Code Of Conduct For AMP Limited Organization

Discrimination

A code of conduct can be stated as the set of rules that is responsible for outlining each and every social norm as well as duty of any individual (Sauvant 2015). The values, principles, rules of behaviour and standards eventually guide for undertaking decisions, systems and processes of a specific organization in such a manner that they would be majorly contributing to the well being of the key stakeholders and even respecting the respective rights of every constituent affected by operations. The common code of conduct is majorly written for the organizational employees that could protect the business properly (Howell 2015).

The expectations of the company are being informed to the employees with the help of this type of code of conduct. It is ideal for all types of companies or forming a distinct document that contains relevant and important data on the employee expectations. This particular document even does not require to be complicated or have extravagant policies, however that particular file requires a simplified basis of what the organization is expecting from each and every staff (Leipziger 2017).

The code of conduct is considered as a significant part for the proper establishment of inclusive culture, although it is not an own comprehensive solution. A respective ethical culture is being created by several organizational leaders, who are manifesting their ethics in respect to behaviour and attitudes (Hubert 2017). The studies of this code of conduct within the private or public sector eventually show that the effective implementation should be a basic part of the learning procedure after involving training, continuous improvement or measurement and consistent enforcement. It is extremely important and vital for all organizations to maintain discipline and ethics in the work for every employee.

2. AMP Limited Organization

AMP Limited is a popular and significant financial services organization in New Zealand and Australia that is responsible for providing investment as well as superannuation products, banking products, financial advices, and insurance (AMP.com.au. 2018). They have been providing services and products to several significant clients or customers of the business with ethics. However, recently some of the governance case issues have come forward, which have proved that they are not provided ethical services anymore and are eventually cheating their clients.

One of the most popular and noteworthy governance issue that has come forward is that they had been charging life insurance premiums for dead customers. Moreover, they have even admitted their overcharging scandal in front of the media, which proves that they were unethical and were not following code of conduct in work (AMP.com.au. 2018). Another news came out in 2018, that a whistle blower has revealed unethical behaviour within the organization of AMP. They have also faced significant criminal charges to mislead Australian Securities and Investments Commission or ASIC as per banking royal commission.

3. Code of Conduct for AMP Organizatio

3.1 Discrimination

According to human social affairs, discrimination can be stated as the treatment and consideration to make distinction towards any person on the basis of his or her group, category and class, in which that particular individual is eventually belonging. AMP Limited is a popular bank in Australia and New Zealand. For this bank, it is important to maintain rules and regulations for every employee of the bank. The basic rules and regulation of this bank are as follows:

1. i) One of the major requirement of this code of conduct for the employees of AMP Limited is that there should not be any type of customer discrimination. It is a manifestation of personal prejudice of the customers, so that they could prefer to trade with the people that are belonging to any particular group over the others.
2. ii) The second distinct rule and responsibility of AMP Limited is that they should ensure that each and every employee is aware of their respective code of conduct as well as other related policies.

Exploitation

iii) The employees should serve their customers without any type of discrimination and should maintain regulations within the banking policies and procedures.

1. iv) The fourth distinct rule and responsibility for the employees is that each and every customer should be treated with utmost care and respect and nobody should be discriminated.
2. v) The organizational employees should also show respect to other employees within the work place.
3. vi) A fair treatment towards every employee and customer is required under every circumstance.

3.2 Exploitation

Exploitation can be defined as the action or fact to treat any person unfairly for the purpose of obtaining advantages from their respective works. This could also be referred to as the action or activity of making use of as well as benefitting from the resources. Exploitation in work is demonstrated as the social relationship on the basis of an asymmetry within employees and workers. There could be a direct affiliation with the consumption in social theory and unfairly taking benefit from other person because of the inferior position of an employee.

The Australian bank of AMP Limited should reduce their financial exploitation in the business. It is a growing issue, which majorly affects the customers of that bank. For the core purpose of protecting their consumers and fighting against exploitation, AMP Limited should focus on their ethics and should empower the customers in showing signs of cognitive decline. The basic requirements of stopping exploitations in AMP Limited and protecting their customers are as follows:

1. i) The first and the foremost requirement of ceasing exploitations within the bank of AMP Limited is inclusion of emergency contact form. They should develop such a form so that the customers could provide the name of any trusted family member for contacting in an emergency. When the advisers of this bank will be concerned for customers, they could easily contact the families of the customers.
2. ii) Each and every employee of this specific bank should participate or take part in the ongoing training that would include special class on financial abuse and they should pass the annual test. This training requirement is applicable to every bank employee and the organizational policies could fight exploitation.

iii) Another regulation for the employees include negotiate, isolate as well as report procedure. When any type of exploitation is suspected, the employees will negotiate with the respective customers with an effort of delaying his or her decision. Next, these employees would isolate that customer from the untrustworthy confidante and finally they would immediately report to major concerns to the higher authority.

3.3 Corruption

Corruption is stated as the form of criminal activity or dishonesty that is being undertaken by any organization or individual entrusted with the position of authority for the core purpose of acquiring illicit advantages. This corruption might even involve most of the activities such as embezzlement as well as bribery and it might include several practices, which are legal in various countries. Corruption could occur in various scales and this corruption could eventually range from smaller favours within small number of individuals to respective corruption, which could affect the country’s government on a larger scale.

These occurrences could take place in regular frequencies and in varying proportion and degree. The most significant and popular methods for bringing corruption are networking, abuse of discretion, bribery, blackmail and extortion, clientelism, nepotism and favouritism, influence peddling, embezzlement, fraud and theft. There are several important and significant strategies present for stopping corruption in the organization or country.

For this bank of AMP Limited, there should be few strategies that could fight against corruption and since they have been facing major issues related to this type of criminal offence, it is majorly required for them to implement such strategies in their business. These major anti corruption strategies’ for AMP Limited are as follows:

1. i) The civil servants should be paid well. If the banking civil servants are not appropriately compensated and are grossly underpaid, it would clearly affect their incentives as well as motivation schemes. Moreover, when the employees are not getting paid as per their efforts, they would undergo such corruption or dishonest act. Therefore, the employees should be paid according to their work labour.
2. ii) A significant involvement with legal and ethical rules of Australia should be done in this bank and there should be a transparency and openness in the government spending. This would stop the employees from getting involved to any kind of corruption activity.

iii) The deployment of smart technology is yet another important strategy for fighting against the corruptive activities.

3.4 Dishonest and Fraudulent Behaviour

The dishonest behaviour involves that specific behaviour, which could cause any damage or loss to the society like information misuse, dishonest breaches of confidentiality and privacy and even acceptance of personal benefits over the definite value and ethics in the bank. This type of behaviour even includes activities that are not at all consistent with the ethos of company as well as standards of the expected behaviour of the employees.

Corruption

Fraudulent behaviour, on the other hand, involves an actual and potential financial loss to the individual outside the company and undertaking social responsibilities or falsification of the documents and financial records. For the proper prevention of fraudulent activities, a framework or a set of components should be provided that could eventually provide the organizational arrangements for designing, monitoring, improving and implementing the prevention of dishonesty and fraud within the society.

For AMP Limited, the major roles and responsibilities of the employees to avoid behaviours of dishonesty and fraudulent are as follows:

1. i) The first expectation from the employees is the right to transparency, fair and honest dealing. The documents of the bank should be transparent as well as simplified and the charter needs the bank employees to be ensured that every contract is transparent and is easily understood by a common person.
2. ii) The confidential data and information of the bank should be kept private and any type of discrepancy is not acceptable under any circumstance.
3. 3.5 Whistle blower Protections

A whistle blower is an individual, who informs his or her higher authority within an organization regarding the immoral or unlawful activity. This whistle blower could either be an employee of the company or could belong to some other entity. He would come forward and share his or her knowledge against the wrong doing when he or she thinks is happening within the company or in any particular department. However, it is noted that most of the whistle blowers end up losing their jobs and are mistreated eventually.

For protecting whistle blowers in the company, AMP Limited should involve certain rules for protecting their whistle blowers. The first law is that the whistle blower could file a law suit and then register a complaint with the high authority that would subsequently trigger a criminal investigation against the organization or the specific department. As per the Whistle Blowers Protection Act 1993, there should be a complete lay down of framework for the purpose investigating the alleged cases of wrong doings. The ASIC rules and regulations should also be followed in this bank.

3.6 Enforcement

Enforcement can be stated as the procedure to ensure compliance with social norms, standards, rules, regulations and laws. After enforcing such regulations and laws, the governments could attempt in effectuating successful policy implementation. This is extremely important and significant for maintaining laws and rules in the company and a range of enforcement powers are delegated within legalized scholarship regarding the degree until which companies should oversee as well as supervise employees.

AMP Limited should involve few laws when any of the above mentioned rules are broken by their employees and these laws are as follows:

1. i) The employee could be severely penalized if any type of discrepancy is observed in his work.
2. ii) Legal actions could be taken against the employee if he or she is found to be involved with dishonesty, corruption and fraudulent behaviour.

iii) Any type of customer discrimination would be treated as unethical and illegal act and the employee could be suspended or even terminated from his service.

1. iv) For the whistle blowers, if they face any issue regarding their job security, they could directly contact the bank’s higher authority without disclosing his or her name and the person involved in illegal or unethical activity would be penalized.

References

AMP.com.au. 2018. [online]. Accessed from https://www.amp.com.au/ [Accessed on 22 Dec. 2018]

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