E&C Excellence Partner Program

E&C Excellence Partner Program

The purpose of the ECI E&C Excellence Partner Program is to provide the ethics & compliance community with access to tools and resources to build the highest quality ethics & compliance programs.

The E&C Excellence Partner Program:

• Is available to nonprofit and for-profit organizations that serve the ethics & compliance or related functions
• Offers an independent third-party resource to help your members or customers assess their E&C programs
• Provides you a resource to help your members or customers better understand the strengths and weaknesses within their E&C programs
• Provides comparative benchmarks across the five core E&C Excellence Principles
• Is an easy to set-up, valued-added program that you can offer to your members or customers

About ECI’s E&C Excellence Program

The E&C Excellence framework and assessment are a community-led initiative by the E&C community and supported by ECI.

In 2016, ECI released Principles & Practices of High-Quality Ethics & Compliance Programs, a report prepared by a Blue Ribbon Panel of prominent ethics and compliance practitioners, academics, white collar and whistleblower attorneys, as well as former enforcement officials. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce underwrote the report.

The report provides details about organizations with ethics & compliance programs that go beyond the minimum standard. The report discusses five core principles:

• Principle 1: Ethics and compliance is central to business strategy.
• Principle 2: Ethics and compliance risks are identified, owned, managed and mitigated.
• Principle 3: Leaders at all levels across the organization build and sustain a culture of integrity.
• Principle 4: The organization encourages, protects and values the reporting of concerns and suspected wrongdoing.
• Principle 5: The organization takes action and holds itself accountable when wrongdoing occurs.

The report also identified specific objectives, practices and pitfalls to avoid that have enabled organizations to raise the bar on ethics & compliance and set themselves apart from their peers.

The History of the High-Quality Program Assessment

In 2019, ECI released the E&C Program Assessment (formerly HQP Assessment), incorporating the work of the Blue Ribbon Panel and HQP Measurement Framework groups to assess the maturity of their ethics and compliance programs. The assessment:

• Provides five common-sense, easy-to-understand principles
• Applies to all organizations across sectors and sizes
• Allows for cross-functional, multi-geographic assessments
• Has an updated question set that aligns with DoJ Guidelines and other best practices
• Provides your member or customer with the foundation for continuous improvement
• Allows your member or customer to benchmark their organization against other E&C programs

• As an E&C Excellence Partner your members or customers will have exclusive access to ECI’s E&C Program Assessment.
• The assessment is applicable for E&C programs of all sizes from small to large multinational operations.
• Upon completion of the assessment, participants:
  • Receive a comprehensive report that provides a detailed analysis of their E&C program’s maturity level across the five principles and 27 supporting objectives
  • The report includes benchmarks for comparison to E&C programs in other organizations
  • The report identifies areas of strength and opportunity along with the maturity level of the E&C program
• Additional ECI services such as culture assessments and training can be added as a service to your member or customer such as a part of the E&C Excellence Partner Program.

For more information contact advisoryservices@ethics.org