Project cases
CREATION OF A CORPORATE ETHICS CODE FOR TYUMEN OIL COMPANY STAFF
Preliminary: Background
The project of creating a corporate ethics code for TNK employees was realized in 2002 by the "PROPAGANDA" CCT, HR and social department, and PR department of Tyumen Oil Company (TNK).
The developers had not only to create a corporate ethics Code for TNK staff, complying with all standard requirements, but also, the key point, to make it really working. For this purpose, the Code should be accepted by all TNK employees, become an integrating document, a reason for corporate pride.
The TNK corporate ethics code had three global objectives. The Code should become:
A management tool regulating the employees' behaviour at their working places.
A tool of corporate culture development, clearly identifying key goals and values of the TNK and strengthening the corporate identity of all the company's business units.
A document to be among others shown to investors, that is, being an integral component of Tyumen Oil Company's investment attractiveness.
Solution
The key solution of the project was the idea of a "two-way street":
· "top-down" — determining basic values and goals of the top management, drafting the Code on this base;
· "bottom-up" — each employee had a possibility to become an author of the Code through its deliberation and proposing their amendments.
This idea determined the general scheme of the project:
1st stage (drafting)
Draft Code was developed, focusing on goals and values of the top management and the ethical problems existing in the company.
For this purpose, there were two lines of work: other companies' codes and their use were analyzed; and TNK's basic values and goals and the most needy sections of the company where the Code should be used were identified.
As a result, a concept of the Code was developed (its ideology, format, fields of use), and the text of the Code was drafted.
2nd stage (deliberation)
Deliberation of the Code by employees of all TNK business units, gathering proposals for the finalization of the Code text and its execution system.
As the Code was a new document for the company, the work at the second stage was conducted in three lines:
· explaining to employees the meaning, importance, and fields of application of the Code;
· involving executive staff in the process of the Code drafting;
· creating positive public opinion in respect of the Code among employees of Tyumen Oil Company; training managers and qualified executives as a resource for the practical implementation of the TNK Code.
The realization of the project required creating a special technology of deliberation, including both already known methods and tools, and unique customized solutions. Key elements of the technology were:
· a two-level model of the draft Code deliberation (in personal or distant form), which allowed virtually all of the TNK employees to become co-authors of the Code;
· an original method of group work, including the draft Code deliberation with pubic opinion leaders, who initiated further deliberation of the document among employees;
· a system of ongoing processing and transmission of data of the personal deliberation for immediate use in the parallel distant deliberation;
· an interactive module scheme of the informational campaign, allowing to explain key terms of the Code and to answer the most burning questions in a dialogue mode.
3rd stage (integration)
Analyzing all amendments proposed, amending the Code, developing mechanisms of the document execution and implementation.
Based on the results of the deliberation, a number of interesting conclusions were made. First, the organization of the Code deliberation by employees achieved one of its key goals: the draft Code was accepted mostly positively by the staff. They considered the Code as the next stage of the TNK development, as another step to the stability. Second, when discussing the ideological part of the Code, the employees noted the importance of learning both objectives and values of the TNK, and its plans and prospects, talked about their need to be informed of the meaining and the progress of the reforms in the company. Third, in the regulatory part of the document, the staff accepted the regulation of common behaviour rules for everybody. And fourth, stylistic and semantic difficulties of the text perception by the employees were identified.
After having deliberated the document, employees' proposals were analysed, and the Code content was adjusted on this base.
4th stage (final)
Following the Code amendment, an internal informational campaign was conducted explaining which amendments were made to the Code, and which were not, and why.
Moreover, a scheme of building the Code implementation and execution mechanisms was developed at this stage, based on other companies' experience and on TNK employees' proposals.
Project results
90% of the company employees took part in deliberating the Code, in any way, which amounts to about 80 thousand people. Such a large-scale deliberation of a corporate document was conducted in the Russian business practice for the first time.
The Code deliberation itself was the start of its implementation. The possibility to take part in its creation was a base of confidence in it. ("If even a comma is amended in the Code, according to our proposals, I will feel that the Code is mine, and will comply with it", said participants of working meetings for the Code deliberation in the Company's entities.)
The process of the Code deliberaion became the base for finding common interests of the employees and the management, for building a single value and goal picture, and for developing dialogue between the TNK employees and managers.
In total, 128 amendments taking consideration of the employees' wishes were made to the text of the Code.
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