This area focuses on how you develop your internal ethical compass, your personal conduct, and your understanding of how your values and actions impact others.

Ethical Foundation and Accountability:

You:

• Are a proud ambassador for KFRS. 
• Committed to the Code of Ethical Conduct and consistently strive for ethical conduct, reporting unethical or illegal acvity.
• Seek help if you face an ethical dilemma and/or are concerned about making a poor decision.
• Take ownership of work, meet deadlines and accept accountability for work, always seeking to improve your performance to contribute to organisational goals. 
• Seek feedback about your own performance to keep learning.
• Own when things go wrong for us and our teams and learn from your mistakes, sharing what you've learned with your team and celebrating successes together.
• Maintain trustworthiness and confidentiality with sensitive information, avoiding gossip or rumours.
• Seek awareness of wider organisational and political priorities.
• Care about our customers, your colleagues and the services we deliver.
   

Self-Care and Resilience:

You:

• Actively manage personal mental health, physical fitness and overall wellbeing.
• Recognise the pressures of work, role model resilience, and promote a healthy work-life balance for yourself and your team.
• Seek help when personal support is needed.

Professional Conduct and Respect:

You:

• Treat everyone with courtesy and dignity, remaining constructive and positive in discussions.
• Avoid offensive behaviour and are mindful of cultural and personal differences.
• Follow policies and procedures, valuing personal integrity, and help others to do the same.
• Raise concerns and call out negative/poor behaviour - you directly tell the person you're uncomfortable and ask them to stop. You raise issues in meetings to clarify unacceptable behaviours and with the individual.
• Identify and address poor performance in teams or behaviour directly, or by seeking support.
   

This area highlights your ability to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, safe, and empowered to contribute fully. This isn’t just a role for managers – it’s everyone.

Valuing Diversity & Promoting Positive Culture:

You:

• Value and appreciate differences in people, treating everyone with kindness and respect and seek to be curious about difference.
• Take responsibility for supporting an inclusive culture in your team and beyond, encouraging diverse points of view.
• Consistently model and encourage a positive attitude, fostering an optimistic and resilient mindset within the teams you work with.
• Actively learn about issues affecting diverse customers, the risks and equality of access to services issues people face due to their differences.
• Encourage people to understand, accept, and learn from cultural changes. Ensure your colleagues are aware of changes and how to apply them. 
• Manage quality in your team, using feedback to understand performance and local culture

Empathetic Engagement and Active Listening:

You:

• Work to build trust and foster constructive relationships to achieve goals.
• Talk to people in other teams and build relationships, supporting a "One Team" approach. You show genuine interest when talking to people.
• Practice active and engaged listening, striving to be open to diverse perspectives and understanding underlying issues.
• Encourage everyone to speak up and share their views, including colleagues who may not have obvious expertise, ensuring all voices are heard. Consider adapting your communication styles.
• Maintain a professional approach during disagreements, keeping discussions focused and respectful, and crediting others for their ideas.
• Use various methods to get feedback, understand views and have meaningful engagement on emerging issues.

Support for Wellbeing:

You:

• Actively look after team members, watching for signs of distress (including indicators of suicidal thoughts) and, if concerned about their wellbeing, raise the matter with them or, not appropriate to do so, your manager.
• Encourage an environment where it is acceptable to talk about how you and your colleagues are feeling and what support you or they need.
• Invest in preventative approaches to spot issues before they become worse.
• Create a culture where individual and team wellbeing is treated with importance and underpinned by care and support for colleagues.
• Act as a role model for ethical and outstanding leadership, encouraging a coaching culture. (Leaders as Coaches: Managers and leaders act as facilitators, mentors, and guides rather than just directing work. They focus on asking questions to help individuals find their own solutions.)

Developing and Supporting Talented People and Teams:

You:

• Work with your team to establish a clear purpose and goals, understanding that collaboration means listening and working towards shared understanding. 
• Encourage your team to build professional and effective working relationships and to speak up constructively.
• Actively help new team members and coaches/mentors’ others, encouraging them to adapt their behaviour and achieve their best performance.
• Understand that everyone has a different way of thinking and uses their talents to support work.
• Design work and learning opportunities so that everyone can succeed.
• Use continuous dialogue to support individuals.
• Are flexible in your leadership approach to ensure people give their best.
• Look for opportunities to support others through continuous dialogue and coaching, using organisational learning to help your team develop.
• Encourage participation from others in discussions and use different skills to help people communicate, recognising that some may lack confidence or have additional needs.
• Speak up and ask for learning opportunities if you recognise your skills are not as sharp as they need to be, qualifications are expiring or you’re not keeping up with changes in relevant industry / technology.
• Foster and embed the principles of a continually learning organisation and regularly raise debriefing on issues and successes.
• Ensure fair and effective systems are in place for career progression and nurturing, and you put mechanisms in place that give people access to coaching and mentoring.
• ‘Nip things in the bud’ to prevent a breakdown of relationships and poor performance of individuals and teams.
   

This area focuses on your ability to make sound decisions, manage resources responsibly, and help KFRS meet the goals of our CRMP (Community Risk Management Plan) while upholding ethical standards.  This is everyone in KFRS.

Proactive Problem Solving and Continuous Improvement:

You:

• Plan, prioritise, and manage your time effectively to get things done.
• Champion and positively accept necessary changes to continually improve services for customers by encouraging solutions and open discussion.
• Provide evidence-based challenges and constructive suggestions for improvement, while remaining open to and respectful of alternative perspectives from other colleagues.
• Consider how to improve systems and processes for your team and how that impacts other teams. 
• Develop rigorous business cases for change. You foster and enable continuous improvement using the right tools and continuously develop the team/wider organisation to be productive and effective. 
• Continually develop your ability to contribute to problem-solving by understanding issues, asking constructive questions and using different problem-solving techniques to find solutions that improve service for customers.
• Seek to use technology to work more effectively and encourage digital literacy.
• Take responsibility for your role in your team's effectiveness, aiming to improve outcomes and decisions. You anticipate local service issues and plan to resolve them.
• Develop systems and processes that are people-focused and seek feedback on service quality to identify improvement ideas. 

Look after our Money and Resources:

You:

• Manage all types of resources (money, time, materials, people) carefully to provide value and avoid abusing public trust and fostering that way of thinking with your colleagues.
• Consider the financial and resource implications of decisions, adjusting your approach and recommendations, and managing budgets accordingly. 
• Manage the expectations of others
• Through consultation, set actions, strategies and budgets that represent the best value for the service, now and in the future. 
• Ensure colleagues demonstrate appropriate business awareness so they can contribute ideas with background knowledge of whether they are realistic.

Transparent and Ethical Communication:

You:

• Present points concisely with an emphasis on WHY the decision or change is required, along with the benefits which support the CRMP or our enabling plans.
• Take responsibility for delivering KFRS messages positively, even when difficult, and find the best communication methods. When delivering difficult messages, don’t blame others for a decision.
• Are truthful and transparent in communications, even when difficult, ensuring clear reasons are given for decisions.
• Ensure everyone understands the seven data protection principles of the UK GDPR (set out within our Data Protection Policy), and verifies information, challenging deliberate negativity or rumours.
• Are aware of and acknowledge others' emotions, adapting your communication style accordingly.
• Take responsibility for delivering messages, monitoring and evaluating how they are received and disseminated. And reporting back to senior managers on how proposals for change are being received.
• Set up communication processes to ensure your team has access to accurate information, clarifying as needed.

Working together across KFRS

You:

• Contribute ideas and feedback, actively participating in meetings, and come prepared – having read the papers and background information
• Work with others to establish policies and guidance for ethical conduct across teams and KFRS.
• Contribute to helping the service understand more about different people and their needs, actively seeking feedback on emerging issues.
• Use your team's expertise to create a shared sense of purpose and understand how your work contributes to delivering the CRMP.
• Monitor service quality and share data to inform performance and planning. 
• Manage data and documentation effectively, working closely with the Data & Intelligence team to ensure we have ‘one version of the truth’ and not creating new sets of data.
• Consider the long-term view, understanding future political, social, and economic landscapes, and communicate this to your team and KFRS. 
• Use established KFRS tools to continually assess risk and create responsive plans.
• Plan, monitor and evaluate work to improve community outcomes. You review workloads, capacity, and well-being. 
• Help people realise their strengths and perform their best during collaborative projects. You find compromises when needed and ensure everyone understands shared goals and expectations at the start of joint work/projects.
   

This area focuses on your ability to be an advocate for our customers and drive improvements for them.

You:

• Know your actions affect others and everyone is a customer.
• Demonstrate compassion and care for customers in times of need and trauma.
• Seek to understand customer needs, including health and safety, safeguarding and inclusion, and how you represent people with additional needs. You learn about your local communities’ risks.
• Champion and navigate changes to continually improve services for customers.
• Build trust by listening and adapting to change. You take a structured approach to improve customer outcomes, ensuring PIAs (people impact assessments) are undertaken where necessary for key services, projects, policies and decision papers. 
• Share risk information and insights about communities.
• Create and maintain annual plans, considering team capacity and demands. You develop team plans to improve customer experiences.
• Encourage formal and informal feedback channels from colleagues and customers to drive service improvement. You develop and implement solutions based on sound evidence. 
• Focus on ‘marginal gains’ (looking to make small improvements) in processes and systems wherever possible.
• Implement systems to measure the quality of decision-making and learn from them, identifying emerging issues and risks early and putting plans in place to mitigate negative consequences. 
• Encourage innovation, including new technology, to improve service delivery.