Page 45 - Capricorn IAR 2020

2020 INTEGRATED ANNUAL REPORT
Ethical Leadership (business and management)
Ethical conduct is the foundation for a sustainable business. Ethical leadership means setting the tone from the top. The recent corruption scandal in the fishing industry highlighted the scale, complexity and widespread acceptance of unethical practices in Namibia. This is to the detriment of social, economic and environmental development of our society.
We want to contribute to eradicating corruption and fraud. Capricorn Group is committed to doing the right thing as defined by our Group Code of Ethics and Conduct Policy and the behaviours set out in The Capricorn Way.
Our suppliers are required to adhere to the Suppliers’ Code of Conduct.
The Group board, through the approved qualitative risk appetite statement, is explicit in its zero tolerance of unethical conduct. Boards of Group legal entities and employees are made aware of their obligations to manage all types of risk, including ethics risk through our practical and case study-oriented Risk Culture Building Programme.
The Group board has mandated the board sustainability and ethics committee (“BSEC”) to oversee the implementation of the approved ethics strategy and management plan to cultivate an ethical culture in the Group. The desired outcome of the ethics strategy is an ethical Group culture in which employees find it easy to do the right thing when no one is watching and embrace and live the organisational values.
Noteworthy deliverables against the ethics management plan are:
• The implementation of a Group-wide tip-off line managed by Deloitte’s to ensure anonymity and protection for whistleblowers. The tip-off line has been rebranded as an effective and trusted safe reporting mechanism for fraud and other unethical conduct.
• The implementation of a Group-wide awareness campaign aimed at starting conversations around good ethical behaviour and doing the right thing. The campaign makes use of various channels of communications, including emails, the AsOne newsletter, the intranet, leveraging of the Connector Programme and also tangible points of contact such as banners and keyrings.
• The Ethics Institute of South Africa has been mandated as an independent consultant to conduct an ethics risk assessment. This is an important step in managing ethics. It measures the Group’s mode of ethics management and produces an ethics risk profile. Through the assessment the Group’s ethics risks and opportunities are determined. The Group’s ethics profile will inform the ethics strategy going forward. The strategy will aim to mitigate negative risks and build on positive risks to enable the Group to enhance its ethical culture.
All internal and external fraud incidents are reported to the forensic department and investigated. Remedial recommendations are made to the relevant business unit executive. Significant fraudulent incidents are reported and discussed at various risk committees to understand what went wrong and to introduce preventive measures.
In the BSEC report we explain governance mechanisms and progress in establishing and monitoring an ethical culture. These include:
STAKEHOLDERS THAT HAVE AN INTEREST IN THIS MATTER
Employees
Shareholders
Customers
Government and regulators
Strategic alliance partners
Media
• Implementation of a three-year ethics strategy and management plan
• An annual independent ethics risk assessment
• Internal promotion of the anonymous Group-wide tip-off line
RELATED STRATEGIC CHOICES
Building our foundation
Win through operational excellence
RELEVANT PRINCIPAL RISK
People Compliance Reputation Operations
BOARD OVERSIGHT
BARC BSEC
Group board human resources (“HR”) committee
Remuneration committee (“Remco”)
Group chairman’s message on page 10
BSEC report on page 96
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