About Caroline McDonald

Caroline McDonald is a writer and former senior editor of the Risk Management Monitor and Risk Management magazine.
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Avoid Corruption in Holiday Gift-Giving

With Thanksgiving and the holiday season upon us, gift-giving and compliance can be an issue for global companies, especially since more than 20% polled by Deloitte said their companies don’t assess the corruption risk of employee gift-giving.

While 20.4% of respondents don’t assess employee gift-giving corruption risk, more than 43.4% expect anti-corruption enforcement to rise in 2016, moneyaccording to a recent Deloitte poll of more than 1,600 professionals.

“As generous as the holidays make many feel, giving gifts that could be seen as bribes to non-U.S. government officials can result in fines, regulatory action and brand damage for multinational organizations,” said Bill Pollard, Deloitte Advisory partner at Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP. “Now is the time to conduct gift-giving compliance training and increase efforts to help ensure anti-corruption compliance through the holiday season. As global enforcement continues to increase, take a note from regulators and make sure your corporate records around travel, gifts and entertainment are transparent and show no ‘corrupt intent’—particularly when out-of-country government officials are recipients.”

The poll results found that anti-corruption policies for giving gifts to non-U.S. government officials run the gamut: 18.2% maintain a no-gift policy and provide no gifts to customers, 16.4% give only small company logo items, 15.7% restrict gift value and 6.1% use separate policies for non-U.S. government officials compared to other customers and third parties.

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The poll also found that 43.6% of companies plan to make improvements, while 12.7% do not and 43.7% do not know.

To uncover irregularities that point to corrupt intent and bribes disguised as gift-giving, some compliance, legal and internal audit teams use visualization and analytics tools. However, just 8.4% of respondents said their organizations effectively use visualization and data analytics technologies to support anti-corruption efforts. A full third of them (33.1%) didn’t use the tools at all.

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Leading practices to prevent and detect corruption in gift-giving include:

  • Set ground rules clearly — Describe the nature and type of acceptable gifts, payments, travel and entertainment. Escalate all gifts for government officials to compliance for review. Create an approval process with aggregate dollar limits. Define the disciplinary process for non-compliance.
  • Act globally — Ensure that rules are consistent not only with U.S. laws but local laws and customs. Translate that guidance into all appropriate languages in which your organization operates.
  • Keep gifts corporate — Give gifts that feature company logos, reflect the organization’s products and ensure they are intended for official — not personal — use (such as a business card holder).
  • Make gifting inclusive — Give gifts publicly and transparently, and involve teams as opposed to individuals (such as specialty baked goods for a team to share)
  • Prohibit cash or its equivalents, such as gift cards.

“Anti-corruption visualization and analytics tools can help address varied global anti-corruption laws and gift-giving customs, making multi-national anti-corruption management easier than before,” Pollard noted. “Nothing replaces the fundamental value strong anti-corruption professionals, policies and procedures do.”

Marijuana’s Cost to Employers

With the adoption of more state laws to legalize marijuana, employers will face challenges to protect their employees from injury and to comply with federal requirements to maintain a drug-free workplace.

Employers also face potentially costly litigation as case law surrounding legal marijuana develops, according to the Quest Diagnostics whitepaper “What Will ‘Legal’ Marijuana Cost Employers?”

Marijuana-workplace

Quest reports that medical marijuana legalization brought forth a new phenomenon: the production of marijuana-infused foods and gadgets, which presents a special problem for employers. Today, nearly half of marijuana users in states where it is legal consume marijuana by eating it rather than smoking it. In addition, vape pens, which are like e-cigarettes but contain capsules of concentrated marijuana oils, leave no marijuana smell and are impossible to tell apart from e-cigarettes. These two modes of consumption will make it more difficult, if not impossible, for employers to tell when employees are using marijuana on the job.

As marijuana use increases, so will workplace injuries, accidents, mistakes, and employee illnesses, escalating the costs of companies’ liability, workers’ compensation and health insurance.

Questions companies should ask include:

  • Will employers have to accommodate marijuana use in their workplaces? A closely watched case. Before the Colorado Supreme Court will establish, at least in Colorado, whether employees can use marijuana off the clock even if they may be impaired the next day.
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  • Must employers pay for employees’ medical marijuana if they are injured on the job? By allowing a court of appeals decision to stand, the New Mexico Supreme Court finds that the answer is yes.
  • Will the use of legal cannabinoids like delta 8 THC be allowed in the workplace?
  • What does increased adolescent marijuana use portend for the future workforce? Research shows that compared to nonusers, teens who smoke marijuana on weekends over a two-year period are six times more likely to drop out of high school, three times less likely to enter college, and four times less likely to earn a college degree?
  • How can employers meet federal requirements to maintain a drug-free workplace if states require proof of impairment rather than the presence of marijuana in the body when no level of impairment has been scientifically established and no noninvasive test to denote impairment has been developed?
  • If courts hold that drug testing is no longer a valid indicator of impairment, how can employers whose businesses involve driving or other safety-sensitive positions protect their workers and the public from injuries and deaths cause by stoned drivers?
  • What if courts hold that failing a pre-employment drug test is no longer a valid reason to deny employment to applicants?

There are, however, steps employers can take to protect themselves:

1) Stay up-to-date with the changing legal landscape and adjust workplace policies accordingly.

2) Remember that marijuana is still illegal under federal law.

3) Join other employers to monitor state legislation and take action with legislators to ensure workplace protections are included in any marijuana laws.

4) Educate your workforce about the dangers marijuana poses to children, families and the workplace.

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5) Challenge the notion that marijuana is medicine, or risk paying for it in your health insurance program. No marijuana medicines being sold in states that legalized them have been approved by FDA as pure, safe, or effective.

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Doctors cannot prescribe them and pharmacies cannot sell them.

Risk Link Roundup

Link Roundup

Here are a few recent articles highlighting some interesting issues that impact the world of risk and insurance. Topics include the impact of the Paris attack on the stock market, the emergence of the world’s largest hotelier, a former Department of Defense director of operations charged with taking bribes, criminal charges in a huge cyberfraud ring and four business owners charged with workers compensation fraud.

Wall St. Rises as Little Impact Seen From Paris Attacks

Reuters: U.S. stocks were higher in early afternoon trading on Monday after a choppy start as investors absorbed the impact of Friday’s deadly attacks in Paris.

Marriott Becomes World’s Largest Hotelier, Buying Starwood

Associated Press: Hotel behemoth Marriott International is becoming even larger, taking over rival chain Starwood in a $12.2 billion deal that will catapult it to become the world’s largest hotelier by a wide margin.

Former DoD Contractor Pleads Guilty to Taking Bribes from UK Company

FCPA Blog: The former director of operations of a Department of Defense contractor in Washington, D.C. pleaded guilty to soliciting and receiving nearly $200,000 in kickbacks in return for steering U.S. government subcontracts to a U.K. company.

U.S. Charges Three in Huge Cyberfraud Targeting JPMorgan, Others

Reuters: U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled criminal charges against three men accused of running a sprawling computer hacking and fraud scheme that included a huge attack against JPMorgan Chase & Co and generated hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profit.

4 New York Business Owners Charged in Workers’ Comp Fraud Sweep

Insurance Journal: The New York inspector general’s office announced the arrests of four New York state business owners on fraud and theft charges as part of an ongoing series of investigations into employers and employees who defraud the state workers’ compensation system.

P&C Rates Inch Down in October

The rate index for the commercial property and casualty market in the U.S. was down 2% in October. Commercial auto, crime, and business owners’ policies (BOP) were the only coverage classifications showing an increase in rates at plus 1%.

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All other coveragesOct-barometer were either flat or down 1 to 2%, according to MarketScout.

Richard Kerr, MarketScout CEO said in a statement, “Insurers are hungry for premium and capital providers are searching for ways to get in on the action. The obvious result is more competition resulting in rate reductions.”

Medium sized ($25,001 to $250,000) and jumbo (over $1,000,000) accounts saw the most competitive pricing with rates down 2%. In September, jumbo accounts were down 4%—a notable adjustment over the past two months for jumbo accounts.

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All other account sizes were down 1%.

Pricing by industry classifications showed that habitational and energy business were priced the most aggressively, down 2%. All other industries were either flat or down 1%.

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October 2015 rates by coverage, industry class and account size:

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