of political and management functions, salary transparency, and “concrete steps to increase the role of women in the governance of football with a minimum of one female representative elected as a Council member per confederation.”

“These reforms are moving FIFA towards improved governance, greater transparency and more accountability,” said FIFA’s Acting President Issa Hayatou. “They mark a milestone on our path towards restoring FIFA’s credibility as a modern, trusted and professional sports organisation. This signals the beginning of a culture shift at FIFA.”

The scandal claimed the careers of two of the most powerful figures in world football. FIFA President Sepp Blatter and Uefa President Michel Platini were found guilty of breaches concerning a £1.3m “disloyal payment” made to Platini in 2011, and banned for eight years from all football-related activities by FIFA’s ethics committee.

However, of more concern to the future of the sport is the loss of trust experienced by the organisation since the scandal broke last summer. A global survey of fans conducted by football app Forza Football found that a whopping 69% had lost confidence in football’s governing body. 43% even said that that they enjoyed the sport less after the learning about the scandals. These statistics are a reminder of the potential reputational damage to businesses that are connected to scandals.

Cobus de Swardt, head of Transparency International, summed up the long-lasting damage to brand football: “As fans we have a love affair with football. When our teams win we are ecstatic, when they lose we are devastated. But when results – whether of games, or rights for hosting events, elections, etc. – are driven not by fair competition, but by corruption, we feel betrayed.”

“The poll results show us beyond any doubt that FIFA has lost the trust of football supporters,” added Gareth Sweeney, the editor of Transparency International’s global corruption report. “But they also show it is still possible for FIFA to regain that trust. At least half those polled will give FIFA a second chance. That’s why FIFA must not only put serious reforms in place but be seen to do that.”

There are important lessons to be learned here for any business. A Concerto Marketing Group and Research Now survey, found that when customers trust a brand, 82% will continue to use it frequently, and 83% will recommend it to others. Building and maintaining trust and transparency is an essential component to your continued success. If corruption can turn notoriously passionate football fans away from the beautiful game, then the potential risks to businesses are immense.

How can VinciWorks help?

VinciWorks’ anti-bribery training suite helps businesses prevent corruption. We utilise the latest instructional design techniques including video, scenarios, gamification and micro-learning to ensure courses are engaging and create desired behavioural changes in your organisation.

Image by alegermino, used under CC2.0

Task force announced to crack down on “shameful” UK fraud

Task force announced to crack down on “shameful” UK fraud

“Fraud shames our financial system,” said Home Secretary Theresa May as she announced a new task force to combat fraud in the UK last month. She continued: “It undermines the credibility of the economy, ruins businesses and causes untold distress to people of all walks of life. For too long, there has been too little understanding of the problem and too great a reluctance to take steps to tackle it.”

The task force will represent a new level of collaboration between government, law enforcement and the banking sector, and is committed to “tackling fraud and reducing its devastating impact.”

The announcement of the task force hasn’t come a moment too soon: last year, fraud was included in the crime figures for England and Wales for the first time, and the figures were sobering. The survey suggested that 5.1 million cases of fraud occurred in 2015, ranging from credit card scams to the CEO email racket, when an employee is duped into transferring money by a false email from the CEO.

Financial Fraud Action UK warns that small businesses are increasingly becoming targets for fraudsters. “Criminals are turning their attention to businesses because successfully scamming a company can net the fraudster a much bigger haul than they could steal from an individual. Fraudsters also understand that small businesses are used to processing all kinds of payments and so a simple request to change an invoice or provide some financial information has a good chance of deceiving an accounts department,” said Katy Worobec, Director of FFA UK. It’s clear that businesses must be alert to the increasing risks, and prepared to defend against these kinds of attacks.

Invoice scams represent one of the fastest growing areas of fraud that affects small businesses. Fraudsters send out a false invoice to a company, often with a payment due date that has passed, and threaten that non-payment will affect credit rating. These fake invoices are often targeted to lower-level admin employees in the hopes that they will be paid quickly in a panic – and not questioned. A more sophisticated version of the scam is sending invoices as attachments that, if opened and downloaded, will give the scammer access to information stored on the infected computer. Another variation is mandate fraud, where a company is duped into diverting legitimate invoice payments into the fraudster’s bank account.

It is essential that all employees are trained and regularly reminded to be on alert for potential fraud. Any unusual invoices must be double-checked, anyone phoning to update the payment details of a regular direct debit must be thoroughly vetted, and emails purporting to be from senior staff members must be verified before action is taken. Companies must also remember that fraud is constantly evolving, and fraudsters go to great lengths to deceive. So while it’s important to train staff to spot fraud, a general awareness of the risks and a healthy suspicion of anything unusual are also valuable defences against criminal activity.

How can VinciWorks help?

Our Fraud and Market Abuse training suite is designed for employees at all levels and provides an overview of what fraud is, why people commit fraud, and the behaviours necessary to identify and report suspected fraud.

Struggling to engage employees with eLearning? Time to harness the power of microlearning with Take 5

Struggling to engage employees with eLearning? Time to harness the power of microlearning with Take 5

Do you struggle to engage learners with your eLearning? Do your learners groan at the thought of annual training refreshers? Then it’s time to mix it up with our new range of Take 5 microlearning modules.

For the uninitiated, microlearning means short, highly specific bursts of information around a single learning objective. Keeping it short and to the point makes microlearning digestible and memorable. What’s not to love?

But that’s just scratching the surface of why we’re backing microlearning in our mission to engage learners with compliance / health and safety training. Take 5 and read on to find out what to expect from our microlearning modules.

Precision content

Whether it’s down to reduced attention spans, changing habits, or growing demands on our time, asking learners to focus on an eLearning course for even half an hour uninterrupted is a tall order.

That’s why Take 5 modules take a maximum of five minutes to complete – just like a coffee break. After all, who can’t make time for a coffee? If you’re thinking, “30 minutes into 5 doesn’t go…” Of course, you’re right, and you’ve identified the beauty of microlearning!

Rather than attempt to address every learning objective under the sun in one sitting, microlearning crystallises content around a single learning objective. This minimises bloat, keeps content relevant, and sends a clear message to learners: you value their time.

Bespoke curriculum

Early eLearning had much in common with books, right down to the page turning, but often lacked a key feature of books: the ability to skip irrelevant chapters. So, whatever the learner’s expertise, entire courses had to be completed from start to finish in a linear fashion.

Today, we’ve done away with page turning, embraced deep scrolling, and split courses into sections that can be completed any order – but to pass a course, learners must still complete every section. This either forces learners to sit through irrelevant training or forces you to develop bespoke courses.

Instead of that, why not pick and mix Take 5 modules to create a bespoke curriculum based on each learner’s capabilities, covering only the learning outcomes they need? Better yet, use a tool like Astute’s Performance Manager to identify those objectives and enrol learners for you.

Flexible format

Building standalone, 5 minute microlearning modules based around a single learning objective allows for far more flexibility than the complexity of creating cohesive, 30-minute-plus eLearning courses covering a variety of topics.

This frees us to get creative on and come up with the most engaging way to convey a single learning objective. We’ve already identified a variety of distinct formats for our Take 5 modules, each designed to appeal to different learning styles, including:

  • Challenge – gamified scenarios based around desirable behaviours.
  • Short Study – investigations subjects at a ‘need to know’ level for every day competence.
  • Presentation – video-based topic overviews, typically with case studies for extra emotional impact and engagement.
  • Toolbox Talk – designed to assist managers or trainers in facilitating face to face training sessions.

Of course, there’s no reason to stop there, and no need to limit a single learning objective to a single style. So if game-based learning works for some of your staff, but others love to just read the information, you’ll have a Take 5 module available to meet their needs.

Try Take 5 Today

We have over 65 Take 5 modules in development covering a variety of essential compliance / health and safety topics and plan to release 3-4 each month, but our first two are already available:

  • Money Laundering Challenge: puts learners in the role of fraud investigator – but will they be able to confiscate all of the money?
  • Gifts and Hospitality Challenge: asks learners to identify which gifts can be accepted and which are actually bribes.

Contact us now to arrange a demo or find out more.

How will the gender pay gap legislation affect you?

How will the gender pay gap legislation affect you?

Recently, the government unveiled draft legislation that would require companies to publish their mean and median gender pay gaps by April 2018. The legislation is an attempt to close the gender wage gap which, despite the Equal Pay Act turning 45 this year, persists.

Overall, men in full time work earn 14% more than women. When part time work is taken into consideration, the pay gap becomes 19.1%, compared to an EU average of 16.4% – and at the top end of the pay scale, the divide between men and women is nearly 55% according to the TUC. Campaigners have warned that, unless drastic action is taken, the pay gap will take a further 54 years to close.

“In recent years we’ve seen the best employers make ground breaking strides in tackling gender inequality,” said Nicky Morgan, Minister for women and equalities. “But the job won’t be complete until we see the talents of women and men recognised equally and fairly in every workplace.

That’s why I am announcing a raft of measures to support women in their careers from the classroom to the boardroom, leaving nowhere for gender inequality to hide.”

The proposed legislation comes just weeks after the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that, despite girls outperforming boys at university, female graduates start on salaries between £15,000 and just under £24,000, while men are more likely to attain salaries of £24,000 and above upon graduation.

Laura Carstensen, an EHRC commissioner, said: “45 years after the Equal Pay Act was brought in to herald an end to gender pay inequality, our research provides clear evidence that the old economic and societal barriers are still prevalent for working women and overshadowing the prospects of our girls and young women yet to enter the workplace.”

The proposed laws would require firms to:

  • take a “snapshot” of what employees are being paid from April 2017 and publish the details by April 2018
  • divide their pay distribution into four bands and work out the number of men and women in each quartile.
  • publish the difference between their mean bonus payments paid to men and women, and the proportion of male and female employees that received a bonus
  • publish their gender pay gap information on their website, accompanied by a written statement confirming that the information is accurate.

Requiring companies to publish the details of their gender pay gap on their company website will have a significant impact on brand image, reputation and ability to recruit and retain staff. Further, by bringing increased awareness to pay generally, the potential for costly equal pay disputes may well be significant.

Kate Hodgkiss, employment partner at DLA Piper, advises employers “to consider conducting a pay audit on an informal basis in advance of any regulations coming into effect”. If after doing so you find discrepancies in salaries between your female and male employees, you must investigate and be prepared to demonstrate that those differences are not related to the sex of the jobholders.

The legislation is expected to come into effect in October 2016, which will give companies six months before the first deadline to report their gender pay gap.

About VinciWorks

VinciWorks provide off-the-shelf eLearning courses that enable organisations to promote diverse workplaces including Introduction to Equality and Diversity and Manager’s Guides to Equality and Diversity. Contact us today to learn more.

Apple’s stance vs FBI highlights corporate privacy responsibility

Apple’s stance vs FBI highlights corporate privacy responsibility

It’s rare for one of the world’s largest corporations to oppose a court order, ostensibly made in the name of national security, and be applauded for it.

Yet Apple declining to help the FBI access San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook’s iPhone has been backed by prominent figures including Google CEO Sundar Pichai and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as thousands of privacy-conscious consumers.

That’s not to say there isn’t backing for the FBI, with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and controversial figure Donald Trump among those suggesting Apple should not obstruct the FBI’s investigation.

Cyber security balance to be reached

Balancing individual privacy with national security is proving to be a compelling subject, and it’s possible that there’s no right answer. Indeed, Apple’s stance – that helping the FBI access the iPhone would set a dangerous precedent for its users’ privacy – has been divisive.

But Apple knows only too well the damage that can be done by losing the public’s trust around privacy. Past hacking scandals and data breaches have significantly impacted their sales and share prices, taking months to recover from. Indeed, some commentators have accused Apple of turning this debate into a marketing campaign.

Regardless of your take on the ethics of this debate, Apple’s stance suggests that, where PR and marketing is concerned, individuals’ privacy seems to trump all else.

About VinciWorks

We help businesses train employees in cyber security topics with online courses including Data Protection, Information Security and Records Management. Contact us now to discuss how our online training can improve your company’s data privacy efforts.

Image Credit: Mike Deerkoski

Are your top performers missing out on leading roles?

Are your top performers missing out on leading roles?

The 2016 Oscars have already garnered thousands of column inches, for largely the wrong reasons. Instead of spurring debate about the best films, performances, scripts and artisans, the nominations caused an outcry about the lack of diversity among the nominees.

Sadly, this is not the first time that the Oscars have caught flack for a lack of diversity; a similar scenario occurred in 2015 when the widely-tipped Selma was overlooked by the Academy. However, many commentators have suggested that this year’s Oscars nominations are more troubling because of the abundance of worthy nominees, including Creed, Straight Outta Compton, Beasts of No Nation and Chi-raq.

So what is happening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences? Why are so few black actors, writers, directors and artisans earning nominations for their widely-respected work? Why are the majority of nominations – and awards – going to a largely white field?

One theory is that the Academy, and the people who choose the nominees, are largely white, and this lack of institutional diversity leads to largely white candidates.

As the uproar over the Academy whitewash threatens to overwhelm the Oscars, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Academy President, launched an initiative to address the lack of diversity. Boone Isaacs stated that the five-year plan, A2020, is designed to ‘increase film industry diversity in front of and behind the camera’. The plan includes a commitment to double the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020. The Guardian reports that “the changes also include 10-year limits on the voting abilities of new members of the Academy, which will be removed if the member is not ‘active in motion pictures’ in the intervening time.”

Both of these ideas suggest that the Academy views their lack of internal diversity as part of the problem. The established members do not represent the diversity of society, nor do they reflect the diversity of society when choosing nominees.

The lack of diversity within the Academy is a story often repeated in the business community, with many corporate leadership teams derided as being ‘male, pale and stale’. Organisations are learning that the push for diversity is about more than just trying to do the right thing, it’s about recognising the value of having a diverse team, and of helping the most talented professionals achieve their full potential, regardless of their race, gender or nationality.

About the author…

We offer a range of eLearning on compliance topics, including Equality and Diversity, and Introduction to Equality and Diversity. Our comprehensive training courses are available electronically, on-demand, so your teams can access the training they need, precisely when they need it. Our eLearning can either be chosen as an off-the-shelf package, or we can customise the courses to suit the needs of your business.

Corruption in tennis and the lessons for businesses fighting fraud

Corruption in tennis and the lessons for businesses fighting fraud

In the past few weeks the world of tennis has been blighted by allegations of match-fixing. While the claims made against the sport have not been proven, it’s an interesting case which may provide lessons for businesses that want to reduce their risk of corruption.

Reports suggest that players have worked with gambling syndicates to throw matches. The claims have been made following an investigation by the BBC and BuzzFeed News, in which they used an algorithm to review the betting activity on professional tennis matches over a period of 7 years. Their studies highlighted a number of matches that attracted suspicious betting activity. Namely, huge value bets for the underdog.

They identified 15 players who ‘regularly lost matches in which heavily lopsided betting appeared to substantially shift the odds – a red flag for possible match-fixing.’ As BuzzFeed reports, ‘gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy have made hundreds of thousands of pounds placing highly suspicious bets on scores of matches’.

This is not the first time that tennis has been embroiled in allegations of corruption. There have long been rumours of professionals colluding to agree the outcome of matches, or even sharing the winnings after planning a mutually-beneficial outcome (some players are suspected of throwing – or ‘tanking’ – matches that they don’t care to win so they can save their energy, yet still pocket a share of the winnings).

Richard Ings, former executive vice president for rules and competition of the Association of Tennis Professionals spoke to BuzzFeed about how the nature of tennis makes it uniquely suitable for match fixing, “if you were to invent a sport that was tailor-made for match-fixing, the sport that you would invent would be called tennis. “It doesn’t take much effort on a player to throw a match without the opponent or the officials or the fans or even the media being aware.”

Given the level of suspicion around tennis, the nature of the allegations, and the apparent simplicity with which matches can be fixed, one might assume that investigators and tennis officials would be aware of the risks and quick to clamp down on the alleged fixers. But so far, the tennis authorities have been slow to react and have failed to punish most of the alleged fixers.

Commentators are speculating that one reason for the lack of decisive action is the fact that the organisation tasked with stopping corruption in tennis is too close to the sport. The Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) was founded in 2008 by the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the ATP, the WTA and the Grand Slam Board. If corruption is occurring inside tennis, can an insider organisation hope to solve the problems? Or does the TIU have too many incentives to ignore warnings in an effort to preserve the good name of the sport of gentlemen?

Whether or not the allegations surrounding tennis are true, the affair is a reminder that, for any organisation fighting corruption, internal investigators may not be the most effective route to the truth. When an organisation has too much to lose – and plenty to hide – outside investigators may be the only effective way to reveal the truth. Impartial third-parties may be necessary to break through a wall of silence, or to expose failings that insiders may see as ‘just the way things are’. Perhaps the TIU needs to involve independent investigators in their procedures, and accept that the investigation may reveal uncomfortable truths.

Perhaps the problems blighting tennis are similar to the difficulties that face some businesses: corrupt practices become so commonplace that they become normalised. In such cases it can be challenging to uncover the full extent of the fraud taking place, particularly if employees don’t view their actions as problematic – or if the fraud is so widespread that a majority of employees have a vested interest in maintaining the cover-up. When corruption is part of an ingrained culture, training programs and other awareness-raising initiatives may be required to change perceptions and encourage people to develop a zero-tolerance attitude to fraudulent practices.

Fraud often occurs in situations when people have both a motive and an opportunity. So while it’s important to limit opportunities and minimise motives, it’s also important to shape an organisational culture that does not accept corruption in any form.

VinciWorks offer eLearning on a range of business and management topics, which can be chosen as an off-the-shelf package, or customised to meet the needs of your business. Our corruption eLearning packages include:

  • Anti-Bribery and Corruption (Introduction)
  • Anti-Bribery and Corruption (Working Globally)

Responsive Competition Law eLearning course available now

Competition law exists to prevent monopolies, remove trade barriers, and ensure the marketplace is fair and competitive.

Activities prevented by competition law include:

  • Restrictive agreements between businesses such as pricing agreements, market sharing and dividing up customers
  • Agreements which do not benefit consumers
  • Abuse of dominant market position

Breaching this legislation can lead to fines of up to 10% of worldwide revenue, imprisonment of individuals for up to 5 years, and debarring of company directors for up to 15 years.

Many common business activities carry a risk of competition law being breached inadvertently, such as planning marketing, pricing or distribution strategies, joint ventures, or participation in trade associations.

Our Competition Law eLearning course is designed to provide employees with an overall understanding of competition law and the knowledge to know when situations should be referred to the legal team.

The course is built with the Adapt Framework to be fully responsive and display elegantly on mobiles, tablets and personal computers, so employees can access it whenever the need arises, offering an effective mitigation of the risk of breaching competition law.

Safe Harbour successor agreed – but will it actually change anything?

Safe Harbour successor agreed – but will it actually change anything?

Hot on the heels of the General Data Protection Regulation’s approval last week, an agreement has been reached between the EU and the US for transatlantic data flow.

The EU-US Privacy Shield will replace Safe Harbour, the law which allowed the transfer of data from the EU to the US until it was ruled invalid last October for failing to protect EU citizens’ privacy rights.

A decision on the new framework will be welcomed by US titans including Google, Apple and Microsoft, who bank on data from the EU – but what’s going to change, and what impact will it have on your business?

The major changes made by the EU-US Privacy Shield include:

  • US companies will be obligated to comply with specific rules related to protecting EU citizens’ personal data
  • Safeguards and clear limitations designed to prevent mass general surveillance of EU citizens by the US government
  • A specially created US ombudsperson to handle EU citizens with concerns over their data privacy

The proposed changes would ease the pressure on EU businesses which rely on cloud-based services in the US such as HR, CRM and marketing platforms, which are difficult to balance with data protection compliance.

In its current form, Privacy Shield may ultimately amount to business as usual for many companies. It is, after all, designed to enable rather than prevent the transfer of data.

However, these developments do highlight the requirement for businesses to be aware and in control of where their data is stored and the compliance of third parties – a matter of increasing importance given the General Data Protection Regulation’s requirement for transparency.

Notably, the proposed EU-US Privacy Shield has hardly been universally welcomed, and assurances from the US government around mass surveillance have been questioned, with the 2013 NSA scandal that prompted changing legislation still fresh in many peoples’ minds.

It remains to be seen how this growing scepticism and increased concern over personal privacy can be balanced with the economic benefits of the data economy, and it’s likely that data protection legislation will continue to evolve in trying to find that balance.

Whatever changes are made to data protection legislation, VinciWorks clients can rest assured that our compliance eLearning will be kept up to date in line with any legal requirements that may arise.

Contact us today to learn about how we can help you deliver data protection training that’s always up to date with current legislation.

ICO releases data privacy assessment tool for SMEs

ICO releases data privacy assessment tool for SMEs

With the number of high profile examples of big businesses being targeted by cyber criminals, it’d be easy for small and medium-sized enterprises to overlook their own vulnerabilities.

Many SMEs possess customer databases to rival those of larger businesses, but tend to lack the security infrastructure to match – making them highly valuable targets for cybercriminals.

In recognition of this problem, the ICO released a tool last week designed to help SMEs assess their compliance with the Data Protection Act.

The tool contains a number of checklists covering the essential elements of cyber security including data protection, records management and information security. If you’re a SME, we highly recommend making use of this free tool to assess your own DPA compliance efforts.

Data Privacy Training

One crucial element the ICO recommends for data protection compliance is training, an area in which SMEs can easily compete with larger organisations – and something VinciWorks can help with.

Our responsive, multi-device eLearning covers all subjects the ICO recommends SMEs deliver training in for Data Protection Act compliance.

Not only are our eLearning courses responsive and deliverable on mobiles, tablets and personal computers, they also provide a robust audit trail, an essential element of any data protection policy.

Contact us today for guest access to our information governance eLearning courses or to discuss how we can help you comply with the data protection act.