Lilly Named One of the World’s Most Ethical Companies
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Ethisphere announced its 13th Annual World’s Most Ethical Companies list and one biopharmaceutical company made it—Eli Lilly and Company.
Ethisphere ranks companies based on Ethics and Compliance Programs, Culture of Ethics, Corporate Citizenship and Responsibility, Governance, and Leadership and Reputation. Each category is evaluated via a questionnaire, Ethics Quotient, with supplemental documentation and when necessary, independent research and follow-up.
On the 2019 list, there are 128 companies across 21 countries and 50 industry sectors. Lilly also made the 2018 list, also the only pharmaceutical company on the list. It was also on the 2017 list.
Ethisphere’s full report will be published in March and April and the 2019 Gala will take place on March 12, with keynote speaker, former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino.
“Today, employees, consumers and stakeholders value companies that show both a commitment to business integrity, and also have the organizational humility to never stop seeking improvement,” stated Timothy Erblich, Ethisphere’s chief executive officer. “The World’s Most Ethical Companies honorees understand that this approach has a profound impact on communities and is the foundation for broader success and profitability. We congratulate all honorees for making our world a better place by blending profit and purpose in a meaningful way.”
Although Lilly has yet announced or commented on the award, in 2018 it noted that it is “committed to the highest standards of corporate conduct in all of our business dealings globally. Lilly maintains an effective ethics and compliance program designed to meet external requirements, guided by our values of integrity, excellence, and respect for people.”
It also publishes The Red Book, which is its code of business conduct, which includes key requirements from its corporate policies and expectations for how it conducts business. All employees receive training on The Red Book and periodically the company reviews and edits its ethics and compliance programs.
The company also has a Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, a Compliance and Enterprise Risk Management Committee, and, as it emphasizes, The Red Book and education and training programs.
In The Red Book, David Ricks, Lilly’s chairman and chief executive officer, writes, “Our medicines can improve people’s health profoundly. Whether they know us by name or not, our customers count on each of us at Lilly, in our own ways, to help them with difficult health-care challenges. We must act with integrity to earn society’s trust and the privilege to be in—and stay in—this business.”
In the 2017 acceptance video, Melissa Barnes, Lilly’s Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, noted, “The award itself recognizes not just Lilly’s strong and effective ethics compliance program—and we do have one—but it also goes much beyond that. It includes work that we do with community outreach, and corporate social responsibility, our global health work, diversity and inclusion, our efforts to preserve the environment and so much more.”
Ricks added, “By having a culture where we are free to speak up and ask questions about policies and each other, a lesson in an open environment to exchange legitimate differences and views on what to do, to have a culture where competing ideas and diverse ideas can be brought forward. Really to enhance innovation and our own offerings to the marketplace. This can really help us to get better and better.”
