What’s Been Cooking in the CRX? Whistleblowing and Sexual Harassment

Welcome to the Conduct Risk Exchange.

Behavox offers its clients a unique Conduct Risk Exchange (CRX), which is an online library of scenarios, reports and widgets, built by our CRX team, in close collaboration with our clients. The scenarios in this extensive and growing repository are available to all clients and are updated regularly. They are entirely anonymous and protect all confidential data.

On a quarterly basis, Radar explores some of the most innovative and effective CRX scenarios, that have been deployed in real data sets and are giving clients fresh insights and signals.

Whistleblowing

“I kept complaining and complaining, and nothing ever got done,” said Yesenia Guitron, former banker at Wells Fargo. When the Wells Fargo banking scandal became public knowledge in 2016, allegations that bank employees had opened credit card accounts for customers without their knowledge based on orders from their supervisors, were treated with shock and disbelief. Meanwhile, Guitron was at home saying, “I told you so.”

Danske Bank recently reported that 200 billion euros ($235 billion) of payments went through its Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015. The European Parliament has called on Howard Wilkinson, a former head of Danske Bank’s trading business to testify as a whistleblower. He is worried about potential reprisals after such testimony. In today’s business landscape, ethics and compliance are naturally intertwined.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority has seen a 38 percent rise in whistleblowing reports from the year 2012 to 2017. Regulators are increasingly interested in whistleblowing.

Behavox’s analysts created scenarios on whistleblowing to safeguard any whistleblower, and to identify individuals who feel their concerns are not being answered by their colleagues and senior management.

The scenarios employ behavioral models, sentiment analysis, relationship metrics and participant count to generate alerts. Keywords and lexicon are used to supplement the scenario. NLP is employed to help analyze the internal communications and distinguish sentiments made in jest from those that are genuine. The scenario is a derivation of existing scenarios based around internal complaints and negative sentiment towards the employer.

Sexual Remarks / Harassment

There have been a number of high-profile cases relating to sexual misconduct in financial institutions. With the rise of the #metoo movement, this once overlooked topic is now at the forefront, demanding more attention. If sexual harassment was happening in your organization, would you be able to spot it?

A recent CareerBuilder survey found that 72 percent of employees who experience sexual harassment don’t report it. The investment bank, UBS, is reviewing how it handles sexual misconduct allegations after an employee who claimed she was raped by a colleague contacted the head of the bank. The Point 72 allegations is also a relevant example of sexual misconduct at the workplace.

Most companies have sexual harassment policies and reporting procedures, but they may not be organized in the best way to encourage reporting. Behavox’s new scenario makes it easier to identify possible cases of harassment.

The sexual remarks scenario monitors communications with emphasis on individuals making unwanted sexual advances or obscene remarks to another individual. This scenario helps detect situations where employees might feel threatened by sexual advances towards them or where derogatory remarks are made to, or about, another person.

The scenario utilizes lexicon, relationship metrics, and participant count. It identifies expressions of inappropriate desire, insulting requests, and sexual comments directed at, or about, an individual.

Behavox runs regular scenario workshops with its existing clients where they get to collaborate and compare notes on hit rates, success and trends in scenario adoption, as well as specifying new market practice that requires new scenarios to be built with the Behavox Scenario Factory.

If you have more interest in this, email Ross Aubrey: [email protected]