This framework supports you to create a safe and positive culture at your club or organisation. It provides practical tools to help you identify harmful and unfair behaviour, take steps to prevent and address it, and make meaningful changes that strengthen your sport and community. 

Changing the culture at your organisation is ongoing, takes time and involves everyone. There is a strong commitment and understanding that integrity is core to your values and behaviour.  

Each club or organisation is unique, with different levels of knowledge and capability. You might be starting out or already have a strong integrity culture. See where you’re at. 

• Starting out. You recognise the need for building integrity at your organisation. You are developing how to recognise and respond to threats to integrity. 

• Developing. You recognise the threats to integrity at your club or organisation. You are developing consistent processes to prevent and respond to integrity practices. 

• Established. You have integrated processes that strengthen integrity. There is a focus on ensuring integrity practices are woven into your day-to-day operations. 

• Excelling. Your processes are advanced, leading and setting integrity standards across sport and recreation.  

Building a positive culture of integrity involves: 

• understanding harmful and unfair behaviour 

• understanding the risks to your club or organisation 

• preventing and responding to those risks 

• strengthening your culture with: 

• strong leadership that expects high standards of behaviour for themselves and others, through shared values 

• easy-to-follow policies and processes to prevent and protect people from harm 

• clear communication, two-way engagement and education to influence change 

• processes to safely report harmful or unfair behaviour. 

Find out how to understand, prevent and respond to risks

Strengthening your culture works hand in hand with doing the right thing. 

A positive culture of integrity happens when there is strong leadership. Leading with integrity is being accountable, open and transparent, and trustworthy. It means developing and advancing values that promote safety, fairness and inclusivity, and leading by example. 

There must be strong commitment from leadership that integrity is at the core of an organisation – the foundation that everything else is built on.  

• Develop a clear vision and plan to build integrity at your organisation. 

• Encourage and support staff, volunteers, and members to get involved in building your culture of integrity. Regularly communicate expectations and listen to feedback.  

• Clearly define the roles that are responsible for preventing and responding to harmful and unfair behaviour. 

• Be accountable for how your organisation manages and responds to integrity issues.  

Developing policies and procedures to prevent and respond to integrity issues are integral to building a culture of integrity. Policies document what you must do, and procedures are how you do it.  

• Identify the policies and procedures you need to address risk areas at your club or organisation. 

• Ensure they are easy to follow and easily accessible. Regularly communicate and share policies, including visitors to your club or organisation.  

When developing or updating policies: 

• involve everyone by asking and listening to people about what’s important to them 

• look out for policies from other clubs or organisations you can use or adapt 

• align all your policies so they are consistent. 

Monitor and evaluate how effective your policies are. Set up a policy register that keeps track of review dates and updates. Include: 

• a process to document and review concerns  

• how to measure the effectiveness of each policy. 

Download and adapt integrity policy templates

Communicate your values so everyone, including visitors, know that acting with integrity is how we do things round here.  

Regularly communicate your expectations for integrity. Everyone at your organisation needs to know: 

• that harmful and unfair behaviour is not tolerated 

• how to prevent, respond and report it. 

Ask for feedback from members, staff and volunteers about what integrity means to them, and what’s important.  

Develop guides and resources designed for the people at your organisation. They should be: 

• written in plain language, and appropriate for the age and stage of the reader 

• communicated and shared with members and visitors, so people know what to do and who they can go to 

• used to support learning for staff and volunteers. 

• Develop a learning plan to build awareness and understanding of harmful and unfair behaviour. Learning ensures everyone: 

• knows what harmful behaviour looks like 

• know how to respond and report it  

• is confident to identify and respond to harmful and unfair behaviour.  

• Learning needs to be accessible and relevant to staff, volunteers and participants. Design your learning programmes with that audience in mind.  

• Anyone who interacts with children or young people must complete a child safeguarding course. 

Child protection and safeguarding education

Respond to all integrity concerns, even if they are minor. Make sure it’s easy for people to report a concern and that they know what to do. 

• Establish policy and processes to manage and respond to complaints and concerns. 

• Appoint a welfare officer or safeguarding lead person responsible for managing complaints and concerns. 

• Establish a process to safely listen to and record complaints and concerns. 

• Establish a clear process to pass information on to trained people and protection services. 

• Encourage people to speak up by clearly communicating who they can speak to. Ensure people feel safe if they make a complaint.  

More on how to report a concern

The Code of Integrity for Sport and Recreation (the Integrity Code) is designed to make sport and recreation safer and fairer for everyone. Adopting the Integrity Code supports organisations build a lasting and positive culture of integrity where everyone can do the right thing.  

Any club or organisation can adopt the Integrity Code but we recommend national organisations adopt first. This means their member clubs, organisations and participants would also be bound to the Integrity Code. If you are a club or regional organisation and thinking of adopting the Integrity Code, check with your national organisation first. 

Find out more about the Integrity Code Find policies, guides and other resources