Code of Business Ethics

Ethics

Working in an ethical way will help us to be safer and perform better. Our reputation and future depends on us all maintaining the highest standards of business behaviour and acting with integrity in everything we do. At Network Rail, this means doing the right thing and abiding by a set of principles that guide not only our employees, but also our contractors and suppliers.

We have a number of policies and tools in place to support our colleagues in making the right decisions. You can find more information about these below.

EthicsApp

EthicsApp can help you make ethical decisions on the go. It contains all of our ethics policies along with an interactive decision-making tool to support you in making the right choices around gifts and hospitality, conflicts of interest and speaking out.

You can download it to any device through the Network Rail App Catalogue, or desktop users can access an online version here.

 Code of Business Ethics

Complementing our Safety Vision, our Code of Business Ethics is one of the most important documents we own. It sets the standard of behaviour expected of all of us. It’s structured by our values and is underpinned by the policies that we follow as an organisation.

The code is here to bring our values to life, empowering us in our decision making, and guiding us to do the right thing on a range of topics such as dealing with safety concerns, handling personal information, promoting diversity and inclusion and social media.

You can find the code within attachments, on EthicsApp and the ethics page on Network Rail’s external website.

iEthics

iEthics is our online register for logging all declarations of offers of gifts, hospitality and conflicts of interest and supports us to be transparent and challenging in the decisions we make.

Using iEthics is the start of a conversation. Your line manager will be able to view your declaration, add comments, and talk to you about any action needed.

iEthics can be found in the Oracle E-Business Suite, within ‘Employee Self-Service’. If you don’t have access to a computer, speak to your line manager or HR business partner, who will be able to help you.

Speak Out

Our Speak Out service is for reporting concerns, suspicions or knowledge of wrongdoing taking place in Network Rail.

The service is run on our behalf by an external third party and is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Any reports are handed to our Counter Fraud and Investigations (CFIS) team for initial review.

Anyone can use our Speak Out service – it’s not just for Network Rail employees, and you can make a report anonymously, if you wish.

You can contact Speak Out by:

phone 0808 143 0100, or online speakout.networkrail.co.uk

For more information see our Speak Out (whistleblowing) policy on EthicsApp.

Training

Ethics is a responsibility shared by us all, so it’s important that we’re all clear on what’s expected of us, and those we do business with.

We have two mandatory ethics modules at Network Rail. A Spotlight on Business Ethics Part One and Two.  The training explores various ethics topics in more detail – including fraud, conflicts of interest, gifts and hospitality, bribery and modern slavery.

You can view one of our training courses, designed with our operational staff in mind, by downloading the course from the attachments section on the right-hand side of this page.

Important: if you are an employee and have access to Oracle, please complete the briefing via Oracle, and not via Safety Central. Completing via Oracle will ensure that you are awarded the associated competence.

Modern slavery

It’s estimated that there are almost 21 million victims of forced labour worldwide – 13,000 of these in the UK.  At Network Rail we’re committed to doing business in a sustainable and responsible way. This includes a commitment to do all that we reasonably can to prevent all forms of modern slavery in our supply chain and in any part of our own business, and we expect our customers and suppliers to do the same.

For more information, view our Anti-Slavery and Human Trafficking policy on EthicsApp , or take a look at our Modern Slavery page.