UNGC Local Network Armenia – Steering Committee Meeting ...

Ms. Narine Melikyan mentioned that Ashtarak-kat Company has the Code of Ethics adopted
since 2006 and that document stresses the values the company believes in and strives for. The
document as well as other internal documents of the company is available on the official
website of the company. Also important, the company organized special trainings for the staff
on the mentioned documents to make sure that each employee is well aware and able to apply
the Corporate Values. Nevertheless, a lot has to be done yet and the management of the
company is the primary responsible for that. There are difficulties, moments of
discouragement, however, the only way to overcome these is for the management to apply
and obey the rules on their own and serve as an example for all the others.
Mr. Gagik Danielyan added that usually companies/employees are resistant to changes and
change is really hard to make happen. Management should be the first to show the
importance of the changes and the benefit it can bring to the company and the employees on
own example. The Coca Cola company has the Code of Business Conduct adopted in the
company along with other internal procedures and regulations. The company is ready to share
the documents and its experience with others. Mr. Danielyan rejected the opinion that there is
something unique in Armenian reality and that it is difficult to introduce mentioned changes
in our country mentioning that everything depends on the commitment of the management of
the given company.
Mr. Gurgen Hakobyan said that the case of GTA is different because as an audit company
working in a strongly regulated field they were supposed to have all kind of regulatory
documents in place and moreover, being a part of international organization all the required
documents were adopted from the very beginning. Introduction and adoption of the
documents was easy in GTA as there are only qualified and educated people working in the
company who are open and they do understand the importance of corporate policies etc. The
most important thing for an audit/consulting company is to create the demand and require
client companies to apply effective internal regulations trough adoption of different kinds of
documents and for this reason the audit should itself have an effective regulatory system
within the company.
Ms. Susanna Khalatyan mentioned that UMBA fully understands the importance of such
documents and have tried several times to request companies to develop and adopt them.
However, the reaction of the companies, members of UMBA was mainly negative and the
prevailing opinion is that it is not the time and it is not that important/urgent for companies to
deal with the issue.
Agreements/decisions: Participants agreed that the members of the SC as well as other
companies in the network should be an example for others and for this reason these
companies should join their efforts in practicing more CSR through concrete actions/projects
and then only demand/require other companies to act similarly.
3. Raising the staff awareness and revising the strategy according to UNGC
principles.
Mr. Ralph Yirikian mentioned that the GC member companies should be required to show
the concrete steps toward raising the employees’ awareness on CSR/GC and make the
necessary corrections in their business strategies to comply with the 10 principles of GC. This
all should be started from simple things such as improving the working
conditions/environment for the employees. The employees are ambassadors of the companies
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