Instructor Code of Conduct

What this document is

The Code is a formal document, adopted by resolution of the network on 1 September 2024. It is a source of rights, obligations and responsibilities for everyone it applies to: partners, directors, employees, collaborators and the companies operating under the shared brand. Observing it is an essential part of their contractual obligations, and it can be enforced against anyone who has been informed of it.

Enrollment principles

An instructor undertakes not to enrol someone they are objectively unable to help — whatever that enrolment is worth.

In a sector paid per enrolment, that commitment costs the fee of every person who should be turned away, and it is the one that can be checked from outside. If someone was signed up who should have been told to go elsewhere, that is a breach, and the procedure below is what follows from it.

The rule of distance

Conduct is required to be courteous, never aggressive, understanding and professional — and, with the particularities of each role, sufficiently formal and sufficiently distant. Instructors must not interfere with a participant's personal freedom or private life, and must not enter into a private or improper relationship with them. Where an educational relationship carries an imbalance of trust and authority, closeness is not a kindness, and the rule exists to make that explicit rather than to be tactful about it.

Reporting a breach

Everyone the Code applies to — inside the organisation and outside it — is required to report breaches in writing, by whoever committed them, to the HR Team at the address set up for the purpose. The HR Team undertakes to protect whoever makes a report from any retaliation and to keep their identity confidential, save where the law requires otherwise. The obligation to report is stated as a duty, not an option: a person who sees a breach and says nothing is themselves outside the Code.

How a breach is handled

Oversight of the Code sits with an internal body, the HR Team, independent of the administrative bodies of the network's companies and with its own powers of initiative and control. It receives and analyses reports, establishes whether a breach occurred, and communicates the outcome and the sanction to the company the person works with.

The procedure is written. The person is notified of the charge in writing and has seven days to respond or to ask to be heard in person; the procedure must conclude within thirty days of that response or hearing, with the decision given in writing.

Sanctions follow a graded scale, in proportion to what happened: a verbal warning, a formal written warning, temporary suspension, temporary reduction of responsibilities, revocation of the assignment or transfer, and termination of the collaboration.

Where the Code comes from

The Code of Conduct for instructors was first adopted on 1 September 2024, by resolution of Genio Net — the business network that represents Learnis in Italy. It has since been adopted across the group, and it is the organisation that trains and contracts the instructors that enforces it.