Is Formal Ethics Training In Organisations Merely Cosmetic? Discuss.

Challenges of Ethics Training

Is Formal Ethics Training in Organisations Merely Cosmetic? Discuss.

Ethics Training is imparted to the employees in order to enable them to recognize and deal with the ethical issues that develop their moral intuition. These moral intuition guide their decision making and actions in everyday life. It also aims to enable all the members of the organization to understand and apply the same code of ethics in their job related decision and are thus in sync with one another. Thus, this training enables all the employees of the organization keep in check the moral legitimacy of their work related decisions, while applying moral principles in decision making. It also promotes and enhances the alignment of the employee’s ethics with that of the organization. Further, this enables to foster and maintain the balance between various stakeholders of the organization. Thus, ethic training doesn’t only mean training employees about the morals and ethical values of the organization, but also enabling each member of the corporate to understand and contribute to the mission achievement of the company through orientation of their individual behavior and choices (Dinc and Nurovic 2016).            

Though organization’s often find it challenging to motivate their employees to take ethic training seriously, it is important to train the employees and has a big impact on business. It is argued that the employees might be competing in the organization responsibly, ethics training is essential for them as it effects organization’s reputation and daily morals. Leaving ethical decision to chance can prove to be very harmful for the company. One ill conceived decision and action by an employee can affect the entire organization and its reputation in the market. Ethics training is usually less skill based and more based on setting the correct behavior pattern for the employees. Thus, it helps in assessing one’s behavior while he or she is in a dilemma or in a particular situation of varying complexity so that the employee can make the right decision (Knowles 2015).

However, it is argued that the employees know the answer to majority of work related dilemmas in abstract setting; however when an important decision has to be made which might affect the company in big way, they can feel pressurized. In such situations, ethic training enables the employee to take right decision based on the instilled values and positive behavior. Ethic training does not focus on helping employee solve problem in a particular way or set out the rules that shall guide his actions, but enables him to improve his thinking and decision making abilities. Hence, it aims to help employees to determine the ethical choice and implement in the most convoluted situation (Bishop 2013).  

Beliefs of Employee regarding Ethics Training

Although there are texts available that lists down the ethical expectation from an employee, those texts may seem to be abstract and confusing. Those ethic acts are written in legal form and can be interpreted by lawyers rather than by employees. Further, mere reading the text may not be effective in converting the unethical employee into ethical one. Had that been the case, the moral lessons in kindergarten would have been enough to keep every individual stuck to their values and work ethically. Effective ethic training supports those texts and makes them more comprehendible for the employees. Training helps employees implement the standards of ethic act of the company in their day to day work life. Through case studies and situations, effective ethic training enables employees realize and live the goal of ethic training, which aims at improving the ethical working in the organization (Floyd et al. 2013).

It is debated that mere knowledge of ethics is also useless unless employees believe that they are really required to implement those standards. The workplace pressure can often lead the employee to get confused about certain ethic rule set by the company in their rule book. The rules usually tell the employees what shall be done in a challenging situation. However, in a particular situation, employee may undertake questionable practice, merely out of habit rather than intentionally. However, employees may also get confused according to their respective pre conceived notion about the particular rule and thus implement it as per individual judgment. Thus, in such scenario, ethic training makes each rule clear to the employee on the same grounds and thus each employee’s workplace ethics is in sync with another’s. Effective training reinforces the message that the organization does not approve of any unethical practices on part of any employee and violation would result in action against them. This fear shall help employees stick to the rules of the company and adhere from unethical practices (Fornoff 2017). 

It is argued that ethics training is thus important to create and maintain the ethical culture in the organization. This also brings the ethical and unethical employees on the same platform and reinstates the belief of ethical employees in their morals and ethical practices. In case of violation of the ethics, the ethical ones get more power to report what is happening in the organization and help in taking care of the problem before it becomes too big to handle (Leroy, Palanski and Simons 2012).   

Importance of Ethics Training

However, it is argued that ethical lapses in the organization tend to snowball. When employees see other employees breaking the rules without facing any repercussions, they tend to believe its okay to do so and thus follow the suit. Or the honest and ethical ones might just leave the company and the company would lose its important employee. Thus, such work culture where misconduct is tolerated, the employee turnover would be higher, the productivity would be lower and thus the company’s reputation and profitability would diminish. Alternatively, organizations that build ethical work culture are more successful and have more positively motivated and productive employees (Michaelson et al. 2013).

Human Resource team of the company is in position to build an ethical workplace environment as they are directly involved in hiring and evaluating the employees. They can train employees and influence their behavior in organization at various levels. Managers also play important role in making sure that employees embraces company’s values and ethics.

It is argued that in companies where managers and top level employees do not enforce ethical behavior, employees fail to trust and respect the managers. According to the National Business Ethics Survey, senior managers are more likely to break the rules than the lower level of management. Hence, it becomes essential to train managers as well about the ethics and values pursued by the company (Fornoff 2017).

After the hiring and training for employees is done, ongoing ethic training is essential to maintain high level of ethical awareness amongst the employees to overcome the situations faced by them on the job. This argument is supported by The National Business Ethics Survey findings that the companies providing ethics trainings have increased from 74 percent to 81 percent from 2011 to 2013. Other indicators of strong ethic training include the fact that two third of the total companies use ethical behavior as key performance evaluation indicator of the employees. Also companies communicate internally about disciplinary actions that shall be taken up when any wrongdoing occurs. Therefore, it is proved that it is essential for companies to impart ethic training to their employees (Warren, Gaspar and Laufer 2014).    

Companies also provide online ethic training which is cost effective and easier to track, however live training is easier to memorize and exercise. Different people bring different set of ethics and values in the company based on their background, training bring them all on similar platform. This is a time consuming process and evolves over few sessions of training. Howard Winkler, the project manager for ethics at Southern Co. aims at constantly changing his company’s ethic training program. He does so to keep his 25000 employees aware of ethical issues in the organization. He uses various methods such as conducting contests, produce videos and use social media to train his employees. Companies also hire external speakers to conduct training sessions for the employees. Southern Co. had invited the financial officer of the major company who had served five years in federal prison for unethical practice undertaken by him. The officer sent across the message as to how a person who does not intend to set out his career to commit fraud can end up being in prison for the same. How one act of unethical practice can lead to another and at the end of the path can lead one to the prison cell. The company has also kicked off an online video series that shall impart ethic training to the front line managers so that they are equipped with the tool they require to fill in their new role (Ünal, Warren and Chen 2012).

Benefits of Ethics Training

It is argued that there are various signs of a good person getting swept into unethical ethical behavior. These signs shall be constantly looked after to by the managers. Due to conflicting goals of the people at various levels, one might try to corner out the other. Similarly if the employees feel that the task assigned to them cannot be attained by regular course of action, they may feel pressurized to compromise on ethics and undertake unethical practices. The employees may also fear that they might not be paid back fairly for doing the right thing. In such case they may not refrain from undertaking unethical course of action. Another factor is not punishing the people for unethical practices in the organization. This promotes the wrongdoings in the company. Following everyone can lead the good person to follow unethical practices. Also with one unethical decision being accepted and gone unnoticed, the next one becomes easier and it keeps going so on. Continuous training shall help employees refraining from falling in this trap and prevent ones in it from falling deeper (Trevino and Nelson 2013).

Ethics thus need to be taught regularly so that employees remember it at all the times. Employees shall be free to ask questions relating to ethics in the training sessions and meetings. Managers shall be equally participative in the sessions. Managers are usually the first person to control the actions of the employees. Thus they shall be trained to regulate their behavior as well to control that of their subordinates. Through constant training, managers can keep ethics in the minds of their employees at all the time and help them identify the issue in the organization as having ethical solution than they would have otherwise done. This helps in making better decisions at the right time and implementing appropriate ramification (Meinert 2017).             

It is argued that ethics training enables the formulation of workplace expectation along with providing thorough knowledge of its legal structure. Strong ethical training programs are well comprehensive and set a good working standard. The weak program on the other hand only sets standards for control and evaluation for performance of the employees. The weaker program has short lived benefits for the company. The employees shall deal with many other stakeholders such as bosses, clients etc which may not support ethical behavior. Thus it is important for companies to continuously improve on the training program and impart updated training modules so that employees can keep up with the changing environment. Every employee shall work ethically in the perfect environment. However, the real environment is very much different from the perfect one. Thus it impacts the behavior of the employees and they make decisions based on the available options. Paying only lip service to the ethics of the company is likely to lower level of ethical behavior of the employees. The companies thus need to pay more attention to ethical training and lay more emphasis on their implementation to ensure employees practice high level of ethical behavior (Michaelson et al. 2013). 

Conclusion

The studies have found that in the first year of the training, employees retain most of the lessons and refrain from unethical behavior. In second year, they could differentiate lesser between ethical and unethical behavior, however they still maintained positive benefits of the training. Thus training should also be followed up by adaptation of ethical value system inside the organization to ensure long term benefit of the training. It shall enable in adjusting the company’s overall environment to contribute to the positive behavior of the employees and sustain them in long run (Verma, Mohapatra and Löwstedt 2014).    

References

Bishop, W., 2013. The Role of Ethics in 21st Century Organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, 118(3), pp.635-637.

Dinc, M. and Nurovic, E., 2016. The Impact of Ethical Leadership on Employee Attitudes in Manufacturing Companies. Nile Journal of Business and Economics, 2(3), p.3.

Floyd, L., Xu, F., Atkins, R. and Caldwell, C., 2013. Ethical Outcomes and Business Ethics: Toward Improving Business Ethics Education. Journal of Business Ethics, 117(4), pp.753-776.

Fornoff, C., 2017. Why Ethics Training?. [online] www.illinois.gov. Available at: <https://www.illinois.gov/eec/Documents/Whyethics.pdf> [Accessed 4 Aug. 2017].

Knowles, T., 2015. Ethics Training. [online] Business Training Courses | Syntrio. Available at: <https://www.syntrio.com/corporate-ethics-training-what-does-it-mean-and-how-can-it-help/> [Accessed 4 Aug. 2017].

Leroy, H., Palanski, M. and Simons, T., 2012. Authentic Leadership and Behavioral Integrity as Drivers of Follower Commitment and Performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 107(3), pp.255-264.

Meinert, D., 2017. Creating an Ethical Workplace. [online] SHRM. Available at: <https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0414-ethical-workplace-culture.aspx> [Accessed 4 Aug. 2017].

Michaelson, C., Pratt, M., Grant, A. and Dunn, C., 2013. Meaningful Work: Connecting Business Ethics and Organization Studies. Journal of Business Ethics, 121(1), pp.77-90.

Trevino, L. and Nelson, K., 2013. Managing Business Ethics. 6th ed. USA: John Wiley.

Ünal, A., Warren, D. and Chen, C., 2012. The Normative Foundations of Unethical Supervision in Organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, 107(1), pp.5-19.

Verma, P., Mohapatra, S. and Löwstedt, J., 2014. Ethics Training in the Indian IT Sector: Formal, Informal or Both?. Journal of Business Ethics, 133(1), pp.73-93.

Warren, D., Gaspar, J. and Laufer, W., 2014. Is Formal Ethics Training Merely Cosmetic? A Study of Ethics Training and Ethical Organizational Culture. Business Ethics Quarterly, 24(01), pp.85-117