CHS Inc., a leading cooperative, owned by farmers, ranchers and co-ops across the United States recently hosted an Ethisphere Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA) roundtable at its headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota where Corporate Compliance and Ethics Executives and General Counsel convened to discuss tactics for engaging the Board and promoting compliance-driven conversations.
Companies present at the “Twin Cities Roundtable” included CHS, Buffalo Wild Wings, 3M, Cargill, Xcel Energy and Thrivent Financial. The event focused on how to effectively utilize the 2016 World’s Most Ethical Companies dataset to create actionable insights. It also explored hotly debated topics on the boardroom agenda such as assessing enforcement activity, compliance risks and engagement.
“The CHS Board of Directors is committed to keeping CHS strong and vibrant for the long-term, so we can help our owners grow for years to come,” said Jim Zappa, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at CHS. “This commitment is the essence of their fiduciary duty to CHS and its owners. Not surprisingly, compliance and risk oversight is an increasing component of our Directors’ duties.”
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]
Jack Lenzi (pictured right), CHS Vice President, Corporate Compliance added that “the Corporate Compliance organization’s mandate is to work with our Board to establish an optimal cadence and procedures for keeping it informed of the evolving compliance risks arising out of our company’s operations, and what management is doing to mitigate those risks, including continuously enhancing our culture of integrity. Effective compliance engagement with our Board helps them set the right tone from the top and execute on their oversight responsibility for compliance and risk.”
Moreover, participants had the opportunity to take a closer look at the 2016 World’s Most Ethical Companies dataset to understand what their peer companies are doing in the areas of governance, compliance, corporate social responsibility, leadership and reputation.
“Based on the data collected from the 2016 World’s Most Ethical Companies, it is clear that the Ethics and Compliance community has tremendous insights and we feel the responsibility to use this data to help companies benchmark their programs to improve performance,” said Erica Salmon Byrne, Executive Vice President and Executive Director of BELA.
Ethisphere’s Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA) was created to capture, codify and communicate leading practices throughout the community. The goal of these roundtables is to provide a platform for candid exchanges to help executive leaders and their companies openly address strategic challenges and collaborate together around actionable solutions.
[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
