EST1 TASK2

Ethics Program
Company X
August 21st, 2013
(Updated 01/17/14)

Welcome to our team! We are dedicated to provide our employees a respectful work environment in order for individuals to perform the best that they can be and as a team. This program is a guideline that explains our company’s standards and procedures, ethics training, employee misconduct system, and few plans for evaluating and improving the ethics program after implementation.
STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES
The importance of ethics in business is highly valued as it helps to determine how the company is perceived by the society and others. All members of Company X are required to follow this section to help the company, employees and clients.
All members will treat other members and the clients with respect, honesty, integrity, professionalism, and competence.
All financial reports and public documents will be full, fair, accurate, timely mannered, and understandable and all members will make certain of it.
All of the company policies, laws, rules and regulations that apply to our specific roles must be understood. If any members have uncertainties or misunderstandings of Company X policies or laws, be sure to seek more accurate information from the Ethics Committee.
All members must maintain a healthy and safety work environment. To have a safe workplace, we designed a company safety manual to educate everyone. Any health and safety issues must be notified to the Safety Committee immediately. Also, contact the Safety Committee for any questions regarding the safety manual or any new concerns.
Any unauthorized audit must not be manipulated, misled, or improperly influenced and any auditor performing an internal independent audit of Company X books, records, processes or internal controls must not be interfered.
All members must not use company resources for personal use. Company resources are time, material, equipment and information. However, a personal use of company resource is occasionally allowed as long as all tasks that are given by the company is accomplished within the given time and does not disturb the workplace.
All members must not share any confidential company information and nonpublic information regarding employees, clients, and other business partners.
Any relationship or activity that might taint our ability to make fair and clear decisions when performing our jobs must be avoided by all members.

ETHICS TRAINING PROGRAM
All companies must provide the ethics training in the employee programs. Ethics program is developed to improve employee morale and provide insights for liability protection. This program will:
Provide organizational ethical expectations and rules to trainees.
Provide ethical concerns involving the industry or profession-specific areas.
Help trainees understand their own ethical tendencies.
Study to recognize situations that might stand in need of making ethical decisions.
Help trainees understand the values and culture of Company X
Be able to quickly evaluate the impact of ethical decisions on the company while maintaining its value structure.
Ethics training program will be mandatory at 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on the 1st of February and August and will include the entire staff, from new hires to CEOs. In this training session, all staff will be able to discuss the code of ethics and solve questionnaires regarding any ethical or unethical situations they encounter. This session will be held at our Auditorium on the projector screen.
For this program to be successful, supervisors should encourage and help the staff to stick to the commitments while they also adhere to the same standard of conduct.

EMPLOYEE MISCONDUCT
1. Monitoring Employee Misconduct
a. The company will notify the employees that they can be monitored at any time. (usually will be mentioned during the hiring process)
b. Monitoring will be randomly selected to establish accurate results and samples.
c. The company will monitor any employees using the company equipment or during their working hours through telephone, computer, electronic mail, voice mail, postal mail, and social media.
d. Monitoring process will be collected and recorded.
e. The consequences for abuse found will be a warning for the first violation, a reprimand for the second violation, gets suspended at the third violation, and finally face termination after fourth violation.
2. Auditing Employee Misconduct
a. Our ethics audit committee will include all of our managers and supervisors.
b. Ethics audit committee will observe all employees on daily basis with our cameras, company computers, in-person, and on evaluations.
c. All comments and evidence related to a complaint or alleged incident will be recorded.
d. Committee will make notes of any disciplinary actions given to employees in the past.
e. Interview supervisors, managers, and other employees before discussing the incident with alleged offender.
f. Read up on previous, similar situations to review how it was handled.
g. Always seek the appropriate legal advice or have the company lawyer present prior to conducting a termination.
3. Reporting Employee Misconduct
a. Any company member who notices misconduct must share their findings of the misconduct immediately with their supervisor, top manager, or other appropriate administrator.
b. Misconduct report must be detailed as much as is available by the employee making the complaint and must be made in writing.
c. All employees are allowed to share misconduct information with the Director of Human Resources, if that would be more comfortable.

In order to establish an effective ethics program, it is important to evaluate the program to determine if it would have positive impact on the company. Ethics program is also a defensive program to investigate or prosecute for potential wrongdoing. To evaluate the current effectiveness of the ethics program:
The ethics program should be evaluated annually.
Compare this year’s statistics with last year’s statistics to see any improvements.
Make sure the ethics program states its standards clearly.
Evaluate its enforceability.
To improve the current ethics program:
Assign responsibility for overseeing ethics of employees to strong leaders like audit committee, managers, and stakeholders.
Run background checks on every new employees.
Communicate and update twice a year with all employees regarding code of ethics through a group meeting, electronic mail, or flyer.
Perform disciplinary actions if members failed to follow the program accordingly
Consistently encourage others to execute the program positively.