Business ethics and compliance

Ethical failures damage corporate reputations. As Warren Buffet famously said, "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to lose it. Doing the wrong thing is a costly business".

GoodCorporation works with companies to assess and develop the responsible management practices needed to meet the ethical challenges businesses face. We also support our clients to build and embed the systems and processes necessary to ensure compliance with the growing raft of corporate legislation.

With investors, regulators and public opinion demanding ever-higher standards from business, it pays to ensure your business is properly protected from ethical risks.

 

Our business ethics services

As leading business ethics consultants, GoodCorporation offers a range of services to help companies design, build and embed their ethics and compliance programmes. We provide assessments against the GoodCorporation Business Ethics Standard and also use this framework as the basis for code of conduct development, business ethics training, benchmarking and risk assessment.

Ethics in the engineering profession: A GoodCorporation Report

GoodCorporation was commissioned by the Royal Academy of Engineering to conduct a review of ethical culture and practice across the UK profession.

UK engineers, technicians, companies and professional bodies participated in a series of surveys and in-depth interviews to identify the different priorities for ethical behaviour, find out where the strengths and weaknesses lie, and where engineering professional bodies can support ethical practice.

The surveys covered a range of indicators of ethical practice, covering areas such as raising concerns, human rights, environmental impact, health and safety as well as diversity, equity and inclusion.

The results of this review have been published in GoodCorporation's reportĀ Ethics in the engineering profession. Click here to view the report in full.

Front cover of GoodCorporation's report on Ethics in the engineering profession featuring the GoodCorporation 'hand' logo

Have a question? Click here to contact our team

A framework for business ethics

GoodCorporation's Business Ethics Standard provides a four-page framework for the responsible management of any organisation. The management practices it sets out can be used to determine how responsibly the organisation operates.

It can be used as a guideline for establishing good practice or as an auditing framework to identify the strengths and weaknesses in practices and procedures.

Key business ethics principles covered by the framework

  • Management commitment: the organisation is committed to establishing an ethical corporate culture that takes into account the interests of all stakeholder groups.
  • Employees:Ā have clear and fair working conditions and are treated with respect.
  • Customers: are treated fairly with honest and transparent sales and marketing processes.
  • Suppliers:Ā are selected fairly, they are treated well and the organisation ensures that suppliers meet minimum standards across all aspects of business ethics and sustainability.
  • Business partners: partners are carefully selected, monitored and reviewed to ensure that good standards of practice are in place.
  • Environment:Ā  the organisation takes steps to identify, measure and reduce its environmental impact, complying with laws and industry codes as required.
  • Community: the organisation understands its impacts on the communities in which it operates and has effective systems in place to minimise any negative impacts.
  • Shareholders (or equivalent):Ā are regularly provided with a clear understanding of the organisation's operations and finances together with evidence of its commitment to the principles and practices of good corporate governance.

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Studies show that organisations where DEI is successfully embedded can be more sustainable with a competitive advantage over their peers. They are also more likely to have higher retention levels, greater workforce engagement, the ability to attract top talent, better innovation and stronger decision-making.

At GoodCorporation, we help organisations to design, build and embed ethics and compliance programmes, to help create more ethical, sustainable businesses. Key to this is culture and DEI is increasingly regarded as a vital component in establishing an ethical workplace culture. To gain a better understanding of how todayā€™s organisations approach DEI and the challenges they face, we have surveyed organisations operating across a range of industries and located in a number of countries.

The survey investigated selected organisational practices that contribute to the effective implementation of a DEI strategy including governance, monitoring and analysis of DEI indicators and statistics, target setting and speak up.

Our latest report analyses the survey findings, highlighting areas of best practice and indicating where improvements can still be made.

Download our DEI report

Ethics and compliance training

Effective ethics and compliance training is an important means of ensuring that a business is properly protected from legal risk or reputational damage through misconduct.

To help businesses deploy the right training that suits the needs of their organisation, GoodCorporation offers a range of compliance training solutions, suitable for both national and international businesses.

We offer both e-learning and face-to-face training programmes across a wide range of ethics and compliance topics. We run workshops to facilitate a deeper understanding of the risks faced and the measures needed to mitigate those risks and can offer all our training programmes in the form of webinars to reach a wider audience.

Business ethics podcast

In this one-off series, we celebrate the past two decades by talking to leading figures in the field of business ethics to explore the ethical challenges that have evolved over the last 20 years and contemplate what the future holds.

In our first podcast GoodCorporation director Leo Martin talks to Peter van Veen, director of corporate governance and stewardship at the ICAEW about the changing direction of corporate governance.

The evolution of governance and compliance

In our second podcast, we speak to Moussa Mbaye Gueye, an expert in trade and development and one of GoodCorporation's local consultants, about the the major changes observed over the past 20 years.

The changing pace of corruption prevention in West Africa

The business community is under the spotlight like never before. We either demonstrate that we operate responsibly or we risk losing our licence to do business.

Lord Sharman

FORMER CHAIRMAN OF AVIVA AND CHAIR OF GOODCORPORATIONā€™S FOUNDING ADVISORY PANEL

Explore our frameworks

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