Your company opens a second office, hundreds of miles away from the original one, with a skeleton crew of ten employees.
No room – and no need – in that new office for a finance person, or a lawyer, or an HR partner.
But you know what that new office could use? A part-time ethics ambassador.
One of these ten employees should act as a liaison between the mothership’s control functions and the new satellite office. Someone to keep the information flowing in both directions. Someone who is responsible for sharing new policies and reminding colleagues to complete their training. Someone who can bring back allegations and concerns to the main office.
If your ethics and compliance function is centralized at headquarters, consider creating a network of ethics ambassadors that are deployed everywhere you do business. My company has nearly 300 of them, and our company is stronger because of that team.
If you’d like to learn how to create such a network, I will be part of a panel of speakers addressing this very topic during an ECI event on June 23.
Hope to see you there!
Writing as “The Ethical Leader,” Yan Tougas draws on 15 years of experience as a compliance & ethics officer at a Fortune 500 company, sharing insights, wisdom and lessons learned. This post originally appeared on “The Ethical Leader” and is reprinted here with permission. Views expressed are that of the author. Visit him at YanTougas.com, connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.
Yan Tougas, Global Ethics & Compliance Officer, Raytheon Technologies Corporation
Yan Tougas oversees Raytheon’s global ethics programs, supporting a network of nearly 300 Ethics & Compliance Officers, managing the company’s Ombuds program, and ensuring that best practices are adopted across Raytheon’s business units. Ethical culture and leadership is the focus of all activities under his responsibility.
Yan joined Raytheon in 2000 and held positions of increasing responsibility at several of its business units. He took his current position at the Corporate Office in 2012.
Yan holds a LL.B from the University of Sherbrooke School of Law (Quebec) and a LL.M. from University of Connecticut School of Law. He sits on the Board of the Ethics & Compliance Initiative and on the Advisory Board of the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University. Yan currently lives in Connecticut with his wife and three children. 
