Integrity Week at Pilipinas Shell

The impetus for Integrity Week can be traced to five years ago, when business leaders of SciP took the Business Integrity Pledge. Later, SciP company controllers also pledged and formed the Integrity Champions Circle, in step with an integrity campaign dubbed “I COMMIT. Think. Act. Work. With Integrity.”

During Integrity Week 2018, Pilipinas Shell reinforced its commitment to business integrity: this time, not only business leaders and Integrity Champions (ICs) but everyone else in the organization took the Integrity Pledge. It opened the doors for more volunteers, not necessarily just from the finance or controllers department, to become ICs.

ICs lead by example in upholding the Shell Core Values, Code of Conduct, Business Principles, and E&C Manual. They serve as extensions of the Country Ethics & Compliance Manager (ECM) by discussing E&C in team meetings, promoting E&C even in external engagements, helping colleagues with E&C dilemmas, and alerting the ECM to provide further guidance and advice, as necessary.

Integrity Week also intensified information dissemination on managing ethical dilemmas through information booths and incentivized trivia challenges. Topics included conflict of interest, gifts and hospitality, dealing with government officials, dealing with agents who act on behalf of Pilipinas Shell, anti-bribery and corruption, antitrust, fraud, harassment, cybercrime, information management, and data privacy. 

“Our employees are showing more and more interest in E&C,” says Atty. Ma. Lourdes Dino, Country ECM. “More than expanding their knowledge of the intricate requirements and processes under our E&C Manual, their participation [during Integrity Week] shows the recognition that how we do things matters more than just getting things done.”

Pilipinas Shell also invited Atty. Leandro Angelo Y. Aguirre, Deputy Commissioner of the National Privacy Commission, to conduct a session on data privacy, highlighting important concepts both from the perspective of the local law and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations. Those who attended the session learned the salient features of the Philippine Data Privacy Act, and its implementing rules and regulations and how to apply them in day-to-day work.

A full Integrity Day was also held, together with the Contractors’ Summit, at the Tabangao Refinery. Integrity Day featured E&C best-practice sharing sessions on resolving ethical dilemmas. Similar sessions, through which our contractors and business partners were encouraged to adopt high ethical standards, were also the focus of the Contractor’s Summit. The Company regularly hosts such activities with its business partners to drive the ethics and compliance agenda even outside of the organization.