CorpComms Magazine

It was News Corporation's Code of Conduct that Rupert Murdoch and his son James held up before the Parliamentary Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport as the cornerstone of the company's ethics. All employees are sent a copy, which was updated in May, which clearly states 'what we should expect of ourselves as colleagues'. Sadly, the actions of News of the World journalists in employing private investigators to hack into mobile phones, appears to have contravened the section Trust in the Free Market - Our Commitment to the Public.

This states: 'We do not obtain information about competitors through theft, blackmail, wiretapping, trespassing, or other methods prohibited by law.' But this disconnect between words and reality is nothing new, according to a new analysis of the codes of conducts of the top FTSE 350 companies. 'Having a code is one thing, making sure it becomes part of everyday life in your organisation is another,' claims Commitment beats compliance: Why the code of conduct needs to be more than a book of rules.

'If a code of conduct is going to succeed it needs context, particularly when it comes to resolving the ambiguity about what 'doing the right thing' means in practice,' it adds. 'The solution is to weave together business strategy, ethics and corporate values to create a culture that gives new employees a clear picture of the sort of organisation they're joining and existing employees a strong sense of how much there is to be proud of about their company.'

Just 40 per cent of Britain's top listed companies have publicly available codes of conduct. Radley Yeldar scored each against 28 criteria under seven categories, ranging from presentation and appearance to top management involvement to compliance. Each code was awarded one point for each criterion satisfied. The analysis found that just three per cent of codes invite employees to participate in their creation and implementation, but 78 per cent use plain English that makes the document easy to understand. Four in five codes provide tools to raise concerns and encourage employees to speak up, while seven in ten emphasise that retaliation against those who report misconducts will not be tolerated.

Learning aids accompany 13 per cent of the codes to help staff understand and apply them. The report found that 87 of the 142 codes analysed scored less than 15 points, which implies 'room for improvement'. This includes FTSE 100 companies such as Barclays, Serco and Whitbread, and FTSE 250 companies such as Kier Group, Logica and Premier Farnell.

Top ten codes of conduct

• Balfour Beatty 26
• BP 26
• Diageo 26
• Rolls-Royce 26
• GlaxoSmithKline 24
• Imperial Tobacco Group 24
• Invensys 24
• BAE Systems 23
• BHP Billiton 23
• Wood Group 23

Best practice to achieve shared accountability

• Make the code easy to find, read and use
• Make the rules clear and explain why they matter
• Use inclusive language that builds a sense of community
• Put ethics in context, show relevant to everyday challenges as well as big knotty issues
• Provide a framework and guidance rather than an absolute detailed structure
• Empower judgment of grey areas
• Stress that accountability is shared and universal
• Communicate employees' rights as well as responsibilities
• Show consequences of contravention and acknowledge benefits
• Ensure all leaders demonstrate the code in action

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