adminpractices. Managed business ethics helps to create an ethical culture that drives productivity and anchor competitiveness.
With the passage of time, it has thus become possible to quantify business ethics.
Employee surveys, employee interviews, the whistleblowing facility, and audits are some of the tools corporations now use to quantify business ethics, and effectiveness of these measurement tools is very much related to the company’s uniqueness.
Below is a synopsis of some of these ethics measurement tools.
Employee surveys
Employee surveys are commonly used to measure HR issues, and in like manner, they have become one of the most powerful tools a company can use to measure organisational ethics.
Employee surveys measure behaviour exhibited by staff such as whether employees observed misconduct, or whether they are willing to report observed misconduct.
They also consider employees’ perceptions of the firm’s ethical culture such as whether they feel pressured to compromise ethical standards, or fear victimisation if they report misconduct.
To ensure the surveys are fully comprehensive, the questions asked are blended with HR issues such as job satisfaction/dissatisfaction, staff moral, absenteeism, and others.
Inclusion of HR issues in the survey will help to provide a complete and accurate reading of the company’s ethical culture.
Interviews
The use of interviews to gauge employee perceptions on different workplace issues is a practice that is as old as the HR profession itself.
To interpret enterprise-wide ethics survey findings better, measurement should include individual interviews, group interviews and focus groups.
It should as well include review of relevant internal documents such as policies and procedures, rules and regulations, mission statement, and the company strategic plan.
Exit interviews can provide valuable insights into a company’s ethical culture.
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 ethical culture.
The interview might ask, for example, whether management and supervisors provide guidance on ethics, and, the opinion of the departing employee on the effectiveness of the existing ethics structures.
Audits
Independent audits that assess a company’s ethics risks and the effectiveness of its ethics management processes are an important ethics measuring tool.
Auditors should evaluate the company’s ethics infrastructure, and must assess its effectiveness against set targets, and best practices.
This evaluation can be made more comprehensive by including the firm’s enterprise-wide risk profile in the evaluation process.
Whistleblowing
Analysing reports that come through whistleblowing is another effective way of evaluating the impact of the ethics effort in the company.
Research shows that the key to gleaning useful information from whistleblowing data is to look beyond the raw data and analyse the actual content of the reports made.
Whistleblowing report analysis is more meaningful when its tracked over time to determine patterns and trends.
Employee feedback
Feedback captured from trainees after the delivery of ethics training is also an important way of evaluating the effectiveness of the ethics effort.
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 corporate ethics by simply listening to what employees say about ethics in their informal groups, or in their everyday chitchats.
Success of corporate ethics can also be measured when employees are encouraged to provide feedback on the goodness and badness of the ethics endeavour using informal means.
Information gathered using these ethics measurement tools give a company a picture of its ethical culture, with such information being used as baseline data for comparison with subsequent data to detect patterns and identify trends over time, or being used to compare findings with those of similarly situated firms.
Companies should understand that through the measurement of corporate ethics, they are able to unlock the value in organisational values, shape employee behaviour, and increase productivity.
Effective ethics management must include employee ethics training, ethics practising, auditing and ethics evaluation.
Research shows that the most successful corporate ethics is that which is aligned to the company mission statement and strategy.
Bradwell Mhonderwa is an Ethics Coach and Trainer with the Business Ethics Centre. Send feedback to [email protected], or call 0772 913 875
Online Reporter