Best compliance and ethics program Jones Lang LaSalle
Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) takes compliance and ethics seriously, and on a global basis. In fact, its team comprises more than 30 dedicated individuals spread across three regions and 14 countries.
Another hint as to JLL’s extensive worldwide compliance and ethics work is the name of one of its key elements: Ethics Everywhere. This program includes a global network of ethics officers, and the company has a community of ethics liaisons within business units.
‘We’ve tried to push a values-led compliance and ethics program,’ explains Claire Handley, chief ethics and compliance officer. She notes that the company has a lot of people who work remotely – it has employees in 80 countries – and the team holds to the idea that compliance and ethics go wherever they are. She adds that the strength of the program is that the team behind it is in synch.
Among other things, the team offers guidance and direction to help employees follow JLL’s code of ethics. The company has various mechanisms by which individuals can report allegations of misconduct, including an external reporting hotline available 24/7 in multiple languages. Reports are followed up via an investigations protocol that operates consistently across the firm and is managed centrally.
Beyond that, JLL makes public detailed program metrics in its Ethics Everywhere annual report. The team uses that information to detect any trends that can help direct its risk assessment and training programs and tracks the effectiveness of the program against external benchmarks. ‘We believe transparency in reporting enhances the quality of our program, and everyone’s compliance with it,’ the company writes.
In 2021, JLL conducted an extensive review of its code of ethics and vendor code of conduct. The primary aims were to reflect changes to the business and make the codes clearer, easier to digest and more engaging.
That same year JLL also completed the global rollout of its Ask Ethics mobile app. The tool, which was developed in-house, offers another platform for anonymous reporting and can be used by employees to navigate the code of ethics and find answers to frequently asked questions.
