We talk with compliance professionals every day who share the goal of making their Code more accessible and engaging.
The feedback they're hearing sounds familiar: "Help me find what I need faster." "Make it scannable." "Show me how this guidance connects to my daily work." "Say this in plain language."
Here's the thing: most employees want to do what’s right. The easier you can make it to navigate your Code, the more likely they will turn to it when they need guidance.
In this blog post, we’ll explore five practical content strategies to improve your Code of Conduct.
Opportunity #1: Show Employees How to Act, Not Just What to Avoid
The most effective Codes focus on positive behaviors rather than lists of prohibitions. Instead of "Don't accept gifts over $50. Don't discriminate. Don't violate antitrust laws," they guide employees toward the right actions.
The Enhancement: Frame your content around positive behaviors and show how these tie to organizational values. Instead of "Don't accept inappropriate gifts," try "We build trust by observing clear guidelines when we give and receive gifts and entertainment."
Show employees a vision of what "good" looks like. This approach feels genuinely helpful—showing employees you're equipping them to succeed, not just listing what they shouldn't do.
Opportunity #2: Prioritize Clarity Over Legal Complexity
Your lawyers absolutely need to review the Code—we all know that. But the primary audience is your employees, and they need actionable direction they can understand and apply.
When employees say there's "too much legalese," they're not saying they don't care about compliance. They're telling us the content is harder to use than it needs to be.
The Enhancement: Focus on the practical, relevant guidance that employees truly need to know. Save the complex legal details for your policy documents. Your Code should answer questions like "What do I do if a customer offers me tickets to a game?" not provide a comprehensive treatise on anti-corruption legislation.
Write in clear, direct sentences. Use vocabulary words your employees would use. Aim for an 8th-grade reading level. Overall, prioritize comprehension over complexity.
Together, these steps will reduce confusion so people can easily understand and apply what you are asking.
Opportunity #3: Make Your Design Support Navigation
When employees open your Code and see page after page of dense paragraphs, it's hard for them to find what they need. Good visual design isn't just aesthetic—it's functional.
One of the most common requests? "Make it easier to scan." Employees want to find information quickly, and smart formatting helps them do exactly that.
The Enhancement: Break your Code into modular sections that are easy to navigate. (Doing this also supports a design-forward layout!). Use headers, sidebars, callouts, and white space to create visual hierarchy. Include "key takeaways" for each section. Use real-world examples in eye-catching sidebars to illustrate your points.
Visually organizing your information gets employees to the right answers faster.
Opportunity #4: Put Topics in “Buckets” for Comprehension
One big hurdle in creating a great Code is finding a way to present the content so it doesn’t just seem like a big list of unrelated rules.
It might seem obvious to compliance professionals that Code topics represent areas that bring legal, ethical, or reputational risk. But to the average employee, it can seem like just a grab bag of random subjects—conflicts of interest, antitrust, data privacy, anti-corruption, AI, human trafficking.
With 20 or even 30+ risk areas in many Codes, it can be tough for an employee to remember what’s in the Code and how it relates to other Code topics.
The Enhancement: Consider organizing topics into larger content groups and then give those groups clear and user-friendly names.
—> “We Respect Others:” Mutual Respect, Workplace Safety, Human Rights, Personal Privacy, plus other topics how to treat people
—> “We Compete Fairly:” Antitrust, ABAC, Gifts & Entertainment, Selling to the Government…you get the idea
Doing this collects numerous Code topics into 5-6 “content buckets” that, in turn, describe “how we work here” — how we treat each other, how we sell and market, how we manage information, etc.
This simplifies the structure and makes it much more digestible to the average non-lawyer.
Opportunity #5: Make It Practical and Relevant
General principles about "integrity" and "respect" are important, but employees also need to see how these values apply to real situations. The strongest Codes translate abstract principles into specific guidance and concrete scenarios.
This gives employees:
- Guidance they can apply
- Reduced ambiguity or need for interpretation
- Insight into how these topics typically show up
The Enhancement: For each topic, ask yourself: What, specifically, do employees need to do or not do in this area? Identify a list of 3-6 core expectations. Then aim to write these in clear, straightforward language.
For a topic like confidential information, this might look like:
- Don’t leave confidential information unattended where others might see it, such as on your desk, a copy machine, or an unlocked laptop screen.
- Never discuss confidential or sensitive information in public where others might hear.
- Use a laptop screen protector if you work in public, including coffee shops, airplanes, and remote locations.
- Follow all IT safeguards and policies, including password and device security requirements.
By being specific and action-oriented, you will provide employees with examples of actual day-to-day decisions and actions to pay attention to.
Moving Forward
These five strategies work together to transform your Code from a compliance requirement into what it should be: the foundation of your ethics and compliance program.
The work you put into making your Code accessible, practical, and genuinely helpful pays dividends across your entire program. It strengthens employee trust, supports better decision-making, and contributes to the kind of ethical culture that regulators, boards, and senior executives want to see.
