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In today’s hybrid and distributed workplaces, one of the biggest challenges facing ethics and compliance leaders is ensuring employees feel empowered (and comfortable) reporting concerns, conflicts of interest, or gifts and hospitality. Despite investing in hotlines, online forms, or dedicated email inboxes, many programs still suffer from low engagement and underreporting.
Why? The tools we often ask employees to use aren’t the tools they actually use.
At Continual, we believe that the key to unlocking honest, timely employee reporting lies in integrating compliance channels into the communication platforms people already rely on, like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and WhatsApp. Pair that with a well-designed AI chatbot that mimics human conversation, and you can dramatically improve both the quality and quantity of compliance-related disclosures.
When employees are faced with a web form buried on the company intranet or asked to draft an email to a generic inbox, they’re met with barriers, anxiety, friction, and a sense of formality that discourages openness. A 2023 report by Forrester Research found that over 60% of employees avoid reporting minor (but still meaningful) ethical concerns due to the cumbersome nature of formal reporting tools.
Compare that with the natural, frictionless way people use workplace chat apps. A study published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication highlighted that individuals are 2.7x more likely to disclose sensitive information in a chat format than in formal written formats such as emails or online forms. Chat makes conversations feel more personal, more informal, and crucially, more approachable.
This is where Continual’s AI-powered approach shines.
Employees spend a significant portion of their workday communicating in Slack, Teams, or WhatsApp. These tools have become the digital "office hallway" where updates are shared, questions are asked, and ideas are floated. Embedding a reporting tool directly into these platforms significantly increases the likelihood of use. It removes the need to switch contexts, go looking for links, or worry about writing a perfectly worded message.
By enabling employees to flag a conflict of interest or declare a gift right in Slack or Teams, you reduce friction and make it part of the everyday workflow. It’s discreet, it’s simple, and it’s familiar. At Continual, we’ve seen up to 4x higher engagement rates in pilot programs using chat-based disclosure bots versus traditional form-driven systems.
A smart AI chatbot doesn’t just collect a checkbox of details. It converses. It can ask follow-up questions, detect when someone is unsure or hesitant, and guide them with clarifying prompts. This conversational intelligence leads to richer, more complete reports, often capturing the nuance and context that static forms miss.
For instance, if an employee declares they were offered a gift from a vendor, the bot can gently ask:
These questions don’t feel like an interrogation they feel like a natural dialogue, and they help ethics teams build a fuller picture.
Moreover, chatbots can instantly triage reports, escalate high-risk issues, and provide immediate guidance, such as reminding employees of the gift policy or confirming the next steps. This level of responsiveness builds trust and confidence in the system.
Let’s not ignore the psychological dimension. Reporting wrongdoing or declaring a potential conflict is an emotionally loaded task. A chat tool reduces the pressure of “officialness” while still ensuring confidentiality and compliance. For employees who are more junior, non-native speakers, or less familiar with policy nuances, a friendly chatbot in a familiar platform feels safer and more accessible.
And importantly, integrating with chat isn’t just a technical convenience, it’s a cultural signal. It shows employees that compliance is part of the organization’s daily rhythm, not some distant corporate mandate.
The future of ethics and compliance is not in portals, it’s in conversations. If we want employees to speak up, we need to speak their language and appear in their channels. Embedding AI-powered reporting into chat platforms like Slack, Teams, and WhatsApp isn’t just a UX improvement, it’s a strategic move to increase transparency, accountability, and participation.
At Continual, we’re building the tools to make that future possible. Because when compliance becomes part of the conversation, everyone wins.
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