Every organization has an ethical code that guides its decision making and activities to have effective productivity and maintain its reputation. Ethical behavior ensures that staff completes work with honesty and integrity and meets the aim of an organization by adhering to rules and policies. Employees who are ethically positive, honest, hardworking, and driven by principles of fairness and decency in the workplace, increase the overall morale and enhance the performance of an organization.
A company that has established behavioral policies can improve its reputation and help ensure its long-term success. Therefore, for your organization to establish proper ethics and behavior in the workplace it is important to specify what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior for its employees. This should be established when hiring new employees and continue through each step as they are introduced to your business. Policies can be specified by including them in an employee manual and stipulating them in the job description where you summarize the expected conduct. The manual can as well address topics like language, harassment, and work attire. Workers who decide not to follow the highlighted codes of conduct may receive verbal and written warnings which eventually lead to termination.
Improving workplace ethics, and stressing integrity are important for the future success of the company. Most business owners are busy focusing on the skills and productivity of prospective employees but forget to emphasize integrity, honesty, and forthright behavior. Stressing integrity in your employees leads them to become transparent in their actions. An environment of integrity can be created at the hiring stage by ensuring that the human resource department addresses this principle during the interview.
Importance of workplace ethics
Workplace ethics promotes teamwork and cooperation. An organization that introduces a workplace ethics program aligns the behavior of employees. As a result, this fosters openness, partnership, and trust. Moreover, when employees know supervisors’ expectations they perform better in their jobs.
Workplace ethics fosters a positive public image. Workplace ethics help an organization establish a positive reputation in the eyes of the public. This is especially important for non-profit organizations and high-profile companies that rely more on private donations and government grants. Such donors need to be aware of how these firms plan to use their money.
Workplace ethics protect company assets. A company can prevent property theft and falsification of documents by implementing workplace ethical standards. Work ethics also help to protect an organization from loss of income due to employees taking false sick leave.
Workplace ethics provides emotional security. Recognizing the importance of ethics in the workplace helps employees to feel secure because there is no harassment from other workers and the supervisors treat employees with respect. In case these ethics are violated, disciplinary actions are taken to foster a better working environment.
To sum up, ethics in the workplace leads to positive benefits for the company, leading to improved performance and future success.
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