What does a company code of ethics cover?

Equity

Equity focuses on the promotion of social and legal justice for specific groups. It also includes the aim of fairness, impartiality, and equal opportunities for specific groups of employees concerning matters such as professional advancement, and participation. Equity seeks to mend structural inequalities through the use of specific:

• Procedures

• Practices

• Processes

• Distribution of resources

The bottom line of equity is that it addresses issues of social and institutional inequality.

Inclusion

Inclusion refers to the process of making any employee feel welcome in a workplace, regardless of their race, gender, religion, disability, or other identifying feature. The inclusion of diverse backgrounds and elements of employees in a workplace fosters a strong and highly versatile staff.

Core values

Core values are needed in a company to help instill a set of guidelines of how it wishes to perform its function as a whole, and how individual employees perform their jobs. Core values are often ideals, and include things like:

• Dedication

• Professionalism

• Commitment to innovation

• Development

• Equal opportunities

• And many more

When a company informs its employees of its core values, the employees can use this as a code throughout their daily tasks. They can base certain actions, and make certain decisions according to a company's core values.

Respect

Respect is essential to the success of a company because it can help foster a strong working dynamic between employees, managers, supervisors, and executives. Working with respect for all employees and members of a company often leads to more productivity and better communication within, and across, different departments. This includes:

Avoiding conflicts of interest

Many companies also include this in their code of ethics. This might concern internal matters, such as guidelines against managers dating their subordinates, or big external issues, like running for public office, or making investments into competing businesses or other companies that an organization's employees do business with.

The protection of company assets

This is related to intellectual property, like patents, and other forms of property, including computer systems, technical equipment, and record-keeping operations. Rules about how to handle company-sensitive data and assets are often included in a code of ethics.