E-mails regarding mandatory ethics training went out this week to most UC Davis employees. Most of them are expected to complete the training via an online course that usually takes about 30 minutes to complete.

The systemwide training is required annually, as a means of increasing awareness of UC’s Statement of Ethical Values and Standards of Ethical Conduct, and related rules.

The online course features seven scenarios on such issues as:

• Favoritism in hiring or contracting.

• Using the university’s resources for your side job.

• Charging work to the wrong grant fund.

Beyond integrity and accountability, the university also commits itself to respect for the rights and dignity of others. This gives rise to a scenario in which an employee calls in sick for two weeks straight, leaving his colleagues to do his work and his manager pressing for details of the worker’s diagnosis.

The online training course explains what is expected of employees and what they are obligated to do with respect to ethical and compliant behavior, how the university’s ethical values and standards of ethical conduct apply to work life, and how to report suspected noncompliance.

“This training exists to remind each of us that the University of California acts from the values of honesty and integrity in all we do,” UC President Mark G. Yudof declares in the introduction to the online course.

The ethics training e-mails did not go to employees who were required to complete the 2010 compliance briefing for researchers (which came out in October), nor did the e-mails go to health system and School of Medicine employees will complete the course as part of their annual compliance training.

If you received an e-mail, you have until Dec. 31 to complete the ethics training. Each e-mail includes a link to the online course, and, if you take the course that way, the university will know automatically, via computer, that you have fulfilled the training requirement.

For units in which significant numbers of employees do not have regular access to workplace computers, UC Davis administrators will work with unit managers to arrange for group training, perhaps during staff meetings.

‘Faye’, ‘Ingrid,’ ‘Cliff’ and ‘Andrei’

The online scenarios involve fictitious employees with names like “Faye” and “Ingrid” and “Cliff.”

And then there is “Andrei,” a manager who is responsible for selecting and purchasing all of the office furniture for a new unit—and who wonders about accepting a free trip to Hawaii from the chosen vendor.

The training course asks for your opinion, and explains the rules that prevent Andrei from taking that Hawaiian vacation.

Not all the answers are so clearcut. And for those, the training course suggests “The Wall Street Journal Test.”

“That is, if what you are doing were to appear on the front page of the newspaper, would you feel proud of your actions?”

As for reporting alleged improper activities, the course suggests going to your supervisor, or, if you are hesitant about doing that, to Human Resources, Campus Counsel (Steve Drown), the Campus Ethics and Compliance Officer (Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Enrique Lavernia) or the “locally designated official,” or LDO.

UC Davis’ LDO is Bob Loessberg-Zahl, assistant executive vice chancellor, (530) 752-6550 or rjloessb@ucdavis.edu.

Or, you can maintain anonymity by calling a private-operated hot line:

• UC Davis—(877) 384-4272

• UC Office of the President—(800) 403-4744

ON THE NET

Ethics at UC Davis

UCOP Office of Ethics, Compliance and Audit Services