HR MANAGEMENT - How Does a Code of Ethics Impact Your Work Practices?

How Does a Code of Ethics Impact Your Work Practices?

by Anna Assad, Demand Media

Your company's code of ethics encompasses the principles all employees are expected to follow. These principles are intended to guide your decision-making and workplace behavior. Ideally, a code of ethics will significantly impact your work practices, because you will follow the principles when at work, but how much impact a code has depends on how your company uses it.

Implementation

A code of ethics on its own won't necessarily affect your work practices. Without implementation by your business, you might not even be aware of your company's ethics code. Those in a position of authority, such as a manager, must adhere to the ethics code and follow the principles in practice to have an impact on employees. For example, if a company's code of ethics involves recycling and a manager organizes a recycling drive in a department, the employees in that department are more likely to recycle at work because they're seeing the ethic in practice.

Support

Supporting programs for an ethics code bring the code to everyone's attention and allow for discussions and questions. Supporting programs include online or telephone access, giving employees the opportunity to report code violations or ask ethical questions when trying to make a decision, and meetings or special events. If you have the ability to speak to someone other than your immediate coworkers when you have questions about ethics, you're more likely to follow the code when you're making a decision.

Review

Reviewing employees for code compliance gives the code a stronger impact in the workplace and on employee behavior. Periodic reviews bring attention to the code and may uncover practices that violate the code in the business. Employees may not realize their actions are going against the code of ethics until it's brought to their attention and explained. Review tools don't have to single out employees. Anonymous employee surveys, for example, allow a business to gauge the impact of its code and get employees thinking while exposing potential code misunderstandings.

Cultures

A business usually has one of two ethical cultures or a blend of both: "report first" and "report second." In report-first cultures, employees are encouraged to report ethics violations immediately. In report-second cultures, employees are encouraged to talk about concerns over ethics with another employee or supervisor before reporting. The type of culture your business has impacts the code's effect on your work decisions. For example, you may report suspected violations immediately in a report-first culture but attempt to explain the problem and the code to the violator in a report-second culture.