Employee Training and Education

Abbott continually offers and updates a number of ethics and compliance training initiatives for our employees worldwide. Annually, all employees are required to recertify to Abbott's Code of Business Conduct. One hundred percent of our employees worldwide completed a certification that they have read, understood and will comply with Abbott's Code of Business Conduct. Many of these employees were also required to complete training on newly developed local policies and procedures. These policies covered topics such as promotional practices, professional services, privacy, trade associations and the World Health Organization Code on marketing infant formula (Abbott Nutrition International employees only).

In addition, every employee in the U.S. and Puerto Rico participated in our Legal and Ethics Resource Network program, a Web-based training system designed to increase awareness of the legal and ethical implications of business decisions. We added the following courses to our training curriculum: Privacy Issues, Avoiding False Health Care Claims and Supplier Diversity.

Employee training and education programs increase awareness of the legal and ethical implications of business decisions. In 2008, all Abbott employees received ethics and compliance training. We added a training module on Supplier Diversity Awareness and 99.81 percent of the 18,000 employees completed the training.

In 2008, we piloted a new e-learning training module on Code-related issues in Spanish and Portuguese. We will extend this program to 30 countries outside the United States in 2009.