adminBradwell Mhondera Business Ethics
There are a number of things company leaders must accomplish in order to grow ethical cultures in their organisations. And as one of the first steps towards building an ethical corporate culture, leaders must institute the examination of the existing state of the organisation through management tools such as the SWOT analysis.
Examination of the current state will unravel critical organisational issues and identify existing gaps between “the way we do things here” of the organisation and the envisaged new ethical paradigm.
A SWOT analysis will help organisations to systematically scan the existing culture and business operating environment, findings which will then be used to develop the initial planning document that must form the basis for an effective corporate ethics management process.
Leaders must be powerful communicators of ethics to staff. Employees need clear and consistent messages that ethics is essential to the success of the organisation.
Leaders must be at the forefront of effectively communicating ethical standards and expectations to staff, and they must schedule business ethics training for employees, including ensuring ethics is embedded in reward management systems of the organisation.
Ethics must be incorporated in reward systems so that it becomes an explicit part of compensation and promotion decisions in the organisation.
High performers should be rewarded not only for their good performance, but also for their ethical prowess.
Rewarding ethics will send a clear message to staff that both the performance targets and ethical behaviour count and unless individuals have both, they should not expect advancement, promotion and good rewards in the organisation.
Company leaders have the responsibility to schedule ethics training for all staff in the organisation. They should know that simply telling employees to be ethical is not enough.
Apparently, impactful organisational ethics goes beyond having individuals of a good upbringing as employees, a myth that is held by many. Corporate ethics demands engagement of staff on ethical matters and making ethics training mandatory at all staff levels.
Ethics training will capacitate employees to deal decisively with ethical dilemmas and other complex ethical issues they meet on a daily basis in the workplace.
When leaders push for the ethics agenda, the overarching goal should be to create a compelling ethical culture that revitalises organisational processes including making the ethical culture a source of competitive advantage.
Company leaders should seek to find answers to the following questions:
Do employees feel safe to report unethical practices in the organisation?
Do employees think that the organisation always treats them fairly?
Do employees feel valued as key stakeholders of the organisation?
Do employees feel pressured to compromise company values?
Do employees believe ethical behaviour is rewarded or unethical behaviour punished in the organisation?
Does the organisation have the interests of workers at heart?
These questions speak to the heart of the fundamental issues that form the visible aspects of an ethical organisation.
It is when company leaders secure answers to such questions that they can correctly gauge the ethical mood in the organisation.
Company leaders must exemplify ethical behaviour, meaning their conduct on and off the job must be above board. Leaders must provide ethical leadership, and they should eat, drink, and sleep ethics.
Company leaders must never give lip service to ethics for doing so simply leads employees to reach, rightly or wrongly, the conclusion that leaders do not care about ethics as much as they do about the bottom line.
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