Bribery and corruption!

If your business deals with large organisations, local authorities, schools, hospitals, social housing associations or businesses abroad, you will probably have noticed that contracts you are being asked to sign require you to comply with the Bribery Act 2010.

What does this actually mean?  Of course your business is not involved in bribery or corruption, so surely you can sign to say that this is true!  Unfortunately, this is not enough to comply with either the Bribery Act or the contract you are signing up to. 

Sometimes contracts specifically require you to have an anti-corruption and bribery policy. This is the fairly easy part – we provide many such policies to our clients – but even if the contract itself does not state that you require a policy, the Bribery Act requires you to have procedures in place, and the only way of evidencing this is to have a written policy.

More than this, the Act states that your business and management need to make your position on bribery, and what this means, clear and unambiguous to all staff and business partners. Bribery prevention policies and procedures must be embedded in the way that you work and everyone must understand them throughout your organisation. It is common for staff not to read their work policy document or, even if they do read it, not to understand what it means for them. The only way to really show that a policy has been communicated clearly and that staff understand it, is to go through it with them in a training session.

Indeed, more and more contracts and tender processes are specifically stating that you must provide your staff with training on this subject, so unless you can comply you could lose out on winning that new work.

At Birkett Long we can provide you with an anti-corruption and bribery policy for a small fixed fee, and run interactive training sessions tailored to the number of staff you have and the time available, also provided via a fixed fee. We ensure that training is relevant and of practical use to your staff at your individual business – and you will be pleased to hear that we promise no legal jargon either!