By Adedapo Adesanya
General Electric has used its forum to highlight and drive the importance of integrity for business operations in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This happened as it hosted a compliance dialogue summit in Lagos with key business stakeholders as part of its efforts to highlight the importance of operating with integrity.
The engaging sessions, which were held under the theme, A Better World: Resolving Ethical business Challenges, brought together key stakeholders, including customers, consultants, legal experts, and regulatory agencies, to collectively identify the opportunities and address the challenges to fundamental ethical issues in business practice.
Speaking at the event, Mr Ozim Obasi, Executive General Counsel for General Electric Africa, identified the need to resolve ethical challenges for business growth.
He said, “Our customers and stakeholders are critical partners in helping us to realize GE’s vision to operate with compliance. This roundtable was an opportunity for us to listen and share learnings from our programs such as ‘The Spirit & The Letter’, our robust employee code of conduct.”
Understanding the value of compliance and ethical policies and their successful integration into the workplace culture will protect businesses from potential exposure to lawsuits, reputational damage, financial loss and stunted business growth.
Some of the issues discussed in the meeting include winning with integrity through fair competition and honest practices, commercial compliance excellence, avoiding conflict of interest, and encouraging open reporting to ensure employees know how to raise concerns and feel safe doing so.
Reiterating the firm’s commitment to integrity and compliance, Mr Matthew Nobles, the Chief Compliance Officer for GE Gas Power Middle East & Africa, added that “Integrity and compliance serve as the foundation to deliver on our commitment – something GE has been doing for 130 years.”
On his part, Mr Kenneth Oyakhire, Services Executive of General Electric’s Gas Power business in Sub-Saharan Africa added that, “As a company, GE remains committed to acting ethically – doing the right thing, always with unyielding integrity – and will continue to engage with the broader regional ecosystem across the power sector through this yearly summit, because by cooperating closely, we can find better, faster, and more effective ways to compliantly drive business performance and growth.”
General Electric has been collaborating with energy stakeholders to deploy innovative technologies tailored to respond to the needs in the region since the 1950s with reliable baseload and flexible emergency power.
The company delivers across the entire energy ecosystem from generation to transmission and distribution. Throughout Nigeria, GE-built technologies are supported by local service and maintenance teams from the company to ensure access to reliable and sustainable energy.