How Did Your Organization Celebrate Ethics & Compliance Week?

Ethics and compliance professionals, who else celebrated #Ethics and #Compliance Week this week???What did you do???

?I have so many of my colleagues at Bridgestone Americas to thank for another epic week of activities.??Some of our highlights from this year include:?

• ?Kicking off the week with a senior leadership panel discussion (including special guest, Asha J. Palmer, JD, CCEP, LPEC ) where we talked about the connection between #trust and #integrity , as well as answering questions our teammates had submitted in our ethics and compliance survey leading up to this week;?
• The Bridgestone Compliance Battle Royale IV!!! I love the energy and excitement that our teammates bring in showing their competitive spirit during this multi-day event that is refereed and operated by many members of our Law Department.??Our Law Department teammates help the games run smoothly and also make the events (or "battles" as we call them) fun, educational and inclusive.??This started in 2019 in what we thought would be a one time event (and I was not sure if anyone was even going to like the concept) and seems to have become an annual tradition at Bridgestone.?
• Multiple engaging communications strategies and messages (including a genius email subject line from Casey Fitzpatrick and Keith Cawley that lead to the highest open rate of any email I’m aware of), as well as a collection of leadership videos that were tied to a contest based on the contents of the videos.?
• A brilliant, creative, thoughtful and thought provoking movie discussion about ethics and compliance lessons.?? Brian McAlhaney has lead our movie based panels for several years with great support from the wonderfully creative Julia Pennington - it is an annual reminder of the value and importance of helping people learn over simply training people (not all training results in learning, and not all learning will look like training).??Brian and Julia, you both did fantastic work again (and yes, I will be back to ask that you please lead another event next year). The panel discussion included members of our BRAVO (Bridgestone Americas Veterans Organization) #ERG - these are some of our teammates who have served, or have family members who serve or have served.??The personal stories and lessons shared by COL Reginald D. Sanders (Retired) , Marty Morrison , Joseph "Joe" Bailey and Jill Wolfe, MALTT showed not only their personal commitment to integrity and trust, but also reinforces how much integrity and trust means to those who serve.??I’m so grateful for their participation in this event and for their service to our country and freedom.??
• My favorite part of our Ethics and Compliance Week is when we announce our Leading With Integrity Award winners as part of the opening leadership panel.??After almost 9 years at Bridgestone, I feel like I know a lot of my colleagues through the Americas region yet every year we get to recognize some leaders from different parts of our business who I am not familiar with (and others I am familiar with).??Our employees/teammates get to nominate leaders, managers and supervisors, and a cross functional panel of leaders decides the winners - I don’t nominate or pick the winners and I think that is how it should be.??It’s amazing to see the winners being recognized for their continued commitment to trust, integrity and helping others (congratulations Marilia Padr?o , Dustin Lane , Amauri Ramos de Oliveira , Marshall Kelley , orly castro , Rene de la Pena and Candace Morris ), as well as the many other leaders, managers and supervisors who did not win but are certainly winning at being leaders who make a difference every day.??Leading with integrity too often goes without recognition and that’s just wrong in my opinion - I’m glad that Bridgestone makes a point of celebrating these leaders, managers and supervisors and sees and celebrates the value that they add to our organization, culture and teammates.?

Before I got involved in ethics and compliance, I did not realize the insane amount of work that goes into planning and executing something like Ethics and Compliance Week (that should also be a word of caution for anyone thinking about starting an Ethics and Compliance Week).??It was a wonderful job by my teammates in our small but mighty compliance team (Chris Hernandez, Eliane Goncalves and Sai Vinay Kumar Singh ) who work tirelessly throughout the year (and have to put up with me no less), but also due to the hours, weeks and months that people like Pam Scarrow, Tatjana Stoljarova , Julie Seabrook, Casey Fitzpatrick , Nick Mann , Brian McAlhaney , Sonia Andreacchi , Teresa Smith and many, many others put in to make this happen.??All of these teammates are busy and yet were so willing to help in different ways.??

?If anyone needs me the rest of this week, don’t expect much of a response - I’ll be fast asleep and/or recovering from an exhausting and amazing week of trust and integrity events.??I hope everyone else had a great Ethics and Compliance Week and the impacts of this week and our work in general are felt for much longer than the last few days.