Professional Career: Sustainability and Code of Conduct Report

This report delves into the contemporary ethical issue of sustainability within the global business environment. It examines the challenges businesses face, including short-term market pressures and the increasing impact of climate change and resource depletion. The report provides an overview of codes of conduct as a means to address these issues, emphasizing their role in setting ethical standards and promoting sustainability. It highlights the support provided by professional bodies like the Carbon Trust and Ceres, and assesses their impact on business practices. Furthermore, the report includes a CPD plan, outlining strategies for skill development in writing, research, and analytical thinking to enhance professional growth. The report concludes with a summary of the discussed issues, highlighting the importance of codes of conduct and professional bodies in achieving sustainable business practices.

Preparing for a
Professional Career

Table of Contents
Introduction .....................................................................................................................................3
PART A – REPORT........................................................................................................................3
Defining the issue or challenge...................................................................................................3
Codes of conduct to resolve the issues of Sustainability............................................................4
Support from relevant Professional bodies.................................................................................4
Impacts that code of conducts and assisting bodies have from the view of business
communities................................................................................................................................5
PART B – CPD PLAN....................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

Introduction
If there are different people at a same place i.e. organization then their thoughts and ideas
will be different and there may be the chances of conflicts. Such conflicts at business place is
termed to be ethical issues(Rees, 2020). This report will cover a contemporary ethical issue and
the challenge faced by global business environment in present scenario. It is going to discuss
briefly about code of conduct and the ways in which it will resolve these issues. Apart from this,
it will also explain the effects of code of conduct and how they are important in improving
situation. This report will also cover the solutions for the issues through professional bodies. At
last, it will assess how these professional bodies and code of conduct impact in proving the
solution for a problem.
PART A – REPORT
Defining the issue or challenge
As it is known, different challenges and issues are facing by global business environment
in present scenario. One of those issue is “Sustainability”(Martins and Pato, 2019). The major
reason for this issue is short-term pressure of market at profits of business, lack of the capacity of
professional building such as: architects, accountants, engineers and others. As unemployment is
increasing in youth and hence resulting in poverty. In this case, climate change and circular
economy will be considered as the most important sustainability issues. Circular economy means
how a waste could be used as an input. Decrement in it could cause the increment in amount of
waste. As the use of resources in increasing inefficiently, it will result in degradation of
biodiversity, poor health, climate change and others. Sustainability issues are increasing as the
companies are increasing and they are not aware of how much harm they are causing to
environment with the improper disposal of waste of the industry, not taking care of degradation
of biotic resources such as: water, soil and others and some companies are causing excess
explosion of chemicals from the chimneys of industries which is the major reason for breathing
issues in humans. In such case, government could play a crucial role as it could demands actions
from businesses in order to see the change as per the system. It could set rules and regulations
accordingly. It could be a major issue for business that how is the interaction between different
sustainability issues. Companies and others should focus at how to resolve the sustainability

issues but they forget that 17UN SDGs and Agenda 2030 framework could only be achieved
together. Businesses should identify what are the benefits of these goals.
Codes of conduct to resolve the issues of Sustainability
Basically, codes of conduct is an organizational policy designed to set rules and
regulations for the employees of the company and also informing them the expectations of the
company from them. It is necessary for the success of a business(Gaydosik, 2022). Integrity
allows a business to be more sustainable and the proper culture of ethics and legal agreement.
The type of stakeholder decides the integrity of the company and hence also important in
deciding the level of sustainability of the company. Business could set its objectives that help in
maintain sustainability such as: repairing social trusts, innovate, do research and many more.
These objectivity could improve the sustainability condition of a business. Sustainability could
also be developed with professional competence. It is the framework which provide knowledge
about technical skills to the employees which allows them how to maintain eco-friendly products
which are less harmful for environment. Code of conducts clears the mission, vision, values and
principles of a company. Code of conduct also helpful in defining culture of a company quickly.
External variables affects the effectiveness of these code of conducts.
Support from relevant Professional bodies
As it is important to maintain sustainability in a business. Following are some
professional bodies which are supporting sustainability:
 Accountability for sustainability: This professional body aims at development of
practical guidance and tools for fixing sustainability in to reporting and decision-making
process. It could be refereed as the focus on stakeholder views, communication with them
and others(Mullen, 2019).
 Carbon trust: As is is known emission of carbon is increasing drastically nowadays. To
prevent the emission of carbon, commercialization of low carbon technologies and to
save energy, organization take support from business and public sector. It is a non-profit
carbon trust.
 Ceres: Some of the public interest organizations such as: US investors, social and
environment advocacy groups and others are aiming to resolve sustainability issues with
companies. It enhances leadership among companies, investors and capital market

influencers to find out solutions and take actions accordingly against the sustainability
issues.
 Climate disclosure standard boards: It is an international association of business and
environment NGOs offers businesses a way for reporting environmental information and
natural capital in main reports such as: 10-K filing and others. These reports are
maintained annually.
 Global Reporting Initiative: It helps the organizations and other businesses in taking
responsibilities for their effects by providing them with the common global language to
dialogue with those effects.
Impacts that code of conducts and assisting bodies have from the view of business communities
Every company have a different belief, value and culture. Each employee is from
different background and at different position. But, a code of conduct is helpful in keeping all
these at same standard. A code of conduct is helpful for the effectiveness of the compliance,
ethics and encourages employees to handle ethical issues they are commonly facing in everyday
working life. It could also used to reference valuable, helping employees in locating important
document and many other resources related to ethics in the organization. It defines business
objectives, mission, vision and many more principles of standard conduct. It is helpful in
knowing about how much the customers are valuing integrity. It clarifies the behaviours and
provide the ground work as a warning. It highlights the structure of a business and
responsibilities of each employees. As it is necessary to maintain sustainability at work place,
professional bodies such as: Ceres, carbon trust and other are helpful. Different body follows
various style to overcome the issue of sustainability. They are also helpful in determining the
reputation of a business and prevent burden of government regularities. It shows the competency
level and job experience of any employee.
PART B – CPD PLAN
The plan designed to help in managing an individual's own learning and growth is termed
as continuing professional development plan(Woolhouse and Nicholson, 2020). It is the
combination of ideas, approaches and techniques which will help in developing the skills of the
individual. It is helpful in the identification of various opportunities which are necessary for the
development of one's career and how to find out those opportunities.

What do I want to learn? How do I achieve this? Which resources are needed
to achieve it?
Writing skills Everybody could write either it is
effective or ineffective. But most
valuable is to write innovatively. I
will now start more concentrating
at reading more books and online
theory on various topics(Rao,
2019). I will schedule minimum
one hour for practising daily. I will
focus at different styles of writing
of popular writers.
 Books
 Novels
 Journals
 Dictionary
Research skills It is very important in today's
scenario. It is the process of
collecting relevant data for a given
topic. It could be somehow unique
and could be collected by deep
study about the topic. I will
analyse first that how and from
where the data could be gathered,
what are the relevant sources and
other areas important for research.
 Books
 Journals
 Google
 Articals
Analytical skills It is the skill to convert long
sentences in to smaller one in
order to summarise it so that
conclusion could be developed.
There is a need to develop all type
of areas such as: critical thinking,
logical reasoning data analytics
and many more(Vaughan, 2020). I
 Books
 Magazines
 Mathematical practice
 Google

will start solving logical questions
on regular basis and read articles
to improve my analytical skills.
Conclusion
From the above report it could be concluded that global business is suffering with
problems such as: sustainability. It is an ethical issue faced by business organizations. Code of
conduct is helpful in fixing these ethical issues. These are the principles and rules within an
organization informing its employees about the expectations of the company from them. From
this report it is also concluded that how professional bodies such as: carbon trust, Ceres,
accountability and others are helpful in maintaining sustainability. The report is also containing a
CDP plan including how to develop some of the skills.

References
Books and Journals
Rees, T., 2020. Ethical issues. In Handbook for research students in the social sciences (pp. 140-
151). Routledge.
Martins, C.L. and Pato, M.V., 2019. Supply chain sustainability: A tertiary literature
review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 225, pp.995-1016.
Gaydosik, V., 2022. Code of Conduct.
Mullen, C., 2019. Professional and Regulatory Bodies. Learning to Care: The Nurse Associate,
p.31.
Rao, P.S., 2019. The significance of writing skills in ell environment. ACADEMICIA: An
International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 9(3), pp.5-17.
Vaughan, D., 2020. Analytical Skills for AI and Data Science: Building Skills for an AI-Driven
Enterprise. " O'Reilly Media, Inc.".
Woolhouse, C. and Nicholson, L.J., 2020. Continuing professional development (CPD) That is,
of a practicing professional. Mentoring in Higher Education: Case Studies of Peer
Learning and Pedagogical Development, p.301.