Ellen Pekilis is a Canadian Attorney with interesting experience setting up employee hotline programs internationally. Her story working through barriers to getting her company’s employee hotline established in the EU is a great illustration of the legal and cultural differences that must be accommodated in international compliance. Basic assumptions that we in North America take for granted, such as the fairness of promoting an anonymous hotline for employees and the ability of employers to investigate employees for wrongdoing, do not necessarily hold true in other countries. These cultural differences impact the way that compliance programs that are required under laws in Canada and the U.S. operate.
In our interview, Ellen describes the challenges of cultural differences in compliance and gives us a peek at how the new EU privacy regulation may impact the relationship between employees and employers in the international context.
Ellen Pekilis is an experienced General Counsel and Non-Profit Leader. She is the former Executive Director of Energy Exchange a nonprofit based in Toronto, Canada, and the former General Counsel of the CSA Group, an internationally accredited standards development, and testing and certification organization also headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Ellen is also a member of the Ontario Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel.
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