Professional Associations
Professional Associations are the cornerstone of professional ethics for their sectors, providing guidance, upskilling and peer networks to hundreds of members every year. Based around the Code of Ethics or Code of Practice, these Associations serve a vital role in promoting the strategic interests of their profession, advancing best practice within the field, and securing the confidence of both the public and regulators.
Ethilogical has a strong relationship with Professional Associations, and through our research and experience has developed a suite of services to help your organisation to both secure its current status as the peak body of its industry, and identify and advance its grand strategic interests into the future.
The services are available both as a package and individually as suits the needs of each Association, and combined offer the opportunity to secure the best possible ethical outcomes for the Association, its members, its clients, and society as a whole.
Code of Ethics Review and Operationalization
A Code is not about compliance: professions that use their Code of Ethics/Practice to secure the interests of their members and advance the future of the profession gain a significant strategic advantage to those who view it as a simple set of rules. Ethilogical ensures this is the case through a detailed review of a Professional Association’s Code to bring it up to best practice standards of professional ethics, and through development of member services and accountability mechanisms to ensure the Code is finely tuned to serve the interests of the Association, its members, their clients, and the profession as a whole.
Ethics Hotline and member support
A 24-hour email and phone hotline, providing Association members with a means to seek prompt and practical advice when facing a complex ethical challenge. This service has assisted numerous professionals to prevent and manage such crises, protecting their own integrity and that of Associations they belong to, by identifying and working towards the most constructive course of action available.
Code of Ethics member training
A profession’s Code of Ethics/Practice should serve as both sword and shield to its members. Upskilling members in the intention, application and practical consequences of an Association’s Code of Ethics ensures members see value in its use. This in turn has been demonstrated to ensure a high degree of compliance with these Codes, but also greater member capacity to promote the values of the Association and the profession as a whole over time.
Case study and practice notes development
The very nature of a Code of Ethics means that even the most comprehensive design will be abstract, and may not be useful for professionals in practice; by applying these Codes to real-world case studies and hypothetical scenarios, Ethilogical ensures members acquire a far higher degree of comprehension of the intent and use of the Code, resulting in far superior outcomes.
Incident investigation and resolution
Employing advanced empathetic and values-driven techniques, Ethilogical can identify the causal factors of infringements against a Professional Association’s Code, both on a practical level and on a far deeper systemic level. This allows for the development of solutions that not only address the immediate infraction in a constructive manner, but also allow for systemic changes to prevent repeated infractions.
Student and Early Career upskilling
New graduates in a profession are highly vulnerable to a number of common challenges. This workshop directly identifies these risks to Early Career professionals, ensuring a more successful transition into their careers, minimising conflict, maximizing retention, and providing these new graduates with an explicit and highly valuable reason to seek membership with their relevant Professional Association.
Professional to Manager transition
Professionals who are promoted into managerial roles commonly encounter challenges due to a lack of specific training in people management skills, despite excellent technical capacity. This training package provides new managers with foundational skills to manage likely interpersonal challenges they encounter, minimising disruption, maximising retention and maintaining/increasing productivity in the teams they oversee.
Membership development and succession plan
Generational growth and recession are critical factors to the strategic interests of a Professional Association. Successful growth in membership can lead to stagnation of the Association, resulting in dwindling value proposition to members, low retention, and perceived irrelevance to new graduates. Ethilogical provides a succession planning approach to ensure Professional Associations cater for the evolving needs of every generation of member, increasing their membership and identifying and securing their strategic interests over time.
Securing Professionalisation workshop
A key strategic goal of a Professional Association is to advance the interests of the profession they represent; increasing membership, improving consumer confidence, and ultimately securing a legally professionalised status. Employing the frameworks pioneered through Power and the Professional, Ethilogical will assess the current capacity of the Association and identify sources of power it may access to advance these interests, as well as potential risks or threats to be managed.
