Why firms need ethics training programs

Having good compliance policies and a reputation as an ethical business will help attract top talent and will make your company more attractive to potential partnerships, contract opportunities, or merger or acquisition consideration.

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Sovereign immunity in the age of continuous cyber warfare More. Ohio income tax changes for business income may increase taxes for some taxpayers More. Somebody registered my trademark! Now what? Being a professional means acting ethically, demonstrating integrity, treating everyone with dignity and respect, and owning up to mistakes. Ethics training for employees and supervisors can have a significant positive impact on employee behavior. Our decisions have long-lasting effects.

Accepting gifts from a vendor or dating an employee who reports to you may seem innocent, but ethically they represent conflicts of interest. This is where a professional ethics training program can help. Ethics Management for Supervisors: Professionalism in the Workplace is designed to bolster and refresh your knowledge of workplace ethics. Develop your ability to recognize and promote ethical decisions in the workplace. Identify ethical and unethical decisions and behaviors. Ethics represent a set of standards and values that define how a business will manage itself and how it will promote the greater good.

As a supervisor, you are responsible for guiding employees with principles of confidentiality, honesty, and transparency in business dealings and conduct toward others. Our ethics training also provides guidelines for managing ethical behavior, promoting professionalism, and creating a code of conduct for your organization.

Review practical examples of ethical and unethical actions and use an Ethical Decision Making Model to help you and your employees navigate ethical dilemmas. Ethics Management for Employees: Professionalism in the Workplace is an introductory course designed for entry-level employees and provides a foundation for the key elements of Ethics training and professionalism in the workplace. What is expected of me in the workplace?

Throughout our careers, most of us will have many different jobs requiring different sets of skills. No matter what the industry, they have one thing in common: in order to succeed and advance, we need to demonstrate professionalism. Being a professional means acting ethically, demonstrating integrity, treating everyone with dignity and respect, showing poise, and owning up to mistakes.

Effective ethics training is less skills-based and more focused on setting expectations of behavior in a variety of contexts. For example, what does harassment in the work place look like? How do you react when a client requests a personal benefit? Is the customer always right?

Employees usually know the answers to these questions in an abstract setting, but when an important contract or critical customer relationship is on the line, employees can feel pressured.

This is why effective ethics training is more a matter of instilling values and promoting positive behaviors rather than solving any particular problem or reciting a dogmatic list of rules. The aim is to help employees make sense of what, at a glance, might seem like a convoluted situation and determine the ethical choice.

AECOM requires all employees to complete ethics training and encourages them to think of it as something that is necessary for business operations, similar to established processes such as completing expense reports. One way for managers to harness the power of positive peer pressure is to offer an incentive — perhaps a team lunch — to the first group that completes training. However, the single-most-important factor in getting employees to recognize the importance of ethics training is a manager who models the right behavior.

If a manager consciously promotes ethics training as a priority, then it is more likely to resonate with his or her employees or project staff. Comment below to share why you think ethics is important as well as what factors create a successful ethics and compliance program! She has been with the company for more than seven years and has a background in human resources for U. Author: Monique Nguyen.