PEER PRACTICES
Culture Data Highlights

Peer Practices

In this section, learn how leading organizations are addressing culture, with highlights from Ethisphere's robust datasets:

Ethical Culture: representing the views of 3+ million employees across 400 companies that have engaged with Ethisphere to conduct an ethical culture assessment

The World's Most Ethical Companies: practices of honorees that have earned recognition for their programs and practices to advance business integrity

ECCP Guidance: Speak-Up Culture

Deep Dive: Managers

Deep Dive: Pressure

Deep Dive: Organizational Justice

SPEAK-UP CULTURE AND ANTI-RETALIATION

The Guidance

In the U.S. Department of Justice's 2024 Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Program (ECCP) update, companies are expected to do the following to foster a speak-up culture:

Encourage and incentivize employees to speak up and determine if anything is discouraging employees to speak up
Measure employee willingness to report and train employees on internal and external reporting channels
Have an anti-retaliation policy in place
Train employees on both internal and external anti-retaliation and whistleblower protection policies, procedures, and laws
Determine if employees who reported misconduct are treated differently than the employees who were involved in misconduct but did not report it

Insights

This focus on speaking up is not new; the DOJ has been discussing building a strong speak-up culture to support voluntary disclosure for some time now.

The language used around both internal and external mechanisms to raise concerns is amplified compared to prior iterations of the ECCP.

Some of the language around external reporting mirrors what we have seen in the human rights sector, with a focus on listing external channels in your discussion around raising concerns.

Given the breadth of the DOJ’s remit, however, this expansion is notable.

Peer Practices

74% of World’s Most Ethical Companies honorees measure their ethical culture through a standalone ethical culture or compliance program perception survey

For those using employee engagement surveys, that number jumps to 92%

82% World’s Most Ethical Companies honorees incentivize their employees to act ethically through formal recognitions and a communication of the recognition or award

51% of World’s Most Ethical Companies honorees follow up with reporters to see if they felt retaliation

93% of employees say they would report workplace misconduct if they witnessed it. But when the moment of truth arrives, only 50% actually report. The most common reasons cited are fear of retaliation and professional harm.

DEEP DIVE: MANAGERS

Importance

Managers throughout the organization are the single most inﬂuential factor in establishing and maintaining a healthy ethical culture.

Managers, due to their elevated roles, become the most accessible models for how to succeed and advance your career path within an organization.

Ensuring managers are modeling the type of decision-making and leadership behaviors that align with the organization’s ethical standards and directives is of paramount importance.

When employees feel comfortable raising ethical concerns, they are more likely to share new product ideas, client challenges, and much more. Preparing managers to lead teams where everyone is comfortable using their voice is time well spent.

Tips For Your Program

Provide managers with a variety of resources that facilitate organic discussions about ethics and compliance-related topics or issues.
Develop communication assets with appropriate context that anchors the messaging in the “lived” employee experience.
Establish appropriate metrics – and rewards – for managers to assess performance and adherence to ethical standards.
Facilitate peer-to-peer knowledge transfer between managers to disseminate practical behaviors and efforts that amplify messaging from the central ethics and compliance function. Champion managers that are doing this at a high level.

Peer Practices

Ethisphere's dataset representing the views of 3+ million employees across 400 organizations shows that:

88% of employees view their manager as a role model for ethical behavior

89% are comfortable approaching their manager with issues or questions related to ethical conduct

Did You Know? Employees are more than twice as likely to be comfortable approaching their manager if there
are at least quarterly discussions of ethics or compliance related issues/topics by managers

DEEP DIVE: PRESSURE

Importance

In a push for proﬁts, an organizations can sometimes unintentionally elicit risky behaviors that are unethical and illegal. An organization that emphasizes results “at any cost” lives on borrowed time.

Organizations that encourage and reward efforts to achieve business objectives while adhering to the company’s values and legal obligations set the stage for sustainable operational excellence.

Quite often, managers and other leaders who are not talking about how to achieve objectives in the right way aren’t opposed to doing so – they just see it as someone else’s job to share that part of the message.

In other cases, managers are instigators of bad behavior, particularly in regions where actions, such as bribes, are an accepted norm.

Tips for Your Program

While some level of pressure is natural in a business environment, it’s crucial to focus on how goals are achieved, not just what is achieved.
Celebrate moments where an employee elects to do the right thing and protect the organization’s reputation versus making a sale by unethical means – preferably in front of colleagues if possible. Public praise matters.
If ethical culture survey data indicates where employees feel the pressure to compromise is coming from, use this information to pinpoint specific teams or processes contributing to the issue. Tailor remediation strategies to address the unique challenges faced by each group, as the sources and solutions may differ significantly across teams.

Peer Practices

Ethisphere's dataset representing the views of 3+ million employees across 400 organizations shows that:

25% of respondents feel pressure to compromise the Company's Code, policies, laws, rules, or regulations to achieve business goals (or declined to answer the question).

Those in positions of authority are most often cited as the source of pressure:

36% senior leadership
30% my immediate manager
32% middle management

DEEP DIVE: ORGANIZATIONAL JUSTICE

Importance

The act of stepping forward to raise a concern is courageous. Employees want to know this act will be respected by the organization and action will be taken to properly address the concern.

Perceptions of organizational justice hinge on employees believing the rules apply equitably to everyone and that no individual – regardless of stature within the organization – is above the consequences of misconduct. When an organization fails to create this sense of equality, it introduces a corrosive force that runs against efforts to establish and maintain a speak-up culture.

When employees do not believe the organization will take the matter seriously, either through investigation or adjudication, they are forced to decide as to whether doing the right thing will justify the vulnerability that comes with stepping forward.

Tips for Your Program

Increase the transparency surrounding the reporting process and related activity. This could include describing the steps involved in submitting a report and the resulting investigation, communicating anonymized metrics on reporting activity in aggregate, and a description of outcomes along with listing the full range of disciplinary actions available.
Create a simple process that allows managers to easily log any open-door report that has been brought to their attention.
Notify reporters, through appropriate channels, when an investigation concludes to provide closure and maintain trust.
Share compelling case studies and stories that demonstrate how the rules and consequences for unethical behavior are equitably applied across all levels of the organization.

Peer Practices

Ethisphere's dataset representing the views of 3+ million employees across 400 organizations shows that:

27% of participants did not afﬁrm that they believe the same rules and associated disciplinary actions for unethical behavior are the same for every employee at their organization.
77% believe disciplinary actions are taken when individuals engage in unethical behavior or misconduct at the Company.
81% of surveyed participants agreed that if they raised a concern about unethical behavior or misconduct, they believe the Company will fully investigate it.

KEY INSIGHTS AND STRATEGIC OUTCOMES

Learn about Sony’s

insights and outcomes from benchmarking

ethical culture

We thought we really had to be more comprehensive in gauging employee perceptions of our program. We picked the Ethisphere Assessment because it looked at all aspects of our program, including areas we have been focusing on, like awareness of resources, our employees’ level of comfort reporting concerns, and their perception of organizational justice. We also liked the fact that it took less than 10 minutes for most employees to complete the entire survey, and that we could benchmark it against peer companies."

KATHLEEN FRANKLIN, Global Ethics & Compliance Strategy Leader, Sony