Prioritise ethics training for employees

manufacturers to consumers.
It is therefore vital for retailers to act in an ethical manner because they affect the lives of many people through the services they offer.
Employees of retail shops are sometimes forced by the demands of their jobs to bend or disregard ethical considerations when dealing with customers.
Take for instance food recycling in the retail food sector.
Some businesses publicly declare that food left for a day cannot be sold to customers the following day, but behind closed doors it recycles the same food and offers it to unsuspecting customers the following day.
The same food can even be offered two days after it was prepared, those who see this will know that the business is being dishonest or untrustworthy.
Apparently cases of this nature are rife in the food retail sector in the country. Retail employees thus sometimes are often faced with ethical dilemmas when torn between short-term pressures from business owners and management to achieve sales targets or some other objectives, and long-term goals of achieving customer confidence and goodwill.
Zimbabwe has in the last few years experienced rapid growth in the retail sector despite the negative impact of the economic recession experienced in the last decade.
The country is witnessing the expansion of the retail sector particularly in response to the dollarisation of the economy, and as the sector becomes more dependent on imported stocks than local goods.
New supermarket chains have sprouted up and the informal sector continues to grow.
Given the existing harsh economic environment, it is arguably this sector that is performing relatively better as compared to other sectors in the economy.
Retail outlets in Zimbabwe offer a wide range of consumer goods that include restaurants, small general dealers, clothing, electronics, furniture, chain stores, department stores, etc.
The highly competitive climate prevailing in the sector means consumers are now faced with greater choice in terms of where to do their shopping.
Customers now have the ability to enforce higher expectations on retailers since they have a choice of shops to choose from if a particular shop does not adequately meet their expectations.
A decision or action on the part of a business’ salespersons subsequently has the potential to alienate customers who, as a result, may choose to do their shopping with alternative retailers.
It is on the basis of this that this article is encouraging retailers to introduce business ethics training for employees in the sector as a way of improving service provision and securing long-term customer trust and goodwill.
Besides offering the traditional customer care training to staff, retailers should appreciate the value of taking their staff through business ethics training.
This is because the decisions and actions of employees who are in direct contact with customers have the greatest potential to endear or alienate customers from that shop.
Ethics training provides a unique competitive advantage. Shop managers need to develop ethics guidelines and policies for staff and make sure employees are fully trained on the guidelines.
In fact, training in customer care should deliberately be embedded with business ethics training to help staff deal effectively with customers’ demands.
Inability by retail salespersons to resolve the ethical conflicts inherent in their jobs as they interface with the public is sure to result in poor customer satisfaction and “customer flight”.
Management in the retail sector should create work environments around which ethical questions and issues can be raised and debated freely by staff.
Free discussions of business ethics issues in the business should lead to easy identification of ethical grey areas, and the development of ethical standards for the whole business.
The best approach in instilling ethics in the business is to teach staff members to live life as if they are in a fishbowl, expecting that everything you say and or do can be observed by customers and others.
This ensures a level of care when dealing with customers and other employees, and helps secure customer loyalty and goodwill.
Retail shops, which take time to discuss and establish ethics management structures, are assured of roaring business through secured customer loyalty and support.
It is important to realise that customers, retailers and employees all have their ethical expectations in their-day-to day interactions. Retailers want their employees to be honest in their dealings with the customers and with their co-workers.
Customers expect the business and its employees to be honest and ethical in their dealings with them.
Employees expect business owners and management to be honest when dealing with them.
These are fair expectations for all. To then ensure a sound relationship amongst these key stakeholders in the retail business, a holistic approach towards developing ethics decorum in the business should be adopted, and should take cognisance of these diverse expectations.
Poor ethics demonstrated by the business owner or senior management can teach employees that the business is prepared to cut corners at the expense of customers.
This will lead to employees themselves following this behaviour. Remember leaders set the tone at the top and model behaviour in the business.
So everyday, business decisions you make should demonstrate respect for ethics.
Hiring, or the employee selection process, is another very important activity in retailing.
Cases of employee theft are very common in the retail sector and poorly done recruitment and selection processes will see the firm losing out through this vice.
According to a recent market survey in the UK, shoplifting by employees, account for 30 to 35 percent of stock loss from crime or waste expressed as a percentage of sales in the retail sector. The success of a retail firm is thus dependent on the quality of the individuals who comprise that firm.
Indeed, “people are the most important asset of any organisation”.
Retailers should, besides using the customary staff selection procedures, use screening mechanisms that bring into their establishments employees with an ethical orientation.
And to complement the propagation of ethics awareness across the retail sector, retailers can also join hands to fight the scourge of employee theft by coming together to create an industry blacklist of employees found guilty of theft.
They should also share a list of delinquent employees, which may include information like names and details of people identified for unethical conduct, bad behaviour to customers, and other misconduct.
A shared pool of blacklisted employees will help ensure that employees sacked by one retail firm do not easily find employment with another, hence curtailing incidences of employee theft and inappropriate behaviour in the industry.
l Bradwell Mhonderwa is the Managing Consultant of Business Ethics Centre, a corporate governance and business ethics management firm. Phone 04-293 2948, 0712 420 090, 0772 913 875, or email [email protected]