How To Write an Employee Code of Conduct

As an organization, you expect your employees to meet a specific standard. You want them to interact respectfully with one another, do their best to fulfill their job requirements, and conduct themselves with a certain amount of professionalism — both inside and outside of the office.

Do you assume that these expectations are common knowledge? Do you think that you and your team have a silent understanding of what is and isn’t acceptable?

Well, you shouldn’t. Instead, it’s wise to pull these guidelines into a formal document known as your employee code of conduct.

What is an employee code of conduct?

An employee code of conduct (also called a staff code of conduct) is a set of rules about how employees can and can’t behave during work hours. It shares your expectations for how team members will conduct themselves when they’re on the clock.

A code of conduct will cover a variety of topics, from harassment or discrimination to dress code or internet usage to your working from home policy .

While many codes of conduct cover those staple issues, it’s important to remember that your code of conduct is meant to support your company’s broader mission and values. That means your code of conduct will be unique to your business.

What is the difference between a code of ethics and a code of conduct?

Many people use the terms “code of ethics” and “code of conduct” interchangeably, but they are indeed two different things. However, you may often find that they’re both included together in a company’s employee handbook.

A code of ethics is more high-level and spells out your company’s morals and values. As an organization, what do you believe and prioritize? For example, your code of ethics might state that your company treats everyone with respect. A code of ethics may also have guidelines around conflicts of interest, corruption, policies for giving and receiving gifts, and more.

Your code of conduct drills down even further and shares specific rules and policies that support those broader beliefs. So, using our “respect” example, your employee code of conduct will dig into the details of your discrimination, harassment, and bullying policies and how you respond in those situations.

In simple terms, think of your code of ethics as your guiding principles and your code of conduct as your instruction manual for living up to those values.

Who writes an employee code of conduct?

The person or department responsible for writing an employee code of conduct will differ from company to company. In most organizations, the human resources team will pull this formal documentation together.

However, that doesn’t mean they should create this document alone. The most solid codes of conduct are the result of a collaborative process between:

By sourcing opinions and feedback from across the company, you’ll create a document that’s not only clear, but also covers all of the key issues for your organization.

After all, employees are likely the ones who will have the most insight into what behaviors should warrant some formal guidelines. Plus, when 34% of employees worldwide think that their company doesn’t listen to their ideas to improve the business, including them in this process is a great way to demonstrate that you value their ideas and opinions.

Why is it important to have a code of conduct in the workplace?

Think an employee code of conduct is more the exception than the rule? Think again. A reported 86% of Fortune Global 200 companies have and use a code of conduct within their organizations.

These documented guidelines and behaviors are way more than just a formality, and they offer a number of advantages including:

When it’s done well, your employee code of conduct will be way more than a stuffy rulebook that collects dust in people’s desk drawers. Instead, it’s a living document that shapes the culture and norms of your entire organization — and it’s well worth having.

How to write a code of conduct

Now comes the big question: How do you write a staff code of conduct? Here are five steps to follow when getting this document rolled out to your employees.

1. Understand what should be included

Keep in mind that your code of conduct will be unique to your company and your team. However, there are some “standard” sections that most codes cover. These include:

Those are just the basics. Your own code of conduct might need to dig deeper into things that are important to your own organization (like work-life balance or volunteerism, for example).

Remember to collect opinions and suggestions from other leaders and employees so that you can hash out an outline for a well-rounded code of conduct.

2. Create a rough draft

You’ve identified the core elements and sketched out an outline. Now it’s time to add some meat to the document by filling in the blanks and creating your rough draft.

As you work on this, it’s smart to follow a few best practices:

3. Collect feedback

When you have your rough draft ready to go, it’s smart to get a few more sets of eyes on it. Ask for some volunteers from across your company — both managers and employees — to carefully review the document.

Their focus should be less on typos and grammatical errors (although, it’s nice if they catch those too!) and more on the content of the document.

As they review your code of conduct, ask them to keep the following questions in mind:

Those opinions will be helpful as you finalize the document, and hopefully help prevent a ton of questions and confusion down the line.

4. Deliver the revised version to employees

Once you’ve incorporated those revisions and changes, you’re ready to deliver your finalized code of conduct to all of your employees.

It should include a place where employees can sign to confirm that they’ve read the code of conduct in its entirety and they agree to abide by those rules. File those signed documents away somewhere safe so you have those records if you need them.

You want your code of conduct to be something that employees can refer to when necessary, so keep it somewhere accessible to your entire team. Additionally, make sure you add a step in your new employee onboarding process for new hires to review and sign this document.

5. Consistently reevaluate your code

Your code of conduct isn’t a “set it and forget it” sort of thing. Set a recurring appointment on your calendar (quarterly should do the trick) when you can thoroughly review this document and make any necessary adjustments.

Your organization is constantly changing, which means you might need to tweak the language or even add or remove sections.

For example, if your team had to make a sudden shift to remote work , you’d want to add some remote-specific sections to your code so that employees know what’s expected of them outside of the traditional office environment.

How to use UDN Task Manager to plan an employee code of conduct

Your code of conduct is important and creating it won’t be a quick task or project . There will be numerous steps and stakeholders involved, and you want to ensure you have those things organized so that you consider all feedback and don’t miss anything.

The good news is that a project management platform like UDN Task Manager makes it easy for you to manage all of your human resources workflows — including the creation of your staff code of conduct. Here’s the gist of how to put together this process in UDN Task Manager :

UDN Task Manager also integrates with all of the most popular file storage apps, which means everybody can access your finished code of conduct documentation from within UDN Task Manager .

Ready to get started and ensure everybody within your company is on the same page about what behavior is and isn’t acceptable? Sign up for UDN Task Manager today and you’ll tackle your employee code of conduct in a strategic and organized way .