Employee education and a proactive approach from senior management are key to maintaining a company’s ethical standards, panelists at the Asia Ethics Summit in Hong Kong said.
Panellists agreed that this positive approach from the top is especially important in Asia, where there are challenges aplenty. Owen Jones, Asia-Pacific general counsel at Hitachi Data Systems, said that while diversity is one of the joys of living in Asia, it also adds complexity to the way things work in certain countries. “We need to embrace the fact that there are different cultural approaches to things like gifts, entertainment, and bribery. We need to take that into account when we deal with different jurisdictions, but we also need to maintain compliance,” said Jones.
Jones added that Asia’s strong growth is a double-edged sword. “High growth makes Asia a highly competitive place to do business, so businesses and individuals in the region are under immense pressure to perform. There is sometimes strong pressure on people to bend or flout the rules in order to meet those targets,” he said.
Jean Luc Gustave, head of screening solutions at Thomson Reuters Risk, one of the panelists, said that globalisation is another major challenge for corporations. “Globalisation is not just impacting corporate companies, but also financial crimes, and we need to take that into consideration as well.” To elaborate, Gustave described a corruption case he oversaw where a trail of money was tracked from Sweden, through the U.S., Kenya and Hong Kong, and finally to the British Virgin Islands. “This is how complex things are,” he said.
Gavin Morgan, chief operating officer and head of leasing at Jones Lang LaSalle in Hong Kong, described the internal strategies his company employs to create a set of ethical standards and educate employees. He said Jones Lang LaSalle has established a global performance management system for all staff, where employees are regularly updated on the company’s ethics policies.
“The best way is to educate your employees to help them properly understand what they can and cannot do,” added Morgan. He added that his company’s mentor system, which is a powerful tool to improve development, helps ensure that all the employees are aware of the company’s code of conduct, and are working together in a team.
“In our office in Hong Kong which has around 450 employees, that type of management helps best deal with employees and helps grow the business in the right way.”
The Asia Ethics Summit, jointly organised by the Ethisphere Institute and Asian Legal Business, is being held on Dec. 4 and 5 at the Renaissance Harbourview Hotel in Hong Kong.
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