01
Professional ownership
These standards apply to teammates seeking or serving NextTeammate relationships. They complement the Teammate Agreement, training requirements, and each client’s approved workflow and authority agreements.
Teammates are evaluated against agreed outcomes, service levels, communication commitments, security rules, and documented authority—not minute-by-minute supervision or subjective morality standards.
02
Reliability and communication
- Honor agreed outcomes, deadlines, meetings, and availability windows.
- Start agreed work with enough time to complete it safely and communicate early when a commitment is at risk.
- When blocked, state what happened, what is affected, what decision or input is needed, and a proposed recovery plan.
- Keep work, capacity, time, progress, and completion records accurate.
- Document recurring work so the client retains continuity and can understand the current state.
03
Authority and professional judgment
- Act only within the client-approved workflow, access, review, spending, communication, and AI boundaries.
- Escalate money movement, contracts, regulated advice, public representations, employment decisions, sensitive personal matters, and other consequential actions unless authority is explicit.
- Decline and promptly escalate an instruction reasonably believed to be unlawful, unsafe, deceptive, discriminatory, outside documented authority, or contrary to security rules.
- Never falsify work, qualifications, time, evidence, completion, or client approval.
- Disclose conflicts of interest and never subcontract, share an account, or let another person perform client work without written authorization.
04
Confidentiality, access, and AI
- Use named accounts, multifactor authentication, approved password management, least privilege, and client-approved systems.
- Report suspected credential compromise, phishing, lost devices, accidental disclosure, malware, or unauthorized access promptly; do not quietly conceal or erase an incident.
- Use AI only within the recorded workflow rules. Protect restricted information, verify facts and sources, review outputs, and document material AI assistance when required.
- Never use AI to fabricate evidence, citations, approvals, actions, identities, or completion.
- Return or delete client information and stop access when instructed at offboarding, subject to lawful retention requirements.
05
Respectful professional conduct
- No harassment, discrimination, threats, retaliation, coercion, sexual misconduct, fraud, theft, deliberate property damage, or intentional client impersonation outside documented authority.
- Communicate disagreements respectfully and ask clarifying questions instead of silently proceeding with unsafe assumptions.
- Protect cultural, religious, political, disability, and personal differences; performance feedback must address observable work and agreed expectations.
- Do not perform client work while materially impaired or in conditions that make the work unsafe.
06
Support, correction, and review
An isolated correctable miss ordinarily begins with clarification, coaching, or a recovery plan. Repeated or material concerns may lead to a written improvement agreement, training, narrower authority, workflow pause, reassignment, platform restriction, or termination. Credible serious concerns may require immediate temporary safeguards while facts are reviewed.
A complaint is not a finding. Teammates ordinarily receive notice, an opportunity to respond, a written outcome, and a reconsideration path. Good-faith reporting and participation in review are protected from retaliation.