National Australia Bank's Code of Conduct: A Comprehensive Analysis

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Code of conduct
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discrimination..............................................................................................................................4
Exploitation..................................................................................................................................5
Corruption....................................................................................................................................6
Dishonest and fraudulent behavior..............................................................................................7
Whistleblower protection.............................................................................................................8
Enforcement.................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11
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Introduction
It has observed that professional behaves to encourage trust, confidence and goodwill of
customers, vendors, and community and respect of human rights. The National Australia Bank
deals in integrity, honesty and ethical activities and also escalates any of the concern that a
customer raised. The Mistakes that have done by National Australian Bank has been revised on a
prior basis like customer fairness in every decision. The NAB has adapted this code of conduct
in order to lay down several principles and guidelines that need to be followed by its entire
workforce in banking regulation. It leads the bank and individuals involved in criminal and civil
liability.
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Discrimination
It is very important to issue as a book of code of conduct at the workplace that has followed by
each individual in order to avoid discrimination (Jackson, et.al., 2010). Every employee should
that discrimination is a legal offence which should be avoided and not followed. Several
organizations prohibit employee fraternization at the workplace, especially between management
and its workforce. Hostile working from employees and unfavorable treating in terms of gender
inequality, racism, reference & background and other aspects that upholds the discrimination is
must be avoided in national Australia bank. Harassment and bullying are two major components
of discrimination and code of conducts eliminate these factors from the workplace:
 Age & racism: The employers are required to remove age and racism discrimination
from the workplace in order to increase goodwill and friendly working environment
(Yeoh, 2014). The bank prevents a significant share while advertising for a job proposal.
The employees are eligible for getting several benefits in respective of age and racism
factor at the workplace. It also includes those illegal programs and practices that involve
age discrimination like internships.
 Gender inequality: The gender discrimination is also a very serious problem at
workplace like the employer is restricted to discriminate while paying salaries and
accommodation to the male employee or female employee even after having similar skills
and abilities (Adnan, et.al., 2012).
 Hostile work environment: Hostile work environment is responsible for absolute
tangible losses, less performance of employees, dissatisfaction, dysfunctional stressful
interaction, etc. through this practice the employers are responsible for the threatened
feeling of employees and the main reason of hostile work environment is communication
failure. It leads the discrimination higher at the workplace which is not good for the
employees or employers.
Laws & acts for anti-discrimination acts
Age Discrimination Act 2004, Disability Discrimination 1992, Industrial Relation Act, Equal
Opportunity Act, Fair Work Act, etc. are the acts made for employees satisfaction that give them
proper equality and significance. There is also practice or activity that is a part of penalizing the
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employer if they do not go behind discrimination laws (Callaghan and Wood\, 2014). The
discrimination in practices may lead to legal offence and serious consequences which state
enforcement.
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Exploitation
Exploitation is wrong practice or taking unfair benefits of employee's activities in the
organization or workplace. Basically, it is consumer exploitation where the customers get
swindled by traders in terms of business deals (Okello-Obura, 2013). In Australia, it has been
observed several times that the cases come in front where the traders found doing deceitful or
cunning practices with the consumers, and in past several customers get presaged or exploited by
the commissions and government unions.
Breach
The breach may showcase good resulting in penalizing those traders with appropriate fines and
legal actions. The traders or suppliers who are guilty are wholly & solely responsible for their
termination and cancellation of their license (Levi, 2013). The person whoever is responsible for
this immoral activity, exposed to criminal activity or civil offense.
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Corruption
Corruption is not entirely questioned on moral ethics; although there are several essential key
drivers of ethical consideration and important question of legal compliance, resource expenditure
and degradation of relationships market. Corporate codes are specifically right and appropriate
for dealing with corruption. It refers to the fraudulent activity, dishonest and unlawful way to the
things done by taking authority in an inappropriate manner. Corruption is a very serious problem
in every sense not only at the workplace. It has become a disease that impacts the performance of
employees and also affects the revenue (Howell, 2015). The term bribery is a form of corruption
that has used to force this activity:
 Providing compromising amount, accommodations or cash
 Special benefits for further or illegal donations to the associations
 Secret commissions or adjustments.
In order to decrease or eliminate the corruption from practising in NAB, there are following
principles and guidelines followed by the workforce such as:
 Separate out duties and responsibilities assigning to the person so that he doesn’t take the
transaction alone and bounded with other peoples.
 Establishment of responsibility and be aware where the fraud or corruption takes place
like effective understanding the area of risk (Evans and Niesche, 2016).
 Have a good understanding with people and monitoring employee activity is a good sign
of stopping corruption.
 Understand the fraud triangles or quarter angles at the workplace are also helpful to
control corruption.
 The possible protective process and high-quality security system that control and records
each business activity also empowers preventions from corruption.
 The identification and departmentalization of individuals who hold managerial positions
is very important for preventing them to do any wrongful or corrupt activity.
The identification of fraudulent activities is also necessary to prevent the workplace. They are as
follows:
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 The awareness from risk areas that can take place of uncertainty or corruption helps to
measure the risk of corruption.
 Try to identify the reason behind the people getting into unethical activities and make
fraudulent transactions.
 Encourage people to do ethical work and become a reflective personality that people
follows to establish morale in them.
For the entire staff, doing the right ethical activities implies living values and working
relationships (MacDermott and Opeskin, 2010). As a bank leading the workforce by an example
or reflection helps to take appropriate actions that control the internal activities in an adequate or
effective manner.
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Dishonest and fraudulent behavior
It refers to the activity that pertain the behavior of people in the workplace. It includes all the
actual or tangible financial losses to a person that is outside the control of the business.
Fraudulent is wrongful activity implemented by the individual or group in order to get unfair
advantages without any efforts or endeavor. It is done only for the purpose of destructing or
hurting people with illegal transactions. Fraudulent activities may take place by the people at the
workplace or involvement of external people also. The falsification of an important document,
theft of any financial records, foreign transactions & other documents, misappropriation of assets
and theft of cash or funds come under major frauds that perhaps obligated by management it is
self also.
The National Australia bank has even appointed FPAs termed as fraud prevention activity. They
encounter the fraud before it gets committed by the group or any individual. This department
likes a cop for the workplace (Pedraza and Herson, 2012). It works on the basis of excellent
internal management throughout the organization and obtains strategies for effective fraud
activities. Internal control anchorage ethics in the organization as well as promote the
administration of ethical policies, procedures, training and periodical control checks. There are
some examples that outline the situations:
 Sufficient and adequate time should be allowed to the individuals or groups to collect
supportive information or information to the alleged incident.
 Discussion is very necessary to force any work ethically and the involvement of
information technology support which controls the security and protection of data.
 A timely investigation is very important to identify fraudulent behavior, dishonesty and
serious waste.
 Clarification of facts and explanation to control the processor workplace culture
internally self-check at different stages is also necessary.
Fraud activities identification is always not possible because of the involvement of management.
But it can be controlled by the system effectively in order to reduce or eliminate (Banks, 2011).
Involvement of all the internal and external peoples that are the part of procedural work like
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identification of material misstatement to admit and also classify the extent of control processes
to remove frauds in national Australia bank.
This may include several penalties and legal consequences actions that shall be taken against
wrong practices, dishonest behavior and fraudulent activity. The group or individual who is
guilty of the fraud committed shall be liable for any criminal or legal offence.
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Whistleblower protection
It refers to the act with certain principles that help the public or other people to get protector to
protect from the wrongful activities and happenings (Himelboim and Limor, 2010). There is a
person who is responsible for intimating people from fraud or any other offence. The situations
say all, it depends on the situation that how it works whether the offence is committing internally
or externally. It is a company policy that accesses all applicable laws to protect employees
against discrimination as a result of legal reporting information.
Federal laws generally prohibit penalizing actions by the public companies against their
employees when they caught doing wrong practices for certain lawful actions. Moreover, the
workplace obligations under federal laws policies of whistleblower act, in accordance with the
policy that national Australia bank administrated transform applicable legislation. There have
been methods to identify the whistleblower act as follows:
 The labor legislation has granted the licenses and rights like the right to have equity in
treatments and say not to discrimination in every sense. The person who tries to hurt or
injure him/herself in physical or mental sense or harm the whistleblower is a breach of
the whistleblower protection act.
 The obligations that are included in this act under the security systems and policies,
decide how the entire process of this act will get carried out.
 The transparency is very crucial in this process to maintain that show the decision and
judgment are not unfair whether the victim is either individual or management.
Although there are several cases found where misleading and wrong cases have been headed
(Debela, 2014). This act ensures that no actions or any lawful consequence would entitle on a
person who complains about the wrongful happenings.
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Enforcement
The workforce connected with national Australia bank is bounded to follow the laws, regulations
and code of conducts that have been identified that are structured for national Australia bank.
The profit maximization and bringing up new customer cannot be possible if the proper
administration not done by the individuals or management. There are always legal violations but
these are far smaller in terms numbers (Alliance, 2011). The management should know the
values of backward or forward. It is the national Australia bank's equivalent that gives authorities
and activities derive a code of conducts.
Employee’s obligations
 The proper understanding of all the aspects of the code of conducts as exploitation,
discrimination, corruption, and other fraud prevention activities which are required to
eradicate or abolish and follow the policies.
 The identification of responsibilities and duties must be accomplished by the employees.
 The cautiousness and attentiveness towards fraud activities must be activated.
 The suspect of any fraudulent activity or any other illegal work must be reported to any
managerial hierarchy.
 Never attracts towards any backhander, bribery or any exploitation that releases
discrimination to other employees.
The code of conducts ensures identification of fraudulent activities within the premises but it has
the proper meaning when the feeling of truthfulness comes from inside the employees. if any
reporting or research reveals any breach or any disciplinary action that probably conquered by
providing absolute training, coaching and counseling (Hayes, 2012). It may lead the workforce
for taking any lawful action or charge any tangible loss offense on an individual that results in
termination also.
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