Risk Management, Compliance and Ethics

The NorthWest Arkansas Community College workplace ethics program’s objective is to promote and encourage ethical conduct in the workplace by all college employees. The program emphasizes training and exposing College employees to ethics in the workplace so they are able to apply ethical concepts and principals to their NWACC responsibilities. Also, the program offers employees an opportunity to anonymously report ethical concerns or problems they encounter in the college workplace via the NWACC Ethics Helpline.

The NWACC Ethics Committee works with the college Ethics Compliance Officer to administer the college workplace ethics program and serves as a voice for college employees in the operation of the program. The Ethics Committee also is charged with evaluating the effectiveness of the program and designing and implementing improvements to the program to help accomplish its objectives.  

The core of the NWACC Workplace Ethics Program is the NWACC Code of Conduct which forms the basis for the entire College Workplace Ethics Program. All College employees are encourage to abide by this Code of Conduct as they perform their responsibilities and duties.

The College operates its Workplace Ethics Program according to Ethics Program Policies and Procedures. To view these policies and procedures, please click on the link below.

NWACC ETHICS PROGRAM POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

WORKPLACE ETHICS TRAINING PROGRAM

NorthWest Arkansas Community College provides training to all College full and part-time employees in workplace ethics. The main means of providing this training is through on-line training modules, which are about 30-40 minutes in length. This on-line training is mandatory for full-time employees and part-time employees are strongly encouraged to take the training.

A new workplace ethics training module titled STANDARDS OF ETHICAL CONDUCT is being offered to all NWACC employees the fall semester of 2009. This training was specifically designed for NWACC employees and features scenerios designed with NWACC employees in mind. In addition to this new module, NWACC employees can access on-line ethics training modules covering Code of Conduct, Ethical Decision Making, and Recognizing and Avoiding Conflicts of Interest.

Employees can access this on-line workplace ethics training

NWACC also uses mini-seminars available on-line, webinars and articles published from time to time to train its employees in workplace ethics.

WORKPLACE ETHICS REPORTING HELPLINE

NWACC is proud to offer its employees the opportunity to report ethical concerns and violations in a completely anonymous manner using the NWACC ETHICS REPORTING HELPLINE. This Helpline is maintained and housed by a third party vendor on its computers and is not in any way connected electronically with the College to assure complete anonimity for College employees.

All employees are urged to speak initially with their supervisor regarding concerns they may have of an ethical nature, but if they are not comfortable doing this or desire anonimity and confidentiality, then the NWACC Ethics Helpline is available to them.

The Reporting Helpline is accessed through the NWACC Intranet at the link shown on the Intranet homepage.

For questions/comments on this content, please contact Steve Pelphrey.

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