A strong code of conduct is vital for employees to know what is expected of them. A successful code of conduct that is followed by all employees, from leadership to management to each and every worker is an important part of building an ethical, inclusive culture at work.
But an organisation seeking to formulate a successful code of conduct or update an outdated one may quickly run into difficulties. Off-the-shelf training rarely encapsulates the nuances of each individual organisation’s policies and procedures, and write-your-own solutions are cumbersome and time-consuming.
With the global rollout of the coronavirus vaccine gathering pace, in many jurisdictions, employers are being given more discretion to decide whether staff can and should return to the office. If your organisation has employees working from the office, you have a duty of care to your staff. Managers must ensure a safe working environment where employees’ health is protected.
This means they have to ensure they have a safe place to work, safe work equipment, their health is protected while working, and assess risks to their health and safety and take action to mitigate those risks. This includes protecting staff from COVID-19. Staff themselves have a responsibility to keep themselves and those around them safe and to learn the best ways to do that.
COVID-19: Social Distancing at Work specifically covers these topics. The course can be used as a standalone unit or as a unit within our standard OHS course.
Many people are anxious, or at least conflicted, about returning to in-person work, whether for health reasons or the flexibility they feel they’ll lose.
Companies are facing a complicated decision. Should workers continue to stay at home, should they bring everyone back, or find somewhere in between?
With the coronavirus vaccine roll-out gathering pace, individuals and businesses are cautiously looking to return to a life that feels akin to normal. But determining when and how to return to the office is no simple matter, especially since employers and employees might have differing opinions on the matter.
The SRA standards are seven principles representing the fundamental rules on ethical behaviour that the SRA expects everyone working in the legal profession to uphold.
The principles must be upheld both inside and outside the work environment. This may also include in your private behaviour, including on social media.
With remote working, less supervision and fewer opportunities for face-to-face training, it’s never been a more important time to make sure your staff are up to speed on the SRA Standards and Regulations.
SRA Standard and Regulations: A Practical Overview covers SRA standards, regulations, and account rules, delivering the information in easily digestible bite size nuggets. The course is designed to be relevant to everyone in a firm, including fee earners, support staff, partners and in-house counsel.
Mental Health: The duty to care and ending the taboo
Even before the pandemic hit, employers were beginning to see the importance of addressing mental health issues in their workforce. With the ongoing effects of the pandemic still affecting so many of us, the importance of treating mental health as a priority has only increased.
With a widespread acknowledgement of the cost of mental health issues to employers, individuals, and the health service, there’s diminishing tolerance and protection for employers who choose to do nothing.
Complaints can vary radically in subject matter, intensity, and desired outcomes. For instance, a company can receive a complaint about a seemingly trivial matter, but from a particularly litigious customer. On the other hand, a complaint could relate to an incident of serious misconduct but may be expressed in an understated manner. In all instances, organisations should aim to deal with complaints adequately, however they arise. This could mean instructing a legal team to act in formal proceedings or simply using a customer’s feedback to identify training needs amongst staff.
Note: The new features discussed here were released to demo/sandbox sites on Sunday 11 April, to production Omnitrack sites on Sunday 25 April and to on-premise installations shortly after.
We’re giving you full control of your workflows with custom statuses and automations
Omnitrack is a flexible data collection tool which can accommodate many workflows and use cases. We’re always assessing how we can make Omnitrack even more flexible, practical and effective, and are excited today to introduce ‘custom statuses and automations’.
The ‘Edit Form’ section of Omnitrack now features two new pages – Statuses and Automations – that allow you to define your own workflow statuses and automation rules. Like all Omnitrack settings, these settings are intuitive, flexible and easy to set up with no technical know-how required.
Statuses page
The statuses page allows you to view, edit, and delete statuses
You are no longer restricted to the default workflow statuses of ‘In Progress’, ‘Inbox’, ‘Register’ and ‘Archive’. Although these defaults work in some cases, they can be hard to understand and leave out critical steps in your workflow process.
The results of the ergonomics assessment in our health and safety training can be fully integrated with Omnitrack
How do you make online training an experience that actually makes a difference in real time? How do you measure what each user is gaining from the training?
All of our compliance courses come complete with an interactive element, be it quizzes, assessments or gamification. This is all very well, but how can administrators and compliance managers utilise these interactions to increase the impact of the training on the entire organisation?
We have just added a new feature to our reporting and tracking solution Omnitrack, allowing administrators and compliance managers to track all necessary data from each course completion. Below are four elements you can integrate and track with Omnitrack.
1. Assessments
The interactive ergonomics assessment in our health and safety course is just one of the many assessments that can be integrated with Omnitrack
Many of our courses include assessments to help establish an organisation’s level of risk. For example, in our health and safety course, which has been adapted for home workers, users undertake a number of assessments related to their workstation setup. These immersive assessments can be integrated. Administrators can then collect rich, actionable data from their users while they complete these assessments. Whether staff are working remotely or from an office, our tool will help businesses ensure all their staff have a comfortable and healthy space to work from home.
Similarly, our mental health course includes a self-assessment on work-related stress. To ensure that businesses can help staff who are struggling with work-related stress or anxiety, or to simply gain an overall understanding of how your staff are affected by stress, the assessment can easily be integrated with Omnitrack. This integration will allow administrators to play an important role in monitoring their staff’s mental wellbeing.
VinciWorks’ new tax evasion course takes a modern, fresh approach to tax evasion training with a focus on industry-specific guidance, role-relevant scenarios and an interactive, engaging approach to ensuring all staff have the skills and understanding they need to prevent facilitation of tax evasion.
The Criminal Finances Act created a corporate criminal offence for failing to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion. This places the responsibility on businesses to have “reasonable procedures” in place to ensure none of their employees or contractors are involved in helping someone evade their taxes anywhere in the world. Guidance from HMRC advises that reasonable procedures should be guided by the following 6 principles:
Risk assessment
Proportionality of risk-based prevention procedures
