Empowering 1,700 Employees to Uphold a Culture of Ethical Excellence at Getty Images

The WorkRamp LEARNIES Awards celebrate the best and most impactful learning programs powered by WorkRamp. 

In this customer spotlight, we hear from Jihye Kim Bower, Manager of Global Culture & Development at Getty Images, as she shares the launch strategy behind their compliance and ethics program, which earned Getty Images one of our 2023 “Out-of-this-World” LEARNIES awards for the most creative and impactful employee learning program launch.

Creating the “We Own It” program 

Getty Images is the world’s foremost visual expert in capturing, creating and preserving content to elevate visual communications. Through the work of their global workforce, Getty Images covers more than 160,000 news, sports, and entertainment events a year and collaborates with over 557,000 contributors and more than 320 premium content partners to deliver powerful content to customers worldwide. 

At the core of Getty Images’ success is a workplace culture built on integrity, accountability, and responsibility. Maintaining this foundation depends on their comprehensive compliance and ethics training program, “We Own It.” 

Read more: 3 Ways to Create a High-Performance Culture 

“We Own It” represents Getty Images’ dedication to upholding ethical behavior, fostering a welcoming work environment, and actively adhering to laws and guidelines. Through the “We Own It” program, employees gain knowledge across diverse domains, including data privacy, security awareness, workplace harassment, ethical business conduct, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and health and safety.

The program is structured as a series of SCORMs, Guides, and Resources pathed in WorkRamp’s Employee Learning Cloud and includes certifications and interactive gamification elements designed to enhance knowledge retention among learners. 

“The combination of an intuitive learning platform with crisp, clear content, communication, and expectations has led to compliance trainings being completed at upwards of 98% by the first deadline,” said Jihye. 

Driving company-wide engagement 

While thoughtfully created content is crucial to the cause, achieving a near-perfect completion rate with an audience of 1,700 learners often requires an additional push. 

In order to activate learners, the Getty Images team leverages several company-wide communication channels. For the “We Own It” program, the L&D lead for compliance takes charge on detailing the communications plan, which includes: 

• An all-company email
• A headline blurb for the weekly company newsletter
• A series of announcements on official internal-news Slack channels
• Live announcements through all-company open forums
• A blog post featured on the front page of the company intranet

Additionally, specific members of leadership are assigned to support the outgoing communications based on the content of the training. From Getty Images’ Chief Financial Officer to General Counsel to senior leaders in information security and internal audit, various stakeholders are bought into the importance of the program and help communicate a sense of urgency to complete each training.

Read more: Why Annual Compliance Training Matters

Finally, the team makes each communication more compelling by using a wide array of imagery from their own Getty Images, iStock and Unsplash libraries, as well as Iorad tutorials that help create quick, visual how-to’s on where to find trainings, what to expect, and more.

Upholding a culture of integrity

Getty Images’ “We Own It” program transcends mere compliance training. Its success, driven through continuous learning and collective ownership, serves as a testament to the company’s unwavering commitment to upholding the highest standards of ethical excellence and responsible corporate citizenship.

Congratulations to the Getty Images team for launching their compliance and ethics program on the Employee Learning Cloud and winning The Out-of-this-World Award at The LEARNIES!

For opportunities to join a team that strives to move the world ethically and authentically through visual imagery, check out the Getty Images career page.

Looking to build a compliance and ethics program that will engage your team? Chat with our team to learn more about how the Learning Cloud can help.