What can Self Service teach us about Compliance & Ethics?

If there's one concept guaranteed to fill me with dread, it's when I'm offered a 'self-service' option. Particularly when it's introduced by a company with a reputation for poor service. Which brings me to Deutsche Bahn Bahn, my office landlord and transport provider for the day,?as they carry me on my usual journey from Brussels to Munich.

As anyone familiar with their service can attest, DB doesn't consistently deliver a seamless service. But today, they have; all connections made on time. Including this one — there's a big clue as to which station this is...

That makes it the perfect day to highlight something that should, by all rights, be awful but isn't. Meet Comfort CheckIn. It's a brilliant idea. Rather than having your ticket inspected, you validate it via an app which notifies the ticket inspector, who then knows not to check your ticket.?

It's simple and utterly brilliant. You get the nasty ticket inspection out of the way and can focus on more important things. Like sleeping, gazing out of the window at the beautiful scenery, or, as I did earlier,?making use of the free wifi to catch up on some of the fantastic presentations at this year's European Compliance & Ethics Community (ECEC) conference.?

Make it engaging

There are three compliance lessons from Comfort CheckIn. The first is the brand; why do so many compliance processes have such dull names? 'Checkin' is so much better than 'inspection'. Why do we make compliance processes sound boring? Unless, of course, we want people to think they're tedious...

On that note, start your ECEC catchup with Dr. Bettina Palazzo on 'why ethical leadership is difficult'. She's the perfect illustration of how not to make things dull.

Get your timing right

The second is the timing. Getting people to check their own tickets just after they've boarded means you're doing it before they've settled into their seats. It's by far the least disruptive time to do it. The same outcome from a compliance perspective but a much better passenger experience.

Someone with fabulous timing is Benjamin Schorn. Catch his amazing fusion of magic and psychology. One of the most astonishing things I've seen in a long time:

Focus on the important things

The third is that it frees up the staff to do other things. Like handing out, free chocolates which read "favourite guest".??

Free chocolates —?technically bribery, of course —?are always nice. But, there's a serious point here, which is that in a resource-constrained world, we shouldn't be wasting resources on unnecessary processes. Which is the perfect introduction to the third presentation I highly recommend. The always fascinating Jér?me Tagger did a fabulous presentation on responsible investment. Highly recommended:

Which brings me to the end of this rail report. If you're ever travelling by train in Germany, check out Comfort CheckIn. But before then, head to the ECEC website where all the videos from Europe's largest Compliance & Ethics Conference are now live. It's a self-service website, but like Comfort CheckIn, it's brilliantly designed and well worth using!

For more on ECEC visit https://www.ecec-community.com/

For more on Human Risk visit www.human-risk.com