Workplace Ethics Quiz

Workplace Ethics

• Workplace ethics refers to the moral principles, standards of behavior, and values that guide an individual's behavior in the workplace.
• It involves a set of moral principles, standards of behavior, and values that describe acceptable conduct in the workplace.

Importance of Workplace Ethics

• Builds customer loyalty
• Retains good employees
• Creates a positive work environment
• Avoids legal problems

Foundations of Ethics in the Workplace

• Ethics: a set of rules that describes acceptable conduct in society
• Values: acts, customs, and institutions that a team of people regard in a favourable way
• Morals: set of rules or mode of conduct on which society is based

Characteristics and Components of Workplace Ethics

• Workplace policy
  • Must be in harmony with all laws and regulations
  • Ensures that basic ethics preclude discrimination, unfair hiring and firing practices, and wages below minimum legal standards
• Workplace ethics and behavior
  • Crucial part of employment
  • Ethics and behavior are as important as performance and teamwork

Ethical Behavior in the Workplace

• Behavior
  • Specifies what is acceptable behavior
  • Addresses topics such as harassment, work attire, and language
• Integrity
  • Key component of workplace ethics and behavior
  • Involves being honest and doing the right thing at all times
• Accountability
  • Taking responsibility for your actions
  • Showing up on scheduled workdays, arriving on time, and putting in an honest effort
• Teamwork
  • Vital aspect of the workplace
  • Involves working well with others
• Commitment
  • Strong work ethic and positive attitude toward the job

Professionalism

• Conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or professional person
• Implies quality of workmanship or service
• Ten golden rules to being professional:
  1. Strive for excellence
  2. Be trustworthy
  3. Be accountable
  4. Be courteous and respectful
  5. Be honest, open, and transparent
  6. Be competent and continually improve
  7. Always be ethical
  8. Always be honorable and act with integrity
  9. Be respectful of confidentiality
  10. Set a good example

Avoiding Ethical Dilemmas

• Call it by a different name
• Rationalizing dilemmas away: “Everybody else does it”
• Rationalizing dilemmas away: “If we don’t do it, someone else will”
• Rationalizing dilemmas away: “That’s the way it has always been done”
• Rationalizing dilemmas away: “We’ll wait until the lawyers tell us it’s wrong”
• Rationalizing dilemmas away: “It doesn’t really hurt anyone”
• Rationalizing dilemmas away: “The system is unfair”
• Rationalizing dilemmas away: “I was just following orders”

Development of Personal Ethics

• Starts with what we do
• Seeking information and awareness of ethics codes
• Thinking and applying the principles and values

Principles of Ethics

• Honesty

• Integrity

• Promise-keeping and trustworthiness

• Loyalty

• Fairness

• Concern for others

• Respect for others

• Law-abiding

• Commitment to excellence

• Reputation and morale

• Accountability### Ethics in the Workplace

• Ethics contributes to customer satisfaction by deepening customer dependence and understanding how to serve them better.

• Ethics contributes to profits by achieving adequate financial performance.

Benefits of Ethics Programs

• Improved society
• Maintains a moral course in turbulent times
• Cultivates strong teamwork and productivity
• Supports employee growth and meaning
• Ensures policies are legal and avoids criminal acts
• Lowers fines
• Manages values associated with quality management, strategic planning, and diversity management
• Promotes a strong public image
• Formal attention to ethics in the workplace is the right thing to do

Importance of Creating a Code of Ethics

• A code of ethics is a vital document that prevents breaches of ethics and maintains a company's reputation and legal standing.
• A code of ethics guides managerial decisions, creating a common framework for decision-making and reducing ambiguity.
• It helps create a cohesive understanding of boundaries within an organization and standards for interacting with external stakeholders.

Purpose and Scope of a Code of Ethics

• A code of ethics guides all managerial decisions and creates a common framework for decision-making.
• It can cover various scopes, including corporate, business units, or geographical divisions, and departmental levels.
• Corporate level ethics standards speak in grand idealistic terms, whereas business units or geographical divisions are more specific.
• Departmental level codes of ethics deal with highly specific issues related to experiences and trends within the department.

Process of Creating a Code of Ethics

• Involving a wide range of employees from all levels of an organization helps ensure that all employees are on board with and committed to the standards.
• Revising the code of ethics from time to time helps maintain the company's ethical reputation.

Training and Incentives

• Implementing ethics training programs for new hires and existing employees increases the effectiveness of the code.
• Tying compensation incentives to ethical behavior further increases the code's relevance to individual employees.

Considerations

• Ethical standards differ between countries and regions.
• International business people must understand each culture's ethical standards to be most effective.
• A company's code of ethics must either compromise with foreign ethical standards or uphold a single code in all countries.