Simon Scales, Director of Global Investigations for TNT Express, the global mail carrier, is also Willy Young. He explains to Mark Rowe why TNT has embraced drama as an extra way to get the anti-fraud and corruption message across.
Act one, scene one: the ‘connectivity evening’ of the European Culture Company (EuroCult). The new head of ethical compliance takes the stage … but soon what shouldbe a niight of corporate congratulation is going badly out of control, and not according to the company’s script. It takes Willy Young, EuroCult’s sales and marketing director, played by Simon Scales, to intervene and save everyone’s blushes as Eurocult’s dirty linen is in danger of being washed in public. Rather than give away any more of the story, why not take the next chance to see a performance of Greed. It’s a play written by Nigel Iyer, a director of Hibis Europe, the fraud investigators and consultants. Briefly, Nigel as featured in the April issue of Professional Security, is an accountant turned fraud investigator and author on fraud, who has most recently taken a two-year masters degree in screenwriting for film and TV at Royal Holloway, University of London. Greed was aired most recently in Brussels in March at an evening dinner during one of MIS Training’s regular ‘fraud and corruption’ events. What’s striking about Hibis’ work and approach is that, yes, they do investigations and training, and raise awareness, but they stress the need to spot the ‘red flags’ of a fraudster, so you can prevent fraud before it happens or develops. The consultants talk also in terms of integrity, principles, ethics and compliance; rather than anti-fraud messages of the ‘thou shalt not steal’ variety, let alone trying to avoid fraud altogether as bad news that does not happen in your organisation.
Deciding what you want to achieve is one thing. Telling the majority of your staff who are not specialists in fraud or security or risk – or rather, getting the message across so that they listen so that it doesn’t go in one ear and out the other – is another thing. How to make fraud prevention relevant, not something that sends people to sleep? Something that speaks to people? You can run role-plays, do multi-media, put your campaign in snappy posters or on the company intranet. That European Culture Company drama goes beyond role play; it seeks to present a cast of men and women in a business who wrestle with the sort of dilemmas that do crop up in a workplace. If someone is, like the Willy Young character, someone who brings home the proverbial bacon for the company, and who is a loveable rogue always with a witty remark to rebuff any criticism, do you or the managers above him turn a blind eye to his shady deals? If there are rumours that he is doing wrong, do you listen, or act on the gossip? Or dismiss it as office-politics jealousy? Ordinary staff do want to say no to fraud and corruption; but do they have a way to blow the whistle? Or do staff find it easier to keep concerns to themselves, for fear of the consequences? How do you handle the Willy Youngs, the bad guys of the world who belittle ethics as stuff for fuddy-duddies?
Rather than give any of the plot away, here is the timetable of the play Greed; after the 15-minute first act, the audience can tuck into a buffet, while Willy Young and the MD Cheryl Stropp mingle with the real audience. After act two, the audience is invited to answer a written quiz, posing some of the questions raised by the drama. Such as: who’s doing the fraud inside EuroCult?!
Simon told Professional Security: "We are looking to raise and heighten awareness; it’s a bit of blue-sky thinking to get people involved in a scenarios." In other words, drama – as it has for thousands of years – gets people thinking about topics, inside their own heads and discussing among colleagues, getting through to people in a way that a Powerpoint presentation or photocopied handout never could. As Simon said: "It seems to work."
He speaks in terms of ‘effective integrity’, principles, policies, and culture in a business. And if there is to be a ‘tone from the top’ that does not tolerate fraud and corruption, there has to be more than merely the senior executives signing a piece of paper; the message has to reach two, three, four levels or more of management, down to supervisers, and, he stresses, ultimately permeating throughout the business. One way to get through to everyone – because it would take a long time for audiences 100 at a time to see a play – is by putting video online, which Simon and TNT are looking into, as part of the raising of awareness.
In case readers are dismissing this as airy-fairy corporate stuff, make no mistake, TNT – a multi-national with some 160,000 staff – is keen to make sure that effective integrity runs through the business. Nor is Simon Scales some head in the clouds head of security; before he joined TNT in 2002 he was in the police: "I learned my trade by rolling my sleeves up, being a thief-taker, and working hard to eradicate the problem of fraud within the public sector." The global role now requires investigations throughout the world, across national jurisdictions, and firmly placing prevention and awareness at the forefront of TNT’s attitude towards the issue, ‘and it pays dividends’. What’s intriguing and a challenge to other big corporates is that plainly TNT is pursuing ‘integrity’ not only because it is a good thing; it makes fundamental business sense. As Simon puts it: ‘It’s far better to prevent it [fraud] than to have to investigate it later.’
