Approach:
• Briefly define ethical work culture and write about its significance.
• Discuss processes and tools helpful in strengthening ethical work culture at the workplace.
• Conclude appropriately.
Answer:
An ethical work culture is one where owners, managers and employees support ethical values, adhere to legal business practices and encourage appropriate behaviour amongst co-workers, management, customers and clients. Such a workplace culture gives priority to employees’ rights, fair procedures, equity in pay and promotion, and promotes tolerance, compassion, loyalty and honesty in the treatment of customers and employees. Common elements of an ethical workplace include integrity, hard work, honouring one’s commitment, respect for others, obedience to law, accountability, non-discrimination etc.
An ethical work culture is significant for an organization due to following reasons:
• Good ethics is synonymous with good business since it creates and sustains the reputation and market value of the organisation.
• It ensures higher employee job satisfaction, increased attraction of high potential employees and is helpful in having open and honest communication.
• It promotes trust in the workplace, organizational commitment and cooperation towards stated objectives.
• Ethical conduct in the workplace encourages a culture of making decisions based on ethics.
• It enhances accountability and transparency when undertaking any business decision. During turbulent times, a strong ethical culture guides an employee in managing such conflicts by
taking the right measures.
• It increases legal compliance and rule-following and thus lowers regulatory risk.
• Unethical work culture can lead to corporate bankruptcies and frauds. For example- Enron,
Lehman Brothers, Satyam etc.
Ways to imbibe an ethical work culture include:
• Explicit core values: Strategies and practices should be anchored to clearly stated principles that can be widely shared within the organization, thus reinforcing broader ethical work systems.
• Well-crafted mission statement: A simple, short, actionable, and emotionally resonant mission statement should be created to enable employees to easily see how ethical principles influence a company’s practices and deeply embed these principles throughout the organization.
• Communicate clear expectations of good ethics: A code of ethics or code of conduct clearly outlining the organization’s primary values and ethical rules should be conveyed.
Putting ethics at the center: Organizations should try to create contexts that keep ethical principles on top of mind, reward ethics through formal and informal incentives and opportunities, and weave ethics into day-to-day behaviour.
• Cultural norms and role of leaders: Leadership at the top as well as middle level is very important as ethical behaviour almost always starts at the top and trickles down. Leaders have to lead by examples and motivate by highlighting the good things employees are doing.
• Training and mentoring: A formal ethics training programme should be conducted to ensure executives and managers have the skill to build and maintain an ethical culture and resolve situations of ethical dilemmas.
• Feedback Mechanism: Organizations should ensure they have a clear feedback mechanism in which employees can report unethical behaviour in the workplace.
Ethical work culture is not just a moral requirement for organizations, it also provides a competitive
edge to those organizations and hence it should be adopted and promoted.
