Ethics at Work

We hear a lot in the media these days about unethical behavior at work.  There are the big stories of CEOs and top executives involved in stealing money from the company and/or shareholders.  And then there are the day to day issues such as "inappropriate" relationships, wasting company time, lying, stealing office supplies, treating others disrespectfully, and not walking the talk.  Somehow all those issues often get rolled into "ethics."  Hopefully by reading that last sentence you realize there is a lot of gray in the word.

According to Dictionary.com, the term simply means a set of moral principles.  The interesting thing is when everyone thinks their ethics (or moral principles) are the same as everyone else.  The reality, as we can see quite easily by looking around at our society, is we all have our own set of moral principles. 


Here is what this means for you as a supervisor.  Your employees do not necessarily have the same set of moral principles that you have or that you think they should have.  You can't say something like "I expect you to be ethical at work" and expect them to have a clear understanding of what that means to you.  Let me provide a few examples.


We all know stealing is wrong, right?  If that's the case I'm going to assume that if I load up a box of office supplies from my office and take them home so I don't have to buy school supplies this year, that would probably be stealing.  But what about this - what if I'm spending 2 1/2 hours a day wasting time (as some sources indicate is the average time wasted at work) at work by taking breaks, personal phone calls, chit-chatting with anyone that will listen?  Is that stealing?  What if I only take 15 minutes to chat with a co-worker, is that stealing?  I hope you can see how this can become gray very quickly.  


The same goes for any other moral principal you might have - whether it be honesty (do you really want me to tell you that you look like you've gained 20 pounds), demonstrating respect for others (how do you do that exactly?), and the list goes on.  


We know full well that others do not have the same ethical standards as we do, otherwise we wouldn't have people in leadership positions taking pictures of their anatomy and sending it via their phone to others.  This doesn't mean you need to detail out every thing you expect your employees to do or not do however, it does mean you can't expect to be able to use a catch all phrase of "Be ethical" and know others will fully understand what that means for you.  


Mari