Corporate Ethics Programs and Security

Rose Shyman added an ethics program to her duties as director of global security at American Standard Cos.

Once I receive the case, I read it, I evaluate it and I determine who within the business should investigate. Most of the cases we receive through the hotline are employee-related. These cases are sent to the senior HR business leader. Other employees copied on those e-mails [include] our chief auditor, our legal counsel and the chair of our ethics council. They have oversight, and they do all work together to investigate the case. But the person the case is sent to is primarily responsible for investigating and seeing that action steps are put in place and the case is resolved. We try to close cases within 10 business days. We then provide a response back to The Network, so that when the caller checks back to find out what has come of the case, they're able to [learn] that the case has been investigated. The employee then has the opportunity to respond to what we dowhat the investigation entailed and what resolution came out of it. Once we've...taken the investigation to conclusion and to resolution, we close the case.

If an employee is unhappy with the resolution, is there an appeals process? Once a case is resolved, is that it?

In some cases, we've hadif the individual has identified themselveswe've had someone in the business call them and talk to them [about the resolution]. In other cases, once the investigation has been conducted, and we feel we've taken it to the [appropriate] level, then we just close the case.

Have you received a lot of good tips from people calling the hotline or sending e-mails?

We had a global implementation of our Drug-Free Workplace

program...over this past year, and we received an anonymous tip through the hotline that one of our employees was coming to work every day under the influence of some type of substance. As a result, we forwarded it to the HR leader, and it was investigated. So going back to what we talked about earlierhow the components of security and ethics play hand-in-handthis is one way we saw this work well. Here we had a companywide global [antidrug] initiative where our ethics hotline added value to that process.

What types of issues that are raised through the program?

Employee relations, supervisor-employee types of issues. Policy issues is another big one. Discrimination is another big one. But there are others, too, such as sexual harassment, substance abuse and safety issues.

Has anything surprised you? Anything you wouldn't have predicted?