adminBradwell Mhonderwa Business Ethics
A code of ethics helps employees to be clear about what is and not ethical in the workplace. Affording employees clear guidelines and directions on expected ethical behaviour in the workplace helps to grow ethical cultures and sound ethical standards. A code of ethics is a corporate document that provides information and guidelines to employees on expected behaviour when dealing with customers, clients, stakeholders, and the general company business.
It addresses minimum standards of employee conduct in order to reduce the risk of business liability and damage to company reputation.
A code demonstrates management’s commitment to the growth of ethical business practices and compliance with applicable industry and Government regulations.
An enterprise’s code of ethics seeks to guide employees in dealing with real-life issues, including use of good judgment on all material issues in business.
The code of ethics should be able to inspire employees to do more for their organisations in the spirit of enhancing productivity and profitability.
It must be comprehensive enough to give support to employees and external stakeholders on all important matters.
The code of ethics should be a practical and easily accessible document. It should be written in plain language that is easy to understand, meaning it must avoid high sounding technical or legal terms.
Crafting a code of ethics is also an important step towards reinforcing the desired elements of the existing organisational culture.
The process of developing a code of ethics must be very interactive and inclusive, and it should be an essential part of any ongoing organisational dialogue designed to re-engineer company processes. The process should have enough participative feedback from employees so that they recognise the code as their own, which will make them support it and willing to live by it.
Engaging employees and external stakeholders such as suppliers in the crafting of the code will help in the crafting of a clear statement on what the business really intends to achieve including stakeholder buy-in.
Mr Michael W. Hoffman, an expert in code crafting encourages organisations to be particularly concerned with the tone of the code.
He was once asked to review a code titled “Our Responsibilities” and although he thought the title was good, every rule in the code began with the statement, “it is your responsibility to . . . ’”.
Mr Hoffman suggested changing the word “your” to “our” in order to ensure that the rules apply to everyone in the company.
Presentation style for the code is also of great significance, and this may involve the use of colour, illustrative pictures, examples, and text boxes for frequently asked questions, in the code document.
An ethics code should include a statement that the business will abide by the laws of the land, international laws, and industry regulations, including laws and regulations designed to protect the environment.
The code must set forth the general compliance policy guidelines quoting clauses that have specific application to the enterprise’s business.
The general nature of a code of ethics, as well as the issues addressed differ widely between different companies depending on the overall thrust of company strategy and the core issues the company wants the code to address.
Some codes are aspirational in nature, and others are prescriptive.
Aspirational codes seek to motivate employees to strive for certain ethical attributes, and prescriptive codes compel employees to comply with set behavioural standards.
However, a combination of aspirational and prescriptive provisions in the same code would clearly form a more revealing and effective ethics code than having a code that is purely aspirational or prescriptive.
This means when crafting the code, companies should carefully examine their relevant context and organisational cultures in order to identify those key factors that should inform the scope of the code.
Though fundamental, a code of ethics mustn’t be static. The code must be dynamic, and it must anticipate future guidance that employees require to deal appropriately with the ethical challenges they may face.
Laws and regulations change, and stakeholder expectations change as well. Over time, businesses become exposed to new technologies, new global trends, new market demands, new value systems, and new competition which tend to create new ethical gray areas for employees.
A responsible organisation should plan to monitor closely such changes and be able to adapt, update, and improve the ethics code accordingly.
It is however futile for companies to place too much significance on a stand-alone code as research suggests that an ethics code only becomes effective when it is made part of a clear corporate ethics strategy anchored on a comprehensive ethics programme that runs an ethics office, ethics reporting mechanism, and ethics reinforcement processes.
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