Values and Ethics

At Capgemini, our Values and Ethics are at the heart of our identity.

Capgemini’s founder, Serge Kampf was deeply convinced that abiding by strong Values and demonstrating sound Ethics are the foundation for profitable and sustainable business.

Capgemini’s seven Values – Honesty, Boldness, Trust, Freedom, Fun, Modesty, and Team Spirit – express our personality, our spirit, they inspire and guide us to never lose sight of who we are. Profoundly entrepreneurial, we cherish and encourage individual freedoms and initiatives, within the discipline of a perfect alignment with our Values.

At the same time, our ethical culture guides the behavior of all our team members across the world. It enables us to adopt an ethical approach, which starts with reflecting upon and sometimes questioning our actions and decisions. It requires a spirit of enquiry, and uses dialogue and debate to reason, always in the light of our Values, and define what “doing the right thing” means in our business, and in our Group.

It is our commitment to our core Values, and our belief in doing business ethically, that have distinguished us from the outset, and that continue to do so today.

Our seven Values

“Our values are at the heart of the company and have become its hallmark: an entrepreneurial spirit above all else, respect for all cultures, and love for our clients.”
Paul Hermelin, Chairman of the Board of Directors

Seven core Values

Central to our culture and identity

Discover our Values and what they mean for the Group, and for each of us:

Honesty

Loyalty, integrity, uprightness, a complete refusal to use any underhanded method to help win business or gain any kind of advantage. Neither growth, nor profit nor independence have any real worth unless they are won through complete honesty and probity.

And everyone in the Group knows that any lack of openness and integrity in our business dealings will be penalised at once.

Boldness

A flair for entrepreneurship, and a desire to take considered risks and show commitment (naturally linked to a firm determination to uphold one’s commitments). This is the very soul of competitiveness: firmness in making decisions or in forcing their implementation, an acceptance periodically to challenge one’s orientations and the status quo. Boldness also needs to be combined with a certain level of prudence and a particular clear-sightedness, without which a bold manager is, in reality, merely dangerously reckless.

Trust

The willingness to empower both individuals and teams; to have decisions made as close as possible to the point where they will be put into practice.

Trust also means giving priority, within the company, to real openness toward other people and the widest possible sharing of ideas and information.

Freedom

Independence in thought, judgment and deeds, and entrepreneurial spirit, creativity. It also means tolerance, respect for others, for different cultures and customs: an essential quality in a multicultural worldwide group.

Fun

Feeling good about being part of the company or one’s team, feeling proud of what one does, feeling a sense of accomplishment in the search for better quality and greater efficiency, feeling part of a challenging project.

Modesty

Simplicity, the very opposite of affectation, pretension, pomposity, arrogance and boastfulness.

Simplicity does not imply naivety (simple does not mean simpleton!); it is more about being discreet, showing natural modesty, common sense, being attentive to others and taking the trouble to be understood by them. It is about being frank in work relationships, loosening up, having a sense of humor.

Team spirit

Solidarity, friendship, fidelity, generosity, fairness in sharing the benefits of collective work; and accepting responsibilities and an instinctive willingness to support common efforts when the storm is raging.

Our ethical culture

Instilling an ethical culture

Our Code of Business Ethics sets out who we aspire to be and translates our Values into ethical principles and expected behaviors.Our training programme was revamped in 2021 to foster and promote our ethical culture internally, providing each of our team members with all they need to learn about Values and ethical culture within the Group. This training is mandatory for all employees and must be taken annually.

Code of Business Ethics

Honoring human rights

As a people company, our commitment to protecting and promoting human rights is deeply engrained in our culture. Respect of these fundamental rights is prerequisite to achieving our objectives to act in line with our Values. Our dedication to human rights forms the basis for our overarching Code of Business Ethics along with other policies. It extends to our entire ecosystem – from our supply chain, to clients, to the local communities in which we operate. To address any human rights violations, our ethics helpline SpeakUp is accessible round the clock.

Actively listening for continuous improvement

As one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for 12 consecutive years, we take the time to talk about ethics together. We regularly ask for employee feedback, empowering our team members to enrich our understanding, and to further strengthen our ethical culture. We make sure that we act in line with this feedback, striving for continuous improvement.

Driving ethical AI

At Capgemini, our ethical culture drives our vision of AI. As a leader in digital transformation, we are committed to the adoption of AI in a way that delivers clear benefits within a trusted framework.

Our Code of Ethics for AI guides us on how to embed ethical thinking into our AI-related work. It includes concrete examples from projects we have delivered and is intended to facilitate ethical discussions within the company, with our clients, and with our stakeholders.

Managing conflicts of interest

Capgemini acknowledges that a conflict of interest can happen to anyone but it must be declared to the organisation and resolved. We have developed a confidential web-based conflict-of-interest management tool, called Declare, that helps to manage any conflict of interest.

Our Conflict of Interest (CoI) policy is designed to help employees understand how to identify, declare and manage any conflict of interest.

Speaking up

Capgemini trusts and expects team members to report ethical concerns in good faith. SpeakUp, our 24×7 web and phone-based ethics helpline, is not just a tool; it’s a commitment to listen to our employees, to be fair when investigating issues, to show rigorous organisational justice, maintain confidentiality, and protect reporters from any form of retaliation.

One of the World’s Most Ethical Companies®

We nurture our ethical culture year on year, constantly improving our approach. This has helped us become one of the most trusted and respected companies, recognised as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies® by the Ethisphere® Institute 12 years in a row.

This recognition highlights our position as an ethical employer of choice and a responsible player in the eyes of our external stakeholders.

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