Second to last week
This week I worked closely with Gabby and Linda, the CFO, on anti-corruption strategy and updating the accounting manual. Since Linda is responsible for the finances she created the first round of updates regarding the accounting manual on her own. It was up to Gabby and me to review what she wrote and make sure that it was compatible with the other policies that we had created. Since topics such as procurement involve the handling of money there was significant overlap regarding who had control and could approve different expenditures.
In regards to the anti-corruption policy we needed to focus on six main points: to whom the strategy applies, who is responsible for the corruption management, how the organization communicates around corruption, how to report if suspicion arises, what actions will be taken by whom if suspicion arises, and how a whistle-blower is to be protected. What made writing this policy slightly easier than some of the others is that we were able to look at standard business practices, anti-corruption does not very much from one corporation to another. Additionally, IBJ is in the process of hiring a Chief of Staff, someone who could help enforce and handle all of these practices.
This week some of our documents started to be implemented by the staff. This led to a lot of practical feedback. One of the mistakes we made when creating some of our forms is that we didn’t necessarily get input from the people who would be using the documents on a daily basis. This feedback turned out to be crucial in re-writing the forms, getting rid of superfluous information in the forms and making them clearer to understand. One thing that we did not take into account was that the forms need to be very simple for some of our local workers in foreign countries to understand and be able to fill out the documents correctly.
This weekend I was supposed to go to Vienna for the weekend. However, after waiting at the airport for hours the flight ended up getting canceled with the next available flight after the date I was supposed to return. As a last minute back up plan I decided to spend a day at the UN Beach paddle boarding. Additionally I spent some time exploring new areas of Geneva, being my last weekend I wanted to make the most out of it. On Monday I kept my day off that was scheduled for my trip and decided to do a solo trip to Le Dole which was beautiful. Halfway up the hike I encountered three dozen cattle and a few Ibex’s with very long horns. It was majestic. At the peak of the mountain I was able to get a 360° view of the area with farmland on one side and lake Geneva on the other.
