5. Typical codes of conduct rules (3)

Rules of behaviour that the company needs you to abide by to make the company as efficient as possible and to secure any confidential information.

For example:

  • Email content - Jokes and inappropriate content should not be sent over the company network. Jokes waste staff time, they take up network bandwidth and often contain material that may offend some staff.
  • Email broadcast - Do not broadcast (cc copy) an email to everyone in the area or even the entire company unless it is authorised by your line manager. This rule is to reduce the problem of over-full inboxes containing internal emails that are irrelevant and just waste time.
  • Confidential emails - anything over unclassified emails should be encrypted. Many companies have a means of classifying their emails into different levels of confidentiality and encryption facilities are usually available so staff need to make use of this.
  • Printing confidential material - all confidential material should be printed using a private PIN number. This rule is often in place to reduce the chances of confidential material being seen by unauthorised staff before the person picks it up. The person has to be present by the printer or photocopier to enter the PIN before the machine will output it.
  • Answering external questions - do not provide company related information to external people, refer any enquiries to the public relations office. For example a journalist might be looking for sales figures, or a quote from the company. It is usually the job of the PR department to manage the flow of public-facing information. Also do not talk in the pub or to family about confidential information.
 

challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you

Click on this link: Handling confidential information