Today’s corporate world is full of ethical challenges and failures. Ethics are standards of conduct and judgments about fair and appropriate behavior.
Top Five Tips for Improving Ethics in the Workplace
1. Engage with employees and customers.
Your colleagues are likely to invest in a Code of Practice/ Ethics Code if they are involved in developing it. Why not carry out some engagement sessions with your colleagues when creating or updating your policies so that everyone can feel like a part of the company’s vision and values? This applies to your customers and clients too. Ask them if they would like to see you working more ethically. You may find you are already doing so – you are just not promoting it widely enough.
2. Empowerment in Work Ethic.
If you want to get the best work morals out of your employees, you need to empower them from time to time. Empowerment involves quite a few concepts; one of them is training. Organize training seminars by inviting experts to educate employees on how to deal with problems. Nominate them for seminars conducted outside the organization and give them a chance to share what they have learned with other employees. It helps greatly, especially when it comes to changing the attitude and boosting employee energy levels.
3. Reward ethical behavior.
Employees are more likely to act with integrity & value honesty if their actions are valued. A great way of promoting the value of following your company’s Code of Practice/ Ethics Code is to reward those who do it well. Conduct a monthly governance award, send ‘star cards’ to individuals; raise the best example of how someone has behaved with integrity at your team meetings.
4. Know where you stand.
Senior leaders in the study stated: in contrast to what corporate compliance officers would like us to believe, their organizations’ codes of conduct and ethics training was not helpful when it came to managing ethical dilemmas. Rules and regulations often do not always cover major ethical issues, especially those around people and resource trade-offs. Even the law, they said, is limited as it is usually geared to big transgressions.
5. Wrapping Up Strong Work Ethic
When working to improve organizational ethics, you need to be careful with the steps you take to ensure you attain desirable results. There will be instances when you think you are taking reasonable measures to improve work morals amongst your employees only to end up deteriorating the entire situation. Always make informed decisions to avoid spending too much time, energy, and resources in improving the moral principles of your employees.