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Employee Ethics
What
it Means in the workplace
Employee ethics have taken front stage lately, with
so many high-profile companies entering the news on a daily basis for
all the wrong reasons.
The topic of employee and business ethics is one
that is getting a lot of attention currently, and rightfully
so.
After all, everyone has a different definition about
right and wrong, black and white, right and left, you name
it.
Because of this, it is important for a business
organization to define acceptable behavior.
Even still,
employee ethics is a responsibility that often falls on – you guessed
it – the employee.
Every Day
Scenarios
- Sometimes,
with the sensationalism that modern news coverage brings to extreme
cases involving employer ethics, we begin to feel like employee ethics
has connotations of large sums of money or scandalous
behavior.
- But this is simply not the case.
Every
day, employees make decisions that test the boundaries of business
ethics, and employers make decisions on what to let slide and what to
challenge.
- Consider this. As an employee,
have you ever made a personal phone call while you were on the
clock? Did this phone call last for more than a few
minutes? This is just one example of where employee ethics
come into play on a daily basis.
- If you are paid by the hour,
your employer was paying you to talk on the phone. Yet, most
of us have done this, or seen someone do it, and thought nothing about
it.
- In the minds of most employees, it is
impossible to be
efficient all the time while we are at work.
- Most organizations have guidelines for
handling these types of issues.
- Other
minor incidents also push the boundaries of business ethics.
- If a commission based associate knowing helps
a customer that was
already being helped by another associate, and closes the sale without
giving partial credit to the original associate, is this a violation of
business ethics?
- What if the employee didn’t directly know
another employee was helping the customer but failed to ask?
Now, the lines of business ethics begin to blur.
Establish
Doctrine
- As an employer, this ambiguity is the
reason you need to clearly establish what is acceptable behavior and
what is not.
- Let your employees know that person calls
should
be limited to emergency type situations, and should not last longer
than 5 minutes (for example).
- Or, tell your commission associates that they
must expressly ask each customer if they were being helped by another
employee unless they personally see the customer walk through the door
and are the first to great them.
Establishing rules up front makes it much easier
on employees because they have
an established procedure to follow. Furthermore, it makes
your job easier because violations of established procedure are clear
and defined.
If you have established the corresponding
punishments for each breach, then there are no surprises when you take
action.
Of course, it is impossible to
define every potential breach of employee ethics. The best
thing to do is let your employees know that you expect them to act in a
professional and courteous manner, and to perform their jobs to the
best of their abilities.
For further information on employee
rights, such as the employee
ethics section here, please be sure
to check out the following areas:
Similar to the employee rights, employers also have
responsibilities and rights. To learn more about this, check
out the employer
liability insurance section.
And don't forget to check out the various employment
background screening sections, especially if you are
interested in federal
government jobs.
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