By Sam Altawil
Corporate scandals such as the BP oil spill management and Goldman Sachs’ fraud implications have made worldwide headlines in recent months. Scandal has been nothing new to either corporate or fire departments over the years, and typically the consequences are the same — the public trust is lost and the organization’s creditability is damaged as a result of such inappropriate behavior.
In recent times, organizations have begun to redefine their core values and adopt a more social moral value system that would serve the public’s interest. Ethical policies were created and immediately publicized on their websites, handbooks and, in some cases, commercials.
However, there are those who believe that these ethical policies are used as a means for public relations, and seldom used or enforced. Some refer to it as “the spitting on the sidewalk rule” — everyone knows it exists, but no one follows it or enforces it. On the other hand, there are many organizations that do enforce their policies.
External use
Ethics can generally be defined as a set of moral principles that defines good behavior as it applies to society as a whole. These principles are designed to benefit the many rather than the few. The overall benefits of practicing ethical behavior for organizations include improving public trust, continuous reliance and employee morale.
In the past many organizations have adopted a standard for professional conduct policies, which certainly contains ethical principles. However, ethical policies enable a clearer definition. Essentially, they expressly address wrongful behavior that currently exists in many organizations, but also it expresses the core values of the organization.
The general design of such a policy is:
1. Describing the objectives of the policy, which generally guides the employees in everyday ethical work practices
2. Describing the core value, which helps the confidence and trust of the public
3. Implementing ethical training for all employees to assure compliance
4. Providing a “hotline” for reporting anonymous unethical conduct, which generally is managed by a third, non-interested party
Today, ethics is a part of many, if not all, organizations, rather than a few years back when it was only a philosophical discussion in academic classrooms. In fact, in recent times, federal and state regulations have addressed compliance requirements stipulating actions that are prohibited for the protection of the public.
On the negative side and as indicated previously, while these policies have been adequately drafted and implemented, there are issues in some organizations of them seldom being utilized or enforced.
Besides from the cases that make the headlines, many are less public — for example, some leaders of organizations have promoted less qualified individuals who they favor; disciplinary measures are not being applied equally to all; performance appraisals are not conducted objectively, which for many employees, whether it be in the public or private sectors, is the number one issue.
Internal use
So is there a duty to be ethical during everyday operations? The short answer is yes. What we know so far is that ethic policies are important, but need to be utilized more internally.
Let’s begin with leadership training; this type of training is implemented for all levels of leaders. While it covers management skills, proper communications, methods of conducting performance reviews, and criteria for discipline, etc., ethics unfortunately are never mentioned during these trainings.
The main reason is because ethics is presumed in leadership training, and the rationale behind it is that proper management concepts are ethical in nature. Conceivably it is true, but in practice it has not been the case.
Additionally, organizations also assume that as long as no legal violations occur, subsequently no ethical standard has been compromised. In other words, if it is legal then it must be ethical. Well, political campaign contributions are legal, but I have yet to see a legitimate ethical argument for its practice.
These types of presumptions have kept ethics off the radar screen for many organizations,
The solution is simple — an expansion of the ethical policy, to include ethical awareness in all aspect of daily operations. Ethical principles should be incorporated in leadership training, while reinforcing ethical principles thereafter, but most importantly ethical behavior must be monitored and enforced for all. Like safety practices, ethical practices share the same behavior traits; both require constant monitoring and reinforcement. By being pro-active, organizations can position themselves to be more defendable on ethical issues as they escalate.
Sam Altawil is a Human Resource leader with experience in human resources, legal compliance and financial responsibilities. He works closely with organizational leaders to improve personnel and business efficiency by mapping and executing strategic campaigns. He currently works at Professional Employment Resolutions in Sacramento, which helps clients focus on their core business by providing HR support for their organization while helping reduce costs and administrative redundancies. You can contact Sam at leadership_hrlegal@yahoo.com.