Integrity matters

Integrity is the foundation for General Electric (GE). Even if you are a superstar in terms of [work] performance, we will not keep you if you do not have integrity. People must always work above board, which means no cheating, no stealing and even no harassment.

How do you measure integrity? It’s a set of behaviours ensuring people do the right thing the right way. For example, we do not allow our salespeople go for karaoke sessions with clients or anywhere where there are “hostesses”. The most they can do is buy dinner for customers. A lot of multinational companies are strict on this because not only will the company be fined, it ruins the company’s reputation as well, so employees who get themselves into such situations would be fired.

Having said that, this [form of entertaining] is the norm across Asia so putting these US measurements in place is very tough. For example, when it comes to my Chinese colleagues in China, it’s very tough to do their job because they are adhering to our policy but the environment is not. Likewise, sometimes new hires in Vietnam or Cambodia wouldn’t understand the values GE adheres to when doing business and it’s not because they aren’t honest. It’s because they think there is no other way to do business so you have to educate them from scratch. We have a lot of legal courses to help us manage the integrity and the compliance sides of the business.

But as a company enters a developing market, the period of time it has been in that country helps because the organisation would mature over the years. That helps people – customers and employees – to know the way you do business and the values you uphold.