Ethical workplaces start with the leadership of a company. Leaders play a critical role in creating and maintaining a company culture and fostering an environment that supports ethical practices.
In small businesses, leaders are typically more visible to employees, and the manner in which they model the organization’s ethics and values is readily observable to all. Whom the leader hires, what programs and activities he or she supports, what behaviors he or she exhibits personally, and the rewards or criticisms given to others are signals to the rest of the organization of what’s really important in terms of company culture, values, and ethics.
Leaders must “walk the talk” and lead by example to create and foster an environment that embeds ethics into the company’s culture and includes integrity, honesty, and doing the right things right when getting work done within the company.
How to Structure an Ethical Workplace
One of the cornerstones in structuring an ethical workplace is to align internal systems and supports to make it easy for employees to make the right decisions and handle issues where there are blurred lines between what is right and wrong. This is done by making ethics a priority and developing (and clearly communicating) the direction employees are expected to take when confronted with ethical business dilemmas. It’s like giving each employee a compass – or today, a GPS – so he or she knows the direction to take to get “home” safely by managing the issue according to the company’s ethics standards.
Aligning your employees to do the right thing requires the following management actions:
- Be a champion of your program. Demonstrate ethics are one of the company’s key priorities whenever the opportunity presents itself.
- Hire employees who will support your values. Cultural fit is far more valuable than technical fit. You can train for technical skills, but it is far harder to train for honesty and integrity.
- Talk about what the right ethical values mean to the company. Constantly share the company’s values through employee communications such as company meetings, new employee onboarding, regular training updates, and employee recognition events.
- Demonstrate a commitment to your ethics program.Show your commitment by encouraging discussions of ethical concerns, highlighting examples of well-handled issues, and rewarding employees who do the right thing. Empower your employees to behave ethically. Let them know they will be rewarded for sharing concerns, and there should be no fear of retaliation for discussing those concerns with management.
- Address poor ethical decisions immediately. This includes explaining your concerns and enhancing your programs and systems so the issue will not recur.
Much has been written about elaborate ethics program designs, including hotlines for employees to confidentially report ethics issues, formal training programs, tracking systems and complex reporting structures, legal updates, feedback systems, and progressive disciplinary programs to ensure that businesses manage ethics completely.
For multinational companies with thousands of employees scattered across the globe, these programs make sense. In a small business environment, however establishing a good baseline program built into the company’s value system, communicating expectations, reinforcing those expectations, hiring the right people, making course corrections as necessary, and celebrating successes may be all you need to establish an ethics program that’s right for your company.
©2014 Reprinted with permission from HRThatWorks.com, a powerful program designed to inspire great HR practices.
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