Corporate Compliance: Judgment, Ethics and Integrity

In-house legal counsel are not only the gatekeepers of the company which employs them. They also protect its assets, culture and values.

When I joined Nestlé Middle East, it was the first time in my legal career that I exercised a dual function: legal and compliance. I was lucky to integrate into a large multinational as it came with an existing comprehensive compliance program including tools, processes, etc. However, I quickly realised that this great compliance program had not been implemented in the Middle East market.

In a highly complex and heavily-regulated environment, ensuring compliance with laws and regulations is challenging. Add to the list compliance with the company’s policies, procedures, principles and values and it becomes an uphill task. Our role is clearly expansive and wide-ranging.

Non-compliance not only leads to potential fines, penalties and/or prosecution, but also impairs the most important assets of your company: trust that consumers, customers, business partners and in general all stakeholders have in your company and its image/reputation/credibility.

The first lesson I learned was that I would have never succeeded in implementing an effective compliance program without the strong support of the CEO, the C-suite officers and/or the Board of Directors of the company. Without this ‘tone at the top’ and without the powerful message that business decisions shall be taken with appropriate consideration of the ethical, legal, and reputational impacts, my compliance message would have had a far less influence.

Furthermore, if you have a seat at the chief executives’ leadership table, it sends a signal to the company’s stakeholders (internal and external) that ethics, compliance and other legal risk considerations are a top priority for your company.

I tried to keep the implementation of Nestlé‘s global compliance program in the Middle East very simple. First, I provided trainings to the whole organisation starting with the C-suite officers and/or the Board of Directors of the company explaining what being compliant means, why it is important to be compliant and what compliance covers. I provided concrete anonymous compliance breach examples based on the violation of our Nestlé values or policies. I was strong and firm during these training programs and was even criticised by several Board members for being too tough in these sessions but I kept going.

I was answering to my colleagues’ questions and pushing them to challenge their own behaviours, the behaviours of their colleagues and sometimes the industry practice itself. I told them to forget false truths and wrong ideas such as “everyone does it, our competitors do it, this is an industry practice”, “if I comply, I cannot compete” or “compliance is not my responsibility but the responsibility of the compliance officer” and so on.

I promoted the speak-up culture of the organisation for reporting potential instances of non-compliance with our values, policies and applicable laws through specific anonymous communication channels. The most important responsibility for me was to ensure that employees know it exists, how to use it, to show that our company encourages its employees to report compliance issues and that there will be no retaliation against anyone who reports compliance violation.

I ensured that our training programs on antitrust, anti-bribery laws and internal policies are up-to-date (on antitrust – such as recommended selling price and trade associations meetings; on anti-bribery – about gift giving during the Ramadan season for instance).

An indicator of success for the compliance program is that more and more colleagues started engaging with me, asking me questions about ethics and values in order to be reassured that they are doing the right thing. They had understood that compliance goes beyond laws and regulations and, even more importantly, it served as a reminder to them that doing the right thing is our way of doing business.

Columnist: Linda Mouaz, legal manager & compliance officer – Nestlé Middle East FZE