Behavior, attitude and culture

Behavior, attitude and culture: current and relevant

More and more organizations are seeing the importance of behavior, attitude and culture. Behavior, attitude and culture are crucial elements within any organization. They form the basis for how employees interact with each other and with external parties. A positive culture contributes to higher employee satisfaction, better performance and a stronger reputation. It is therefore vital that organizations actively work to promote a healthy and ethical culture. Fortunately, in recent times much has been published on Behavior, attitude and culture (also called: soft controls). Those publications provide good guidance.

What professional associations do

The Association of Compliance Officers (VCO) established a Knowledge Table "Behavior & Culture," which designed a toolbox. After all, compliance professionals are expected to make a concrete contribution to this topic. That contribution can be made in many ways, for example by stimulating awareness through training and discussions, but also by integrating these "social controls" into compliance monitoring.

In addition, IIA Netherlands, the professional association of Internal Auditors also assigns importance to this substantive theme. They emphasize the importance of behavior, attitude and culture within organizations and support initiatives that contribute to the integration of this topic in internal audits.

Soft Controls in Practice

Soft Controls has been one of the favorite topics for seminars and conferences for years. Not only for second-line functions such as controllers, compliance officers and risk managers; also for the third-line function of Internal Audit. The topic of Soft Controls is much discussed, but often it remains at the importance of it, without concrete application. Sometimes it can even linger on a discussion of definitions of Soft Control. And that while the modern, accepted definition of Management Control already picks up a nice broad interpretation, by speaking of "measures that lead to desired behavior.

Soft controls and Kaptein's 8 factors

An important aspect of behavior, attitude and culture is the concept of soft controls. Soft controls are measures aimed at influencing employee behavior and attitudes. They complement hard controls, such as rules and procedures. A commonly used model for soft controls is Kaptein's 8 factors model. This model identifies eight factors that influence ethical behavior within organizations.

Supported in part by the revamped Corporate Governance Code, which, among other things, emphasizes attitude, behavior and culture, the topic of soft control has recently been taken up again emphatically by internal auditors. Fortunately, this goes beyond expressions of its importance. Many have an explicit desire to integrate soft control into the way they work. We see various initiatives to this end, but in practice this does not always prove easy.

How ARC People can help

You can engage ARC People on this timely topic in the following ways:

• Conducting a survey (jointly or otherwise) of behavior, attitude and culture within your organization.
• Implementing measures that encourage positive development of behavior, attitude and culture.
• Transferring knowledge, in the form of a short workshop or multi-day training.