Ethical Assessments identifies Excellence in Action
Showcasing Best Practices from AtkinsRealis, Ingredion, and JBS Foods
Ethisphere’s mission is to build a better world by advancing business integrity. And a big part of that is not just directly helping organizations across the globe achieve ethics and compliance excellence, but in sharing those stories so that everyone in the ethics economy can see what great looks like. That is why we showcase those companies whose business integrity efforts truly stand out.
Some of these may have earned recognition through Ethisphere’s rigorous Compliance Leader Verification ethical assessment process—which identify areas of strength and improvement around six key areas: program resources and structure; perceptions of ethical culture; written standards; training and communication; risk assessment, monitoring and auditing; and enforcement, discipline, and incentives. Others may be a World’s Most Ethical Companies® honoree. And others still may be forging ahead boldly on their ethics and compliance journey in a way that is bound to educate and inspire others. But all of the exemplify excellence in action.
ATKINSRÉALIS
Founded in 1911, AtkinsRéalis is a global, fully integrated professional services and project management company that supports various sectors, including buildings and places, defense, industrial, minerals and metals, nuclear, power and renewables, transportation, and water.
AtkinRealis’s exemplary ethics and compliance program embeds integrity across the organization. The company has made significant investments in compliance and ESG, and implemented major initiatives, from building a culture that requires managers to frequently communicate with their teams on ethics and compliance, to robust third-party risk management procedures.
For these things and more, AtkinsRéalis received Ethisphere’s Compliance Leader Verification in May 2023. And just recently, it became the first engineering company in the UK to achieve the Clear Assured Platinum Standard for its progress and impact with DE&I initiatives. With 37,000 employees that speak, over 70 languages and representing 130 nationalities across six continents, AtkinsRéalis works across a diverse set of markets, from buildings and places to defense, industrial, minerals and metals, power and renewables, transportation, water, and even nuclear. These factors collectively require a certain diversity-driven perspective within the compliance program and around business integrity in general.
“I would say our long-term strategic plan has always been about ensuring that our integrity program is there to support employees in their day-to-day workings and to make sure that it’s pragmatic and as much as possible integrated,” says Hentie Dirker, Chief ESG & Integrity Officer for AtkinsRéalis. “I come from a business background. I was in sales and marketing. And people on the ground are really busy. So in order to make things easy and to get that buy-in from them, you have to really make sure that you always integrate your systems as much as possible into things that they would already be doing or interacting with from a day-to-day basis and to really to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy.”
Click here to learn more about the many different ways in which AtkinsRéalis builds and advances its culture of integrity. And to learn more about how Hentie and his team are moving the needle within AtkinsRéalis, check out Hentie’s Ethicast interview here.
INGREDION
Ingredion is a leading plant-based global ingredients solutions company headquartered in Westchester, IL. The company makes sweeteners, starches, nutrition ingredients and biomaterials that are used in a wide range of food, beverages, paper, and pharmaceuticals. Or to quote Ingredion itself: “We turn grains, fruits, vegetables and other plant materials into ingredients that make crackers crunchy, candy sweet, yogurt creamy, lotions and creams silky, plastics biodegradable and tissues softer and stronger.”
Ingredion is also a current World’s Most Ethical Companies honoree – a distinction it has earned an impressive 10 times. So it comes as no surprise to learn that the company is doing some compelling work in the area of speak-up culture and internal investigations, such as conducting post-investigation surveys with all parties involved in an investigation as well as detailed walkthroughs of the investigations process to demystify it and make it less intimidating.
“When you start pulling the lid off of things and you really start shining a spotlight on it, it becomes less scary. And if it’s less scary, then people are more likely to engage,” says Kimberly White, Ingredion Vice President and General Counsel-Compliance. “We have gotten more than 100 responses. from those [post-investigation] surveys. And we have found even with people who are implicated, they are coming up and saying, you know what, this was not a bad experience. And I think that’s a real testament to our speak-up culture and also our processes.”
Kimberley adds that this is all a part of how seriously Ingredion takes its speak-up culture, and its business integrity program. But it never hurts to have a little help from the outside, too.
“Of course, we have Ethisphere that helps us also continuously improve,” Kimberley says. “Thank you to Ethisphere and thank you to all of my colleagues out there who make this such a wonderful practice so that we can really level up the game for all corporations to be ethical business partners.”
Click here to learn more about Ingredion’s Business Integrity, Ethics & Compliance program, including a special integrity message from Ingredion CEO Jim Zallie, Ingredion’s Code of Conduct, and more. And to learn more about Ingredion’s innovative approach to internal investigations and speak-up culture, check out Kimberley’s Ethicast interview here.
JBS FOODS
JBS Foods is a leading global food company that processes, prepares, packages and delivers fresh, further-processed and value-added premium protein products for sale to customers in approximately 100 countries on six continents.
With more than 250,000 team members and operations in 15 countries, JBS is the #1 global beef producer, the #1 global poultry producer, the #2 global pork producer, and the mothership for major- brands such as Pilgrims and Primo. It’s safe to say that if you haven’t yet eaten a JBS product, you probably know someone who has.
Over the last several years, JBS has made substantial efforts not only to deepen and expand its ethics and compliance program, but more importantly, it has done so with an eye towards the future sustainability of the program itself, especially when it comes to budgeting.
You have to realize, when you’re forming budgets, what hills to die on, says Michael Koenig, Global Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer. “Every compliance officer has their wish list, but you’re not going to get everything you wish for. What are the things I absolutely must have, what I’d like to have, and what are the things that would be nice, but if I don’t have, that’s okay? You have to think of budgeting that way as well. You have to build internal trust and confidence that when you go asking for more resources for something, the leadership will say, you know what, we trust what they’ve done.”
People don’t like surprises, Michael says, especially when it comes to budget. The key is to have candid, ongoing discussions about resources, especially around issues that could suddenly require unexpected costs. That’s when all that discussion pays off. “I would much rather deal with problems than surprises,” Michael says. “That’s true in the substantive world, and it’s true in the budgeting world.”
Click here to learn more about Governance and Compliance at JBS—as well as its culture, leadership, and sustainability efforts. And to learn more about JBS’s remarkable compliance journey, check out Michael’s Ethicast interview here.
