Ethics Program, Essay Example

The employees are expected to behave themselves in a manner inline with the mission and vision of the company for good relations and cooperation with the clients.

Code of Ethics – Standards and Procedures Section

Principles

Integrity

The employee integrity is aimed at creation of trust and provision for reliance in their performance and judgment. This integrity requires the employees to follow the form and spirit of non- profit making company’s standards.

All employees shall:

• In all occasion and company situations, dress appropriately and neatly
• Portray courtesy, rights and respect of others at all times
• Respect and value the property of clients
• Observe high degree of fairness, honesty and ethical conduct;
• Conduct the company businesses without any real or virtual conflict of interest
• Desist from making statement, report or representation that proves to be unlawful, false and misleading
• Honor the integrity of other employees, recognizing their expertise and different experiences
• Adhere to the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations (OHSR) and Workers Compensation Act, including other applicable rules and regulations pertaining to the business.
• Deter and refrain from unruly talk, noise, and other inappropriate conduct
• Respect the opinion of the clients and fellow employees and be punctual in all company meetings
• Promoting and appreciate diversity within the company organization
• Taking pleasure in the company, its activities and programs
• Desist from the use of alcoholic substances contrary to the law

Objectivity

The employees shall portray the highest level of professional neutrality and in collecting, evaluating and disseminating information concerning the company’s activities. They are required to strike a balanced assessment of their daily judgment experiences without being influenced by their personal or other people’s interests. They should exhibit impartiality and independence din their performance of company activities.

Employees shall:

• Conduct their affairs as instructed as prescribed by the Employee Protocol devoid of prejudice, bias, compromise and variance
• Be free of any interest, influence, and relationship that weaken their professional acumen, objectivity or independence while giving out their activities
• Divulge any possible personal or apparent conflict of interest in the initial communication or contact with the client
• Safeguard their neutrality and independence and shun gratuity gifts which could threaten, compromise or pressure their ability to act impartially
• In their duty of discharging their roles and responsibilities, maintain political objectivity and neutrality

Confidentiality

• Employees are required to revere the value and possession of information they receive from clients in the courses of their functioning and shall not at any circumstances divulge the information to a third party without the owners consent.
• Employees shall:
• Take necessary steps to safeguard the clients’ information confidentiality and shall exercise prudence in the assimilation of this information
• Never use the information from the client for their owner personal or monetary gain converse to the law

Competency

Employees shall:

• Employ in services for which they gave the required skills, knowledge and experience
• Strife to conclusively finish their duties and obligation without any omissions and apparent mistakes
• In the course of their operations, distinguish clearly between facts and opinions
• Offer their services to the customer in a diligent, efficient, respectful and conscientious approach
• Readily and gladly share their collectively information and knowledge and always seek for the health and wellbeing of the organization in general
• Respect the co- workers conduct and opinion to facilitate openness and honesty within the organization
• In a situation of non ethical behavior by the peers, the employees shall conduct him/herself in professional, open and ethical manner

Plan for an Appropriate Ethics Training Program

It is the role and obligation of every employee to understand and review the standards of professional and ethical conduct. The company shall on regular basis conduct training programs aimed at boosting the level of ethical standards comprehension by the employees.  Team leaders and senior supervisors are required to point out and identify employee needs that seriously necessitate training on essential substantiating units. The individual employees and the immediate supervisors are responsible for assuring successful completion of the specified training.

There shall be an Ethics Training and Compliance Building Team for identifying the needs, developing and implementing and ethics compliance training program

An effective training and compliance program shall:

• Establish a code of ethics and program that minimizes the potential criminal behavior
• Quickly identify wrong doing, enhance rapid investigations, and lower the possible consequences
• Promote company stature and reputation

Supervisors shall:

• Stress the importance of taking up the offered ethics training as a main manual source of guidance to new employees
• Ensure that all new employees attend and successfully complete the offered mandatory training
• Permit the management through the immediate supervision to allow at least one hour of the first three month for the new employees to complete this mandatory training
• Offer the new employees with the necessary contacts, physical address, office telephone number, cell phone number, e- mail address for the certified training officer
• Issue the necessary documents for the new employees to sample the training on offer
• Ensure that all the attended ethics training programs are well followed and credited

Company ethic officers shall:

• Assess the risks and needs involved in the on the issues addressed by the organization compliance ethics program
• Initiate, develop revise and disseminate the ethics codes
• Be in charge of the training programs of the employees
• Establish an effective communication channel
• Set up ethics audits, monitoring and control mechanisms
• Institute necessary actions on the cases of violations of the code of ethics
• Evaluate, review and modify the training program to improve its efficiency and effectiveness
• Assist the employees in addressing the ethics related issues of the work place
• Assist the employees in understanding that that the ethical status of the company is up held by their behaviors and actions

Systems to Monitor, Audit, and Report Misconduct

Interval Assessment

There shall be ongoing assessment to be conducted in the organization regularly by:

• On spot supervision of activities
• Frequent documented analysis and review work after engagements by certified ethics officer
• Establishing audit procedures and policies after every contact in the engagement aimed at enhancing compliance with laid down planning and reporting standards
• Establishing channels for receiving client feedback on every engagement
• Seeking to improve efficiency and effectiveness through the review and analysis of the performance metrics
• Preparation of the final report upon approval of the board of directors

Periodic Assessment

Based on the established code of ethics and efficiency and effectiveness of the organization in achieving its objectives of meeting the needs of the clients, there shall be designed periodic assessment of the conformance conducted through:

BI-Annual Client Assessment

• Annual overall business risk survey
• Review if the internal performance assessment based on the benchmarking activities, prepared and examined in light to the Audit Procedures and Policies.

There shall be internal mechanism for employees to monitor and report cases of misconduct;

• Ethical telephone hotlines
• Questionnaire meant to act as benchmarks

The management shall set up enforcement mechanisms aimed at instituting corrective measures to achieve standards and punishment

• Code of Ethics and standards procedures shall ne used to identify and eliminate instances of misconduct within the organization]
• Dependable codes and retribution enforcement standards
• Nonstop enhancement of the ethical conformity

Plan to Review and Improve the Ethics Program Over Time

The objectives for review shall be:

• To ascertain whether the established ethic program is compliant with the existing laws and regulations
• To evaluate whether is administered effectively on the actual work situation or it’s just applicable on “paper work”.
• To analyze whether the compliance program design is inline with the compliance programs as stipulated in the Federal Sentencing Guidelines

Plan to Review and Improve the Ethics Program

An entrance meeting shall be conducted to ascertain the extent and timing of the review. This shall establish:

• Organization official code of conduct
• Ethics and compliance organization chart
• Procedures and policies of conduct, in relation to the human resource
• Organizational policies and procedures for hiring new employees as well as training
• Necessary process required to revise the code of conduct and the overall ethics program
• Availability of the training programs necessary to educate the employees on ethical concepts other compliance issues
• Employees access to channels for reporting cases of ethic programs violations
• If the organization is supporting ethic programs initiated by the management

Founded upon the core procedures of ethical programs, the following shall ne determined:

• Whether the procedures and standards are aimed at deterring ethics violations or crime
• If the code of conduct administration is included in the ethics program agreement
• If the information on standards and procedures is communicated to the general employees
• If there is continuous enforcement of these standards and procedure on ethics compliance

At this point a draft report can be prepared and submitted to the management:

• Continuous improvement of the organization ethics program shall be done regularly to improve the systems and always when revision and amendments are necessary.
• An effective program shall offer the employees and opportunity to comprehend the company’s ethical values as well comply with the codes of conduct and policies to form the ethical environment
• Assorted employee backgrounds i.e. experience, skills and education shall offer the necessary organization socialization
• The reviewed organization ethical programs shall sensitize the employees to understand the ethical and legal consequences of the working environment

To review the programs, the top management shall rebuild the organization trust through:

• Establishing the top priority of the customer
• Communicating frequently and frankly with the client
• Dealing with crisis in a honesty manner
• Sticking to the established organization code of conduct in all circumstances