Workplace Ethics

Mastering Ethical Leadership and Sustaining a Moral Workplace

Paul Falcone

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781400230075
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

LEARN TO NAVIGATE COMPLEX EMPLOYEE MANAGEMENT ETHICAL CHALLENGES

Paul Falcone, author of 101 Difficult Conversations to Have with Employees, teaches you the leadership principles that cultivate an ethical workplace and legally protect your company.

Ethical challenges ranging from designing a diversity and inclusion strategy to creating a process for handling harassment allegations or establishing an employee discipline or termination process can overwhelm even senior leaders. This quick-guide walks you through these and many more critical ethical challenges you’ll face when managing a team and workplace.

Workplace Ethics provides solutions for:

 

• Facing common ethical challenges in the workplace and offers quick pointers to help you navigate those situations.
• Understanding The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 affects your team and meeting SOX obligations.
• Educating employees how they can foster an ethical work environment at any level.
• Identifying failing diversity and inclusion initiatives and how to fix them.
• Mastering the tools needed to ethically manage your team and legally protect the company.

 

This quick-guide will help you cement your reputation as a selfless and emotionally intelligent leader who sets high expectations and achieves exceptional results.

PART 1

OUR HISTORY, OUR LAWS, AND OUR EVOLVING WORKPLACE

1

WHAT IS WORKPLACE ETHICS ALL ABOUT AND WHY THIS BOOK?

Workplace ethics represents the consummate body of knowledge that impacts and influences daily business decision-making and the strategic trajectory of your organization. Sound important enough and did I get your attention? But it’s about more than just knowledge: it’s about wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge applied. Passing along workplace wisdom is something woefully lacking in today’s day and age. Why? Likely because we’re moving too quickly and not communicating enough. Therefore, it’s critical that you—the senior executive, business owner, or frontline manager—take the time to pass down hard-won wisdom to those who look up to you and depend on you for their own future career growth.

Think about it: Doesn’t it make sense to establish your values and philosophy for all new hires before they launch into their new careers at your organization? Wouldn’t you prefer a workplace free of angst and drama, one where people have each other’s backs and can do their best work every day, free from that walking-on-eggshells feeling or those little indiscretions that chip away at people’s self-confidence or sense of self-worth? It’s definitely doable if you make room for it. Instilling a greater sense of purpose and accountability in all of your employees is a core goal that you can commit to achieving in one quarter or one year, depending how you choose to define and measure it. And wouldn’t it be ideal if a simple, short book could reengage your leadership team to reinvent itself and pass along newfound wisdom to staff members? Look no further: the tool is here, right in your hands. Let’s get started and bring you up to speed with some of the most interesting and fascinating aspects of history, employment law, and ethics that will help your frontline operational leaders think more wisely before they act.

Ethics is important because sometimes it isn’t easy to decide what is right and what is wrong. Many of the choices you will have to make in your workplace will be unclear or complicated. The good news is that using ethics will help you make better choices in all types of situations.

Ethics define what is morally right or wrong.

First, some definitions:

• Ethics. A code of moral standards by which people judge the actions and behaviors of themselves and others.
• Business Ethics. The application of ethics to business and business practices. This includes the study of organizations and the historical, ethical decisions they’ve made. The aim of business ethics is to do the right thing and build a great business by doing so in a spirit of profit through purpose.
• Workplace Ethics. The application of an ethical code of conduct to the operational and strategic management of an organization and its leadership and people practices.
• Ethics Versus Morals. Please note that this book uses the words ethics and morals interchangeably. Of course, there can be a difference: someone without a moral compass may follow ethical codes to remain in good standing with society out of a sense of compliance. In comparison, someone may violate ethical codes because they believe they are doing something morally right out of principle. For practical purposes and so as not to cause any confusion, we will use the words ethical and moral as synonyms, meaning basically the same thing.

Ethical and moral considerations should drive every business’s decision-making and operations. But we continue to see ethical challenges and lapses in judgment in the business world, sports, entertainment, politics, the sciences, and just about every other human endeavor. Sure, it sounds like a high bar to reach, and make no mistake: it can be, especially when trying to turn around a culture that tolerates lax ethical behaviors. But a consistently ethical culture is habit forming and easier to sustain than you might otherwise think. The goal, therefore, is to allow the space to groove new neural pathways that make expectations of ethically responsible behavior the norm.

It’s all about building muscle around the situational thinking that drives your company’s daily operations and long-term planning. Like any muscle, it gets stronger when measured and developed, but it can likewise atrophy if it’s simply a statement or a policy that gathers dust in a company handbook or policy and procedure manual. This is real. It’s alive. It should be present in all you do and become a part of who you are as an organization and as a leadership team. It should become a core competency on your annual performance review template in addition to a key element of your bonus programs. And it needs to become part of your organization’s parlance and lexicon from this day forward. Let this become the “Good Book” that your executives, managers, and supervisors rely on and refer to in charting the course for your organization’s future.

2

THE FOUNDATION

LEGAL VERSUS ETHICAL STANDARDS

If you’re a history buff or a philosopher, if you enjoy employment law or simply have an interest in how to drive higher organizational and individual performance, you’ll enjoy the road we’re about to explore together. First, let’s distinguish between legal and ethical standards to appreciate their differences:

• Legal Standard. A focus on compliance and the avoidance of wrongdoing that could run afoul of the law; the underlying question is, “Can I do this?”
• Ethical Standard. Building a moral corporate culture based on authenticity, integrity, and transparency; the underlying question is, “Should I do this?”

Put another way, legal means within the law, while ethical means doing the right thing. Here’s the rub: the law often lags behind ethical standards, so you won’t want “what’s legal” to serve as the primary driver of your decision-making. In other words, a company that merely complies with the law can end up with gaping holes in its responsibilities to its employees, customers, and community as a whole, simply because there hasn’t been enough time for the law to catch up to the unethical (and potentially illegal) practices.

For example, government regulators arguably didn’t know about the cancer-causing properties of tobacco or asbestos for years; later litigation showed that senior management knew of the dangers posed by their products, yet decades went by before criminal exposure resulted. But because government regulators claimed they didn’t know that those products were unsafe at the time, it hadn’t produced regulations to require that those manufacturing companies make safer products, alter their production standards, or cease production altogether. The companies continued to produce cancer-causing products because it wasn’t against the law to do so, although hindsight tells us that these organizations were highly unethical for covering up such critical—and deadly—data.

Both legal and ethical considerations are clearly important, but which one rings truer to you, grabs your attention, and feels like something you want to strive for? If you’re like most, it’s clearly the ethical standard. That’s where you want to be at all times. The legal standard is simply the low bar—the lowest common denominator—that distinguishes lawfulness from unlawfulness (such as criminal damages, civil liability, and the like). Rarely will that excite anyone unless they’re concerned about going to jail (and we’ll assume that’s not the case here!). But that’s a reality of the ethics world too. As we’ll learn when we read about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or SOX, real-world penalties of jail time and multimillion-dollar individual fines come into play in matters of defective certification and willful noncompliance. (Believe me, they don’t pay you enough money to risk going to jail and losing all your assets for messing with the books of your corporation’s financial statements!)

No, the driver that tugs at your heart will always focus on building a moral culture, an organization in which people can do their best work every day, feel respected and empowered, and perform at a higher level because they’re self-motivated and highly engaged. It’s exactly that level of discretionary effort that drives innovation and creativity, that links people’s performance at work to the achievements and accomplishments that they can profile on their own annual self-reviews, resumes, and LinkedIn profiles, and that makes the employment experience a win-win for company and worker alike. True, there’s no job great enough for the human spirit. But you know when you’re rocking it, when you and your people are fully engaged, when you’re hitting home runs and getting the recognition and appreciation you feel you deserve. More likely than not, those circumstances occur when you have a great relationship with your own boss, when you’re fully engaged and tied into your company’s mission and goals, and when you’ve got the right team in place to build upon one another’s talents and have fun all at the same time.

When those elements are present, when the energy of the team comes together and creates an output that far exceeds the contributions of the individual players, and when the achievements flow easily because you’ve aligned your organization’s needs with your employees’ career interests and professional goals, you’ve got nowhere to go but up. One of the fundamental underlying elements in situations like these stems from your commitment to workplace ethics and inclusion. This doesn’t have to be a once-in-a-career opportunity: you can replicate it wherever you go. And remember, the greatest leaders are not those with the most followers; they’re the ones who create the most leaders in turn. Authenticity, integrity, and transparency are the starting points in determining who you are and who you choose to be. From that starting point, you’ll naturally do the things that make you a great boss and a great company. Never lose sight of the basics and return to them often: they won’t let you down.

3

GAINING AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE ETHICAL CHALLENGES YOU MAY FACE ON A PRACTICAL BASIS AS A BUSINESS PROFESSIONAL

We often hear and interchange the words ethical or moral and think of the very high-level impact of their implications: insider trading, sexual misconduct, harassment, financial fraud, and the like make headlines daily. Of course, those make up part of the equation, but violations of ethical standards in the workplace probably happen every day on a lesser scale (think taking home office supplies or calling in sick around the holidays). Day-to-day operational and people decisions hinge on each leader’s awareness of the conduct and behavioral standards that create your organization’s internal culture and external reputation.

There are so many ways to be successful through people, and no leader or executive wants to be successful despite people. But how do you strengthen that natural desire to become someone’s favorite boss, someone they look up to and thank decades later for making them the successful person they’ve become? Interestingly enough, it’s in many of the smallest and most routine things you do. On the one hand, do you display role-model behavior when it comes to treating people fairly and respectfully, acting with integrity, making your word your bond, and teaching those who follow in your footsteps to do the same? On the other, do you make it safe for your people to trust you, to feel comfortable making themselves vulnerable to you, and to be willing to share with you their career needs and true longer-term professional interests (even if it means potentially exploring new opportunities at other companies)?

Getting down into the weeds a bit further, give some thought to how you might respond to the following on-the-spot, watercooler types of one-off questions from members of your team or employees from other departments:

“Jack, can I talk to you off the record for a minute?”

“Sam, I can’t talk to my boss about something that’s really bothering me. I know you’re her peer and I sense that you’re good friends. Would you mind if I picked your brain for a few minutes to get your advice on how to work with her better?”

“Nina, I really didn’t want to say anything, and please don’t use my name here, but it looks like Ashley’s been hitting on Mike pretty heavily, and he told me he’s definitely not happy with his boss constantly asking him out to dinner and badgering him. We’re all starting to notice it now.”

“Anthony, this company is so cheap. They never invest in any of the latest technology. They always say they’re broke unless someone gives notice: then they find money out of nowhere to entice the person to stay by making a counteroffer. Do you really have to quit around here to get noticed and get a raise?”

And the list goes on. Any one of these real-life scenarios can pop up at you out of nowhere, and your automatic, gut-level initial response has more ethical implications than you might otherwise think. We’ll examine these very types of conundrums throughout the book, keeping a keen eye on the moral as well as legal considerations that should factor into your responses.

For now, let’s start with a practical piece of wisdom you can share with your staffers as they grow and excel in their careers: Change your perspective and you’ll change your perception. Help your employees—especially when they’re frustrated—get out of the weeds and have a look at the situation from the thirty-thousand-foot level. Try saying something like:

• Looking at this as objectively as you can, why do you think this may have developed over the past few months, and what can we do now to remedy it? More important, what role do you want to play in the resolution?
• I want to hear your evaluation and analysis of this. Being as objective as you can to both sides of the argument, tell me why you feel that may have happened or why they might feel that way?
• Can I share with you what this looks like from my vantage point?
• What sugg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Our History, Our Laws, and Our Evolving Workplace
• Part 2: SOX Compliance, Antiharassment, and Effective Internal Investigations
• Part 3: Avoiding Litigation Land Mines
• Part 4: Ethical Leadership and Sustaining a Moral Workplace: A New Way Forward
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Author