Why Do You Need A Mystery Shopping Program? One Word: ACORN

I've been somewhat bemused by the 'surveillance' film footage of ACORN employees seemingly giving advice on how to evade taxes and conceal criminal activity to conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute.

When I finally saw the entire film footage (on the fabulous "The Daily Show" hosted by Jon Stewart) I was struck with two different thoughts. First, a fleeting thought—I didn't know that people working in the illegal sex trade were concerned about paying taxes. The second, and more substantial thought, is, as an executive of a multi-site organization, how do you know what your front-line team members are doing on most days?

I do feel sorry for the embattled CEO of ACORN. She was making the rounds of the morning talk shows, outraged and threatening to sue because the secret videos broke Maryland law by carrying out an illegal wiretapping operation. But, as many politicians have learned, when the video genie is out of the bottle, no one cares how the video was made. More problematic is that even the most spirited defense of ACORN I've read refers to the organization as "admittedly very poorly managed." Not exactly a glowing endorsement.

So the question is, if your frontline staff were featured in film footage gathered by a hidden camera, what would you see? How do you, as an executive, increase the likelihood that such footage would be benign? There are a few risk management tactics that should be in your organization's plan:

• Updated policies and procedures—with testing of staff knowledge of those policies and procedures
• Routine assessments with compliance—with policies and procedures across all programs
• A consumer 'hotline' (and web site) to report perceived service problems
• Related performance metrics on your organizational and supervisory performance dashboards
• A mystery shopping program to monitor services from the consumer (and hidden camera) perspective
• A robust training and technical assistance program for front-line supervisors

I think the ACORN situation is going to spawn imitators—particularly for health and human services that are perceived as politically unattractive (for any number of reasons). Before your employees are featured on a local news program, be prepared and review your controls for remote staff.