Building the Ethical Organization
Ethics and the Bottom Line
"Cultures that combine strong values with adaptability to a changing marketplace are the ones that are highly successful. Over the period of a decade, companies with these successful cultures had more than a 4 times the revenue growth and 12 times the stock price growth of those that did not."
- Richard S. Gallagher in The Soul of an Organization
Focusing on having good ethics in an organization is a good business decision. The values of an organization are what the organization feels is important; ethics is how they implement, apply, and live those values. Ethics is about relationships. Companies that move beyond a singular commitment to complying with laws and regulations and adopt an enterprise-wide ethical culture dramatically reduce misconduct which results in a better workplace and a better bottom line.
An ethical culture and how people are treated also adds significantly to a company's competitive advantage. A comprehensive review by the Department of Labor of more than 100 studies that examined the link between progressive people, practices and improved bottom line results concluded that there is a positive relationship between training, motivating, and empowering employees and improvements in productivity, employee satisfaction and financial performance.
Enhancing the Workplace Brings in Results
In a great workplace, how people are treated adds significantly to the competitive advantages available to the organization. Our research covering the nation's best employers for Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work for in America" annual article confirms that these great workplaces benefit from the following:
- Receive more qualified job applications for open positions.
- Experience a lower level of turnover.
- Experience reductions in health care costs.
- Enjoy higher levels of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.
- Foster greater innovation, creativity and risk taking.
- Benefit from higher productivity and profitability.
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What is your organization doing to help employees address your ethical culture? While Codes of Conduct and compliance manuals and programs help in setting the ethical direction of the organization, individual decisions are the determining factor in living the culture of the organization. The only way to build an ethical culture and organization is by building a commitment to ethical conduct. All training programs conducted by The Williams Institute for Ethics and Management have an ethical component. Whether it is leadership, sales, customer service, or coaching, ethical decision making, honoring and valuing people through ethical communication is a focus of the VALUES Training© process. Ethics training is embedded in each course. Each participant completes an Ethics Awareness Inventory© to help them determine their ethical perspective and make good ethical decisions. They learn a communication process that creates a common modality which improves ethical communication in the organization. They are taught to be aware of their ethical perspective, to apply their perspective and to articulate how and why they make decisions. This is a truly unique and successful way to help build a profitable organization.