Ethics: Leveraging our Values and Culture

Cargill Confidential

Ethics
A system of moral principles; the ethics of a culture Rules of conduct recognized by a particular group ie: medical ethics, Cargill ethics Good ethics are good business The ethics of the culture depends on the character of the individual Culture is values and beliefs practiced
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Character
Character comes from within. It is not what others think of you, but what you think of yourself. It is not what others expect of you, but what you expect from yourself. It is not what others judge you to be, but how you judge yourself. For there are no standards greater than what people of character place upon themselves.

Cargills Guiding Principles

1. Cargill will comply with the laws of all countries to which it is subject. 2. Cargill will not knowingly assist any third party to violate any law of any country, by creating false documents or any other means. 3. Cargill will not pay or receive bribes or participate in any other unethical, fraudulent or corrupt practice. 4. Cargill will always honor all business obligations that it undertakes with absolute integrity. 5. Cargill will keep its business records in a manner that accurately reflects the true nature of its business transactions.

Cargills Guiding Principles

6. Cargill managers and supervisors will be responsible that employees, consultants, and contract workers under their supervision are familiar with applicable laws and company policies and comply with them. Further, they will be responsible for preventing, detecting, and reporting any violations of law or Cargill policies. 7. Cargill employees will not become involved in situations that create a conflict of interest between the company and the employee.

Inappropriate behavior at training sessions

Training facilitators have suspicions that some participants of the leadership program have been going to strip clubs during the evenings of the program modules. They have picked up on comments [overheard them] or been informed by other participants [during one-on-one coaching sessions]. Unfortunately, they do not believe this is a oneoff occurrence. They believe this may have happened in several of the 5 programs. They had suspicions early and have incorporated leadership and professionalism expectations during the Leadership Point of View section of the program. For many of the participants, this is the first time they have traveled for business. Some GMs and HR Managers have discussed appropriate conduct and expectations with their participants, but we believe this has been done inconsistently to date.

What, if anything should be done?

Supervisor assaults Production Employee

Two employees from a Cargill location were in Minneapolis for a Tartan Super User Training session. Both employees were production employees; 1 a supervisor, Sam and the 2nd an hourly employee, Fred. There was no formal reporting relationship between the two employees, but both worked at the same location. After a long day in training, the two employees decided to join a group of other Tartan Super Users for a happy hour at a local sports bar. After spending a couple of hours at the bar, Fred decided to go back to the hotel, leaving Sam with several other employees. When the group decided to leave the bar, Sam was left to pick up the tab at the bar. Sam was upset by the fact that he was left to pay the bill, so when he returned to the hotel, Sam went to Freds room to confront him. When Sam knocked, Fred opened the door and an argument ensued about Fred leaving Sam with the tab. As the argument heated up, Sam proceeded to assault Fred, punching him the eye. Other Super Users who were staying at the hotel heard the argument and saw Sam punch Fred. The police were called to the scene, completed a report and took photos, but Fred chose not to press charges.

Supervisor assaults Production Employee

The employees went to bed and arrived at the office at 8:00 to attend the next days training. Fred was sporting a large black eye. Fred and Sam were in the same training class and sat a few seats apart from each other for the better part of the morning. At approximately 10:00 an employee who had witnessed the event and who was concerned for Freds well-being, reported the incident to the BU HR Senior Generalist, Liz. Liz went to the training room, contacted Fred, and privately confronted him, asking if the story, as related to her, was true. At that point, Fred broke down, confirmed the story and asked if he could be excused from the balance of the training that week in order to return home. He expressed concern over his ability to focus and fear over having to continue to work in close proximity to Sam. Fred was coached to stay in the training and Liz contacted Sam. Sam confirmed the incident and admitted to the assault.

What course of action should be taken?

Payroll Clerk Embezzles

Payroll for the plant workforce is performed at the plants. Kronos accumulates hours as employees clock in and out; Kronos interfaces every Tuesday to Peoplesoft where pay rates are stored to calculate our paychecks. The payroll clerk would identify employees who were on leave of absence (vacation, funeral, medical leave, etc.) and would add hours to their time in Kronos. She would then go into peoplesoft, suppress the print check/stub function and would change direct deposit information to deposit to her own bank account. As soon as the payroll ran, she would go in the system and delete the changes she had entered to erase the traces of her scheme. The only place the proof of the fraud showed up was on the labor distribution detail report. This is a very lengthy report that is reviewed by our superintendents each week but the mere size of their groups of employees make the review too cumbersome and ineffective. This was discovered thanks to a local bank clerk noticing several paychecks from Cargill going into the same account several weeks in a row. Corporate security was notified and they conducted interviews and confronted her with the facts. The employee has been with Cargill seven years. She was the most experienced payroll clerk in the plant. She had just gone through a divorce and her son recently deployed to Iraq. She started small, not every week to begin with, until she realized no one was noticing. Hourly employees who had questions about why their W2s were showing extra dollars were sent to her for explanation. She rarely took time off and was never gone on Tuesdays. What should Cargill do?

Companies Bribe Regulators

Its an international norm that poultry processing plants are regulated and inspected by local authorities. Local inspection teams work for extended periods of time in a specific facility. In the case of country X the poultry industry met a few years ago to agree on how the industry was going to pay for this service, facing new challenges including a very low salary for inspectors. At that time the industry agreed on rates and tariffs to properly charge each of the poultry companies operating in the country. This agreement included amongst other issues - improvements in conditions for inspectors working on the floor of each of the facilities. The approval of this plan represented a significant increase in the rates paid to the government agency. It is now known that other companies opted to stay with their previous payment system and pay a bonus directly to their local inspection teams. These payments are very well received by the local inspection teams at the facilities - to the point of being a significant issue when the teams have to change facilities and work at Cargill.

This is starting to affect our ability to operate. All the other companies are paying these bonuses, what should Cargill do?

Back to the basics Positioning for the future

We are a vision and values based organization. Cargills Guiding Principles are clear and are expected to be more than words on a page. Trust is a most precious gift given and received. It must be protected at all costs. Our word is our bond. Do the right thing.

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