Agenda item

At the meeting of the Standards Committee on 8^th February 2013, Members requested that the Director of HR be invited to attend a future meeting of the Committee to respond to questions in respect of the Employee Code of Conduct.  

The Director of Human Resources to be heard relative to recent revisions to the Employee Code of Conduct, as attached. 

The Director of Human Resources, Chrissie Morgan, provided the Committee with an overview of the Employee Code of Conduct which, following its revision in 2012 to incorporate legislative changes associated with the Bribery Act (2010) was approved by the Establishment Committee on 27th September 2012.  Given the Standards Committee’s remit to “keep[ing] under review and monitor[ing] City of London Corporation’s Employee Code of Conduct”, Members were invited to comment on the existing Code.   

With reference to the Code and the various policies referred to therein, it was noted that the separate policies had not been included within the Code in order to keep the document as streamlined as possible, for ease of future revision and on the basis that all relevant documents were easily accessible by all employees on-line.

A query was raised regarding the Member/Officer Protocol and its relationship with the Employee Code of Conduct and clarification sought as to whether the Protocol should be referenced in some way within the Employee Code of Conduct (i.e. Part 5).  The Town Clerk undertook to explore the existence of the Member/Officer Protocol and to liaise further with the Director of HR in respect of referencing the Protocol within the Employee Code of Conduct.

The Director of HR confirmed that the Committee would be advised in the future as and when changes to the Employee Code of Conduct were proposed and the document would also be submitted to the Committee for an annual review, as per the Committee’s terms of reference.