[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to this special live edition of the Ethicast. I'm your host, Bill Coffin, and with me to discuss some best practices to keep in mind while applying for the 2027 World's Most Ethical Companies recognition is Ethisphere's Chief Strategy Officer, Erica Salmon Byrne. Erica, it is wonderful to see you. As always, thank you so much for joining us on the program.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Oh, Bill, it's my pleasure to be here and particularly to have an opportunity to talk to you a little bit about what we are hoping to see from applicants this season.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Indeed. Indeed. Now, for those who are unfamiliar with this, the World's Most Ethical Companies recognizes enterprises that have demonstrated best in class ethics and compliance programs, corporate governance practices, and cultures of integrity.
Tomorrow, July 29th, Ethisphere will officially open the 2027 World's Most Ethical Companies application period, which will run until Thursday, October 29th at 8pm ET when it officially closes. And as returning applicants know, the application process is always a little different from year to year as the app, as the landscape of ethics and compliance itself never stops changing. So we're going to get into some of the ways that applicants can set themselves up for.
Erica, are you ready?
[00:01:22] Speaker B: I am ready, Bill. Let's do it.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Outstanding. First question for you is how should applicants budget their time and people hours for this task? Because if there's one thing that unites this, this whole, this whole applications process is that it is a marathon and not a sprint.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: It sure is a marathon, Bill. And that's the reason why we give you 90 days to, you know, the open period being as long as it is.
And a couple of quick words, you know, one is Bill's going to give you all the details at the end of the show on how to register for the webinar that we'll be running tomorrow where you'll have the opportunity to hear from more than just me about the application process this year, what has changed, and some of our best practices that we have learned over the course of the last 20 years that we've been doing this. So, Bill, this is our 21st consecutive world's most Ethical Companies process that we've been running. And so we've learned a lot along the way.
A couple of words of advice to anybody who's listening into you and I. First off, the process is deliberately cross functional. Do not think that you can pull together all of the answers without talking to some of your sister control functions. And we do that on purpose. We do that on purpose for two reasons. One, it Helps us to get a better understanding of the scope of the programs that you might be running inside of your business. A better way for us to evaluate applicants. Second, it's a sneaky way for you to build relationships. So, you know, let's say, potentially, hypothetically speaking, Bill, you're having a little bit of a hard time engaging your corporate secretary on some of the things that you would like to do from a board education perspective. Well, this is a great opportunity for you to go talk to the corporate secretary and say, hey, we're applying for World's Most Ethical. Here's section one of the survey. There's a series of questions here about the way that we think about skills on our board. We're being asked to produce a copy of our skills matrix. For example, we're being asked questions about how we think about board training. It's a way to start a dialogue with a control function that you may or may not have a strong relationship with and so use it right. Don't think that you can put together your best application on your own and don't think that you can't use this as a way to build bridges to other functions. So the first step from our perspective is always read the red lines, right? We are going to tell you every year what we change. And this year is no exception.
We have kept the survey comparatively stable year over year. So we have not changed quite as much as we've changed in prior years. But as always, there are changes. We'll get into them in a little bit more detail on the webcast tomorrow. But just a couple of quick highlights.
We added several questions or answer options throughout the survey on the use of AI. No surprise, but that one that I mentioned about going to talk to your corporate secretary. There's a brand new question in section one about how your board is overseeing the responsible and appropriate use of AI and how the board is using AI itself. So likelihood that you are able to answer both those questions on your own as an ethics and compliance professional, very low. You're going to need to go talk to your friends. So sit down with the red line, look over the changes.
New questions, for example, in section 8 on your practices to screen for FTO and cartel risk.
Probably something you're going to have to also talk to sustainability and supply chain and procurement about. So look over the red lines and ask yourself who's the source of truth on this question.
Build your cross functional list of people that you're going to have to go talk to in order to be able to answer these Questions well, and then I know, Bill, you and I are going to get into documentation in a moment, but also start to think about what your document examples look like. Because as a reminder to everybody out there listening, your World's Most Ethical Companies application is comprised of your survey responses and the documentation that you submit across the 16 categories where we 17 for this year where we ask for documentation.
And so if you are not really curating your best examples of the documentation that we ask for, your application is going to suffer. So think also about not just where are my survey answer people, but who is the holder of the document that are going to best exemplify my practices in this particular area so that I can show the WMA that A we're doing what we say we're doing in the survey and B we're doing it well.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: So we mentioned documentation and I know that properly documenting your application is a really important piece of the whole thing.
Can you talk about some best practices and maybe some common documentation hang ups that applicants should avoid?
[00:05:53] Speaker B: So from a documentation best practices perspective, I mentioned curate and I mentioned best examples.
I also want to mention this. We are not expecting you to create anything for us. In fact, when we see documents that are clearly created just for us, it raises an eyebrow as to whether or not this is actually representative of your practices.
Every piece of documentation that we request in the WMA process should be something you already have. If you don't have a communications plan, don't want to make one for us. Make a communications plan because you need one, right? Like every place that we asked for documents in the survey, we are asking to see exemplars of your existing practices. If you don't have the existing practice, don't tell us you're doing something that you don't have documentation for.
So that's the first thing. Don't make things up just for us. That's not the point. The point is to show us what you're doing in your normal behavior as a program.
So that's point number one. Point number two, please, please, please read the DOC guidance.
Nothing is going to frustrate the WME team more than to start to review an application where someone has clearly not read the documentation guidance. Right? So please read the documentation guidance. We work really hard as a team to tell you what we want to see. We're not hiding the ball. We're looking for good examples. Read the doc guidance.
Watch the DOC videos. This is something we started doing a couple of years ago because we knew that some people were like, look I'm not going to engage with the PDF. It's too long, it's too wordy. I'm not going to read it. And their application suffered as a result. So now we've started to create little videos. You can choose which modality you would rather engage with. So if you are not a reader, watch the videos. We have released videos in the portal for every documentation category where you have a different member of the WMU review team. Real people on our side, not AI talking about what good looks like in a particular category.
Watch the videos. Right? Read the guidance.
Pay special attention to the files. Types we cannot accept.
There are things that we can't open on our side. We have too much work to do during the review period when we're looking over everybody's applications for us to chase you down because you have decided to send us Outlook files, guess what? We're not in your mail system. We can't open them.
Please pay attention to the list of excluded file types so that again, what we are looking to do with the documentation is to understand what you're doing with your program and score it accordingly. If you make that really hard for us, we are not going to chase you. We're just going to assume that this is reflective of what you're doing. Score you accordingly. So spend some time thinking about what it is you actually want to show us.
Don't create anything new for us. Right?
And pay attention to the types of files that we can accept. Oh, Bill, one more. I know I usually do three, but I've got a fourth.
Please do not try to circumvent our file limits by dropping 27 documents into a single PDF. We see you. That's cheating, right? Take the time to curate what you are giving us.
And particularly for the things where people are tempted to give us way too much, give us what your employees are seeing. So, like in written standards, for example, we ask to see examples of your policies. We limit the number of policies you can give us because we don't want to read all of your policies. We've got a lot of applications to grade, so we limit the number of policies you can give us. Do not merge your conflicts of interest policy, your gifts and entertainment policy, your travel and hospitality policy, and all of your procedures into one doc, because that is not how your employees experience it. Well, maybe if it is how your employees experience it, then fine, give it to us like that. But if it is not how your your employees experience it, don't do it. Okay? You're just trying to get around our limits and show us things that we have not asked to see.
So give us the docs the way that your employees experience the docs. That's what we're trying to evaluate. We are trying in the written standards section to say, if I were a company employee, can I find this doc? Can I read this doc? Does it give me the information I need? That's the evaluation that we're doing on your policies. Don't make it harder for us by merging all your policies into one doc.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Erica, do you mind if I hit you with a follow up question?
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Bill, longtime listeners of the Epicast know I always welcome a follow up question.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: How much emphasis should applicants place on narrative statements to continue contextualize the documents they submit?
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah, narrative is there. If you feel like there is something that you have to explain to us, do not feel like you have to write us a narrative. Right. When I talk to longtime applicants, one of the things that I often hear is that part of the burden of applying is not even at this point taking the survey or really finding the docs. It's writing the narrative. And my response to them is always, why are you writing the narrative?
And sometimes the narrative is really to explain something. Right.
You're giving us a document, for example, that is a work in progress or is halfway implemented and you really want to explain like, hey, we're three months into our new liaison program. Here's what we've done so far and here's what we're planning to do. That's a great use for a narrative. Just because there is the option to provide supplemental narrative, do not feel like you have to use it.
Write us a narrative. If there's something that you feel like you need the team to understand that may not be clear on the face of the docs. Do not feel like you have to write us a narrative simply because we give you the option to write a narrative. Supplemental narrative is optional. It is not extra credit. You don't get extra points for the narrative.
Write us the narrative. The narrative is there. If you feel like there's something that we need to understand that we might not be able to understand from looking at the docs themselves. That's the purpose of the narrative.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
Now, sometimes these documents, though, have sensitive information in them. So what about redactions? Like, can you redact too much? Because I have heard stories from the review team where sometimes they get documentation and it looks like it just got dapped. It just got dipped into a vat of black redaction ink.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look we know that there's information in the WME applications that is sensitive and we are happy to work with redactions.
My word of advice to any applicant is always redact judiciously. Ask yourself, is this actually something that I cannot let the WME team see?
And if so, go ahead and redact.
But remember, the point of the documentation submission in the first place is for us to be able to evaluate your practices. So if you redact too much, we are not going to be able to tell what we're looking at and we are not going to give you the benefit of the doubt. If we get a white border with a black box that covers everything inside of it, we don't know what's there. Right? We don't know what's there. And just because you have titled that file Risk Assessment Xls, that doesn't mean that we have the confidence that it's actually the risk assessment if we can't read anything in the document. So redact where you have to, but ask yourself whether you actually have to. We've had companies, Bill, over the years that redact their policies.
I'm sorry, you know, your policy is not confidential company information.
The actual, you know, numbers behind your risk assessment. Yes. Get it. Board reporting information. Yes. Get it right. Like there are absolutely categories that we asked to see that are more sensitive and we are happy to work with redactions. But if you redact everything, we can't evaluate it fairly.
So do you really need to redact the headings? Do you really need to redact the structure?
Ask yourself those questions when you are submitting something that is redacted. If I were the review team, could they tell what, what, what they're looking at?
And that is the, that's, that's sort of how to think about redactions.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Now, you had mentioned earlier that the applications process really requires folks to connect with their allied functions across the enterprise to get the information they're going to need to fill out the application. And you mentioned how this application's process can be a good reason to reach out to those functions if you haven't spoken to them a lot or if you have a, perhaps a fraud relationship.
But beyond that, though, do you have any advice on how to actually approach the app? Actually approach.
With which the allied functions?
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good question, Bill. I think I would definitely, for those of you who are out there wondering about that one, I would definitely say come to the webinar tomorrow because we're going to have a little bit more time space and ability to answer that particular question.
We certainly, you know, the application guide doc is a really great introduction to the, to the application itself. So there are a lot of ways in that documentation that, that guidance document where there are tips and tricks and some ideas of kind of how to compile your team, who should be on it, who should be kind of the core team, how to think about the approvals, process, all of those kinds of things. So for somebody who's new listening into you and I, I would definitely say spend some time with the, with the guidance docs, the actual application guide doc itself, because I think that will give you some good ideas and some tips and tricks there.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: For companies that are considering applying for the first time, what special advice do you have for them? And what would you say to applicants that might be a little worried that their program is perhaps too new or perhaps too small to warrant applying?
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you are a first time applicant, I have a couple of pieces of advice. First off, definitely spend some time with the survey, the questions, looking over the red lines and thinking about what some of your answers to those questions might be. Second piece is set expectations internally, appropriately.
We had 19 first time honorees on the list last year, Bill, and the average number of times applying across that honoree class was three and a half. So that means that some of them had applied four or five times before they were honored, and some of them had applied, you know, two or three times before they were honored. But it is a process to figure out kind of how to move your way through the application.
And one of the first things the application shows you is where some of your areas of opportunity might be. So if you're a brand new applicant and you're thinking about the process, spend some strong time with the survey first. Ask yourself what some of those answers might be, and then set expectations accordingly internally.
On the small side of things, Bill, you know, a lot of the practices that we look for are the kinds of things that companies have in place when they hit sort of a certain size threshold. So it's not that you couldn't successfully make the list if you're a smaller organization, but it will be a little bit more challenging. So generally speaking, what we recommend is that if you are an organization that has less than like 250 million, 200 to 250 million dollars in revenue, spend some real time with the survey first before you decide to go through the process because you may not have the kinds of practices that we're looking for. And then the other thing I would say is really think about the documentation piece. It's a big piece of the scoring.
We're not, as I said, we're not looking for you to create anything for us. These are docs you should have if you're having, if you are doing the kinds of things that you say in the survey you're doing. But that's the other thing to ask yourself. Right. What are the things where I could say on an ad hoc basis, I'm doing this practice, but I might not actually have the docs to show it. So those are my two pieces of advice to the newbies out there.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Well, Erica, as someone who really leads the charge in the review of all these applications, what is something that you really hope to see from this year's applicants? And conversely, what's something you really don't want to see from this year's applicants?
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Yeah, Bill, I'm excited for this year because I think we've got some really interesting new questions that are going to give us some great new data on the way that organizations are handling some emerging risk factors. I'm really excited for one of the new documentation requests, which is sort of an expansion of the way that we think about root cause on investigations. And then the thing that I'm, I every year I hope to see fewer and fewer applications that clearly have not engaged with our doc guidance.
You know, over the course of the last couple of years in particular, we've really tried to expand the way that we have been transparent about how we think about documents.
We've given people lots and lots and lots of insights. And it is very challenging when we see applications where the applicant has clearly just kitchen sinked it. Like, sort of like I'm just going to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall because I don't really understand what these folks are looking for.
And generally speaking, when I talk to those companies after the fact, what I find is that they didn't engage with the guidance we gave them and so they just kind of threw stuff at us. And that's hard. You know, we're, we're a human review team on our side that is reviewing lots and lots of applications. And when you kitchen sink it, we are, we're not going to be very impressed in most, most cases. So I'm really hopeful that this year we see a higher and higher percentage of companies that have clearly thought about what they're showing us, particularly in the places where we ask for examples of things like examples of comms or examples of manager communications materials or things like that give us your best examples, right? Really like think about if I were showing off what I've accomplished as a program, what are the things that I would want to show that's your work so that we can then do our work well.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Erica, thank you so much for lending your expertise and your insights for the benefit of the 2027 World's Most Ethical World's Most Ethical Companies applicants. I know they appreciate it. I always love hearing about this. So thank you so much for coming onto the show and sharing your your knowledge with us.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Oh Bill, thank you for giving me the chance to talk about this and I hope to see each and every one of you on tomorrow's webinar.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Well, to learn more about the World's Most ethical companies, visit worldsmostethicalcompanies.com Like I said before, the 2027 application period begins tomorrow, July 29, and the final submission deadline is Thursday, October 29 at 8:00pm ET and also tomorrow on July 29, join Erica and a panel of Ethisphere experts for a free webinar guide to applying for the 2027 World's Most Ethical Companies. This event offers even further practical insights to help applicants prepare for a successful submission, including what the World's Most Ethical Company's designation is and why it matters, who should be involved and how to get aligned internally how to log in and navigate the application portal what to expect from the Ethics Quotient Questionnaire in terms of structure, process and timeline what's new for the 2027 Ethics Quotient and also introducing SurveySync by Diligent, how this really cool tool works and how to activate your workspace. There will also be resources to help you prepare, document and submit, so make sure to register for this webinar
[email protected] webinars. It's free, it's packed with knowledge, and it's really going to get you off to a great start. So make sure Register
[email protected] well, that's about it for this episode. For new episodes each week, subscribe to us on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Also follow at the sphere on LinkedIn to learn more about how we help organizations like yours make themselves more successful and more resilient by advancing business integrity.
Thanks for joining us, and until next time, remember, strong ethics is good business. See you soon.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Bye. All.
