Assessing ethics in organisations

ethics on business operations.

These tools include employee surveys, interviews, trainee feedback and audits among others.
Employee surveys are proving to be one of the most powerful tools an organisation can use to measure its ethics processes, including determining its ethics pulse.

Surveys measure a combination of actual behaviour exhibited such as whether employees observed misconduct, and employees’ perceptions of the firm’s ethics climate such as whether they fear victimisation if they report misconduct.

To ensure the surveys are fully comprehensive, they should include HR variables such as motivation, job satisfaction/dissatisfaction, staff moral, absenteeism, etc, because the inclusion of these HR issues will help to provide a complete and accurate reading of the company’s ethics.

Information gathered through surveys give the organisation a picture of its ethics climate and its business conduct.
Such information can then be used as baseline data for comparison with subsequent data to detect patterns and identify trends over time, or can be used for comparing findings with those of similarly situated firms.

Interviews can also be used to gauge employee perceptions on ethical issues. To interpret enterprise-wide ethics survey findings better, measurement must include individual interviews, group interviews and focus groups.

It should as well include reviews of relevant internal documents such as policies and procedures, the mission statement and strategic plan. Exit interviews provide valuable insights into an organisation’s ethics climate.

Incorporating ethics-related questions in exit interviews provides a channel for employee feedback and normally elicits honest responses.
If questions are crafted properly, departing employees can reveal a lot about the firm’s ethics climate.

The interview might ask for example, whether management and supervisors model ethical behaviour and whether unethical behaviour is punished in the organisation.
Audits that assess a company’s ethics risks and the effectiveness of its ethics processes are an important ethics measuring tool.

Auditors should evaluate ethics management processes and assess their effectiveness against best practices and set outcomes.
This evaluation can be made more comprehensive by including the firm’s enterprise-wide risk profile in the evaluation process.

Analysing calls that come through whistle blowing is another effective way of evaluating the impact of the ethics effort in the company.
Experiences in various organisations show that the key to picking up useful information from whistle-blowing data is to look beyond the raw data and analyse the actual content of the calls.

It is common to find that most of the calls made through whistle-blowing are more about HR issues than they are about misconduct committed in the organisation.
An analysis on reports by whistle-blowers is obviously more meaningful when it is tracked over time to determine patterns and trends.

Feedback captured from trainees after delivery of ethics training is another important way of evaluating the effectiveness of the ethics programme. The training period provides employees with an environment where they can freely express their concerns without fear of victimisation.

Sometimes organisations can measure the success of their ethics thrust by simply listening to what employees say about company ethics in their informal groups, or in their everyday chit chats.

The success of company ethics can also be measured when employees are encouraged to provide feedback on the goodness and badness of the ethics endeavour using informal means. Not only can this approach generate valuable information, but it also sends a powerful message to employees about the importance of open discussions about the organisation’s ethical culture.

The measurement of the ethics climate, however, is not a one-size-fits-all setting. The use and importance of each tool is very much related to the context of the particular organisation; i.e. its size, complexity and its existing organisational culture.

Each organisation is different, with unique cultural factors and risks. As a result a meaningful analysis of the impact of company ethics to its operations is possible by first understanding the unique characteristics of the organisation.

Managers should understand that the only surest way to close the gap between the company-listed values, and the “how things really work here” issue is by implementing a well-researched ethics management programme.

Such a programme will translate listed values into operational values through a clear and deliberate management effort that is anchored on ethics training, ethics rewarding and sanctioning, ethics auditing and evaluation.

Research shows that the most successful ethics programme is the one that is successfully embedded or aligned to the organisation’s mission statement and strategy.