
Branding: Why Your Program Needs It and How to Do It
Imagine if you could build your compliance program into a brand that people loved and remembered?

Don’t Ask Me Where I Work
When you go to a conference or networking event, what is the first thing you get asked or ask? “Where do you work” leads to small talk, not real connections. Explore the better way of making stronger relationships.

On Not Being Good at It
Compliance officers are used to being good at things. After all, our careers require a certain level of academic mastery and we must have emotional intelligence and business acumen to deal with senior management.

In Defense of Compliance Independence
Americans are celebrating the Fourth of July holiday this week, commemorating the separation of the United States as an independent country from the United Kingdom. Battles for independence can be long and filled with difficulty, including moments where freedom fighters feel defeated.
As a profession and department, compliance is still young. Debates still rage about whether compliance needs to be independent, and what “independence” actually means in practice.

Not involved in M&A due diligence? Now what?
Nearly every compliance program we evaluate at Spark Compliance has the same problem – failure to have a pre- and post-merger and acquisition (M&A) protocol in place that officially involves compliance in M&A activity.
If you find out there’s been an acquisition without any compliance-related due diligence, you’re probably feeling stuck (and maybe a bit panicked). Or perhaps you’ve proposed a pre- and post-M&A plan and you’re getting pushback on its breadth.
What is the minimum you can get away with to still have a good enough approach?

A Deeper Dive into Human Rights Impact Assessments – Part 2
Human rights assessments are an increasingly closely watched area of due diligence for the supply chain of organizations across numerous industries. Even smaller operators are subject to the reality of today’s global supply chains, and everyone from customers to regulators are watching to see how organizations treat people and the planet. Visibility into the ethics and practices of vendors – and for that matter, the operations of any organization – are more important than ever before.