Employees get together to fight corruption
Corruption and bribery can be a significant challenge that impacts the ability of any company to contribute to sustainable development. Diageo is committed to operating with the highest ethical standards everywhere, something that is hugely important to our employees. In Cameroon, our staff decided to focus on engaging stakeholders on how best to address the issue more broadly.
Following an internal Pathway of Pride event at Guinness Cameroon, which promoted Diageo’s standards of ethics and integrity, employees in the business felt that stakeholders at large should convene on the important topic of corruption. And so the idea for the Business Coalition against Corruption in Cameroon was born.
After gaining Government sponsorship for the Coalition, Diageo then came together with more than sixty other companies, NGOs and government bodies to discuss ways of tackling corruption, and to join the Coalition by signing up to an anti-corruption pact. The event, which included a presentation by Transparency International, the world’s leading non-governmental anti-corruption organisation, made the front page of the main national newspaper, showing the importance and impact it had in Cameroon in sending out a clear message that bribery and corruption will not be tolerated.
Diageo is continuing to run workshops that train people in how to deal with corruption when they find it, how to avoid it, and how to report it, and we will be holding our second Pathway of Pride event across Africa in September 2011.