Ruby Tuesday’s Code of Conduct Essay Example for Free

Ruby Tuesday’s Code of Conduct Essay For each business due to the human aspect of ethics and the connection to business success corporate leaders take different steps to establish a code of conduct not only for employees but directors and officers of a major company. The code of conduct has different key areas that have significant importance to the business. Ruby Tuesday has specific guidelines that they set for their employees. Preventing harassment and discrimination including race, color, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, veteran or marital status, and rudeness towards guests or vendors could result to disciplinary actions including the termination of employment. Having this in the policy shows that the company does care for the rights and respect given to the people that are apart of their company. It provides employees to feel they are given fair treatment. Another key area is inside trading. It is against policy for an employee, officer, or director to profit from material that is nonpublic. Material can include unannounced sales or estimate of sales, unannounced changes in earnings estimates or actual earnings, and changes in management. Any employee, director, or officer withholding any information may not buy or sell any securities or exercise any options to buy securities until 48 hours after material information has been released publicly. With this being included in the policy it is important to establish trust between an employee and the employer. It shows significance to the business that they are all about honesty. They don’t allow information to be leaked early. If a sale was being given at a specific time well it wouldn’t be fair if anybody knew a couple days before or a week before. Employees should prevent the payment of bribes or kickbacks. They are unable to offer, give, solicit, receive, or authorize any bribe or kickback. It’s unacceptable to accept improper inducement payment or gift in connection with Ruby Tuesday. The significance  of preventing the payment of bribes is to not cheat the business out of its sale. If a customer was purchasing something for full price but did not want to pay full price, instead the customer bribed the employee with a really good gift or payment. It would be cheating the company out of its profit for that specific merchandise. Employees are able to eliminate hazards from the workplace and provide a safe and healthy work environment. They are told to dispose of any hazardous material and toxins. Establishing a safe and healthy work area is very important in a business. Not everybody can be comfortable with working around something that isn’t safe to them physically or health wise. It is important that not only employees are safe but customers are as well. There are antitrust laws in business. Employees are never allowed to discuss or make agreements with competitors. These type of discussions can include past, present, or future pricing, pricing policies, bids, discounts, promotions or similar items or conditions regarding sales. Trust is important in business you have to know whether or not your employees can be trusted with top secret information. You wouldn’t want your competition a couple steps ahead of you and knowing all your plans and tactics. Also included in the policy is the proper use of assets. The theft, misuse or waste of any property or services by an employee, officer or director can result in disciplinary actions including termination of your employment. It also can include possible civil and criminal penalties. The proper way of handling property and services are important. If you didn’t follow the safety guidelines of equipment things could go wrong. You could end up damaging the property or getting hurt from not using it properly. Companies’ take steps to ensure that the policy and guidelines are being followed properly. The board of Ruby Tuesday oversees, advises and monitors the performance of the management team. They do this by having frequent meetings discussing the management and the release of the company’s quarterly earnings. The directors are expected to spend time to review and understand the materials being distributed to them in advance of meetings of the Board and of the committees on which they serve. Three ways Ruby Tuesday can engage in socially responsive activities within the community is creating a webpage on a social network. They could also have surveys given out to each customer that walks in. And last but not least a fundraiser they can do to help raise money for either their company benefit or community’s  benefit.