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Home > CSR > 2008 > Performance > Ethics and Conduct
Conducting our Business Ethically
Maintaining a high ethical standard is extremely important at Hormel Foods. From employees working in our plants to members of the Board of Directors, we see it as our responsibility to apply ethics to all decisions and actions.
Code of Ethical Business Conduct
Our Way is the values-based program at Hormel Foods that guides our daily actions.
At Hormel Foods, we require our employees to be trained on our company’s policies and procedures. Our Code of Ethical Business Conduct serves as a guide for our employees, officers and directors in making business decisions. The code covers many of the topics discussed in this report, including fair employment practices, harassment, safety, diversity, environmental responsibility and product integrity. Additionally, our code of conduct outlines our policies on conflict of interest, gifts, illegal payments, illegal political contributions and disciplinary action.
At Hormel Foods, all of our policies follow local and national laws in the United States and elsewhere.
Communicating Our Way
To ensure our employees understand the value system at Hormel Foods, we communicate Our Way in our employees’ native languages. In the United States, for example, we provide this information in Spanish, as well as English.
If our employees observe anything that does not comply with our code and the values outlined in Our Way, we provide a hotline number to facilitate anonymous employee feedback and address concerns — 1-800-750-4972. To ensure accountability, this hotline is operated by an independent third-party organization.
Performance-based Executive Compensation
As part of our principle of maintaining financial sustainability, Hormel Foods has a compensation committee within our Board of Directors that consists exclusively of nonemployee, independent directors. The committee establishes and administers the compensation and benefit programs, and upholds two primary goals:
- Attract and retain highly qualified executive officers; and
- Incent the behavior of executive officers to create stockholder value.
To accomplish these goals, we also benchmark compensation compared to industry peers. The incentive-based system factors in individual performance, competitive market data and overall performance of the company. Incentive compensation is also comprised of both short-term and long-term incentives to help assure the company’s success into the future.