Unethical Behavior - It's Impact on

Today's Workplace
It is a sad truth that the employees of just about every business, in every business, will occasionally
encounter team members who are taking part in unethical behaviors. Such unethical behaviors include a
wide variety of different activities. Among the most common unethical business behaviors of employees
are making long-distance calls on business lines, duplicating software for use at home, falsifying the
number of hours worked, or much more serious and illegal practices, such as embezzling money from the
business, or falsifying business records.

Though there is sometimes a difference between behaviors that are unethical and activities that are
actually illegal, it is up to the business itself to decide how it deals with unethical behavior - legal or not.

Many employees find that discovering unethical behavior among co-workers actually tests their own
values and ethical behaviors. After all, unethical behavior that is not illegal frequently falls in a grey area
between right and wrong that make it difficult to decide what to do when it is encountered. Furthermore,
different people have different views regarding what is ethical and what is unethical. For example, some
people feel that it is alright to tell a little "white lie", or to make one long distance call on the company's
nickel, as long as they can justify it in their mind.

When employees discover other employees doing something that they know is wrong by the company's
standards, their own sense of what is right and what is wrong instantly comes into question. That
employee needs to consider how s/he feels about that particular activity, as well as informing about that
activity, or turning a blind eye.

Even by deciding to do something about it, the employee who has discovered the unethical behavior is
presented with a number of difficult choices. Should the employee speak to the individual directly, or
should the employee head directly to a company supervisor?

To make this decision a bit easier, many companies have adopted several techniques that allow for the
management of unethical activities. The first step is to create a company policy, in writing, that is read and
signed by each employee. This erases most feelings of ambiguity when it comes to deciding what to do
after witnessing an unethical behavior.

The second is to give a clear outline of what is expected of the person who has discovered the unethical
behavior. It should include the person who should be contacted, and how to go about doing it. With clear
instructions, there will be less hesitation in reporting unethical activities, and then they can be dealt with
quickly and relatively easily, before they develop into overwhelming issues.

Furthermore, the repercussions of unethical behaviors should be clearly stated. This way, both the person
doing the activity, and the witness to the activity will be well aware of the way that things will be dealt with,
and there won't be any risk of someone not reporting unethical behavior because they're afraid that the
culprit will be unfairly treated.

Communication is key in the proper management of unethical behavior in today 's workplace.
 Story about the employee who missed a deadline to
file for her company's stock options

Ethical behavior in workplace is desirable, necessary…

The woman, an assistant to the company's chief executive, visited the human resources office the
morning after the deadline, apologized for being so busy that she overlooked the deadline, and then
asked to file for the stock options.

"What was the person in HR supposed to do?" Ruddy says. "Should she violate the law to accommodate
this woman, although no one would probably ever know it? Or should she risk offending someone in the
company who might be in a position of power?"

The HR person chose to deny the request - and the employee went straight to the CEO to appeal.

"Fortunately, the CEO stood behind the HR decision," Ruddy says. "If he'd made an exception and
allowed her the stock options, it could have caused real problems."

Ruddy, president of the nonprofit World at Work benefits and compensation association in Scottsdale,
Ariz., says this story illustrates how the seemingly insignificant decisions we make every day test our
ethics.

HR employees, especially, must be constantly aware of the ethical decisions that are part of their jobs,
says Roy Burchill, senior manager for compensation and benefits for Accredited Home Lenders in San
Diego.

For example, Burchill says criminal background checks sometimes reveal minor crimes that individuals
didn't report on their job applications.

"It's usually not a crime that would stop us from hiring them," he says. "But the fact they lied on their
application raises a lot of red flags. We are then in a position of deciding whether we would hire this
qualified person knowing that they might wind up lying to us down the road. It's a powerful ethics issue
that we face."

Ruddy says that too often we treat ethics as a theoretical concept but that ethical issues surface in our
jobs regularly.

While chief executives need to assume responsibility for creating a culture of ethical behavior, that task
cannot be left to them alone, says Ruddy. "Ethical issues pop up all over the company, to everyone," she
says.

In a survey of 418 World at Work members who work in human resources, 65 percent said they face
ethical dilemmas in their jobs at least once a month, with 19 percent reporting ethical issues surfacing at
least once a day.
"These can be very subtle and seemingly insignificant, but they are all important in how you handle them,"
Ruddy says.

Increasingly, she says, ethics questions surface in human resources departments because they deal with
real-life problems.

"A lot of people look to HR as the ethics police," says Burchill. "They want to trust HR and want to have
the people there handle ethics issues."

Burchill says that puts added pressure on HR employees to be candid and fair when handling personnel
issues. Notable corporate ethical lapses over the past few years have created an atmosphere in which
companies talk about ethics more and the behavior they expect from their employees, he says.

Ruddy says there are some powerful incentives for companies to promote ethical workplaces. She says
that public companies who suffer ethics problems can see their stock prices decline for up to six months
after the public learns of unethical behavior.

And a study from the Walker Loyalty Institute of Indianapolis finds that 42 percent of workers take ethics
into account before accepting a job with a particular company.

Yet, Ruddy fears, companies just don't pay proper attention to cultivating an ethical atmosphere inside
their companies.

"It's not enough just to have a policy, you have to make sure everyone knows what it is and how to apply
it," she says. "Companies have policies buried in documents and think that's enough. You must educate
and remind workers when you see behaviors that are not what you want. You can't expect people to be
ethical unless you tell them what is acceptable and what isn't and live up to that every day in your own
actions."

Burchill says his companies and others have set up third-party reporting options, allowing people to
anonymously report ethical lapses or inappropriate conduct.

"A lot of issues that get reported are not ethics-related, but it's good to have a forum where people can
vent their complaints," he says.

But it's also important that workers know the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavior
on the job and can report violations when they see them.