Actions Speak Loudest

Entrepreneur, May, 2000 by Chris Penttila

Campbell may be onto something. According to Mason, there's a dichotomy in today's workplace. Even though they're in high demand, many workers still worry about losing their jobs and keeping pace with technology. Therefore, you have to reassure your employees constantly and provide a road map so they can chart the direction of your company. How well your staff under-stands your ethics and what's important to you are a part of this big picture.

"The role of the CEO is to say, 'This is what we stand for.' Let it be known to employees that being ethical is a part of doing business," says Ed Freeman, director of the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics at the Darden School at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

But conveying a sense of what he or she stands for is a challenge for every leader. For their new book, A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America (Jossey-Bass), authors Ian Mitroff and Elizabeth A. Denton spoke indepth with more than 100 leaders of midsized to large companies who felt that although they could express their intelligence and creativity in the workplace, they tended not to bear their true feelings, souls or even their senses of humor to their employees. But these leaders were also seeking more open and fulfilling experiences in their workplaces, just as their employees were doing. "The No. 1 thing these people listed as wanting to experience was wholeness and fulfillment. No. 2 was working for an ethical organization," Mitroff says.

However, although these leaders yearned for truth and ethics, they often fell silent when asked to explain certain aspects of their business practices. Mitroff says that this isn't lost on employees. "Employees know the game; they see through the crap," he says. "Only when they get the word through actions will they know that there are values in the company that aren't up for sale."

A full 30 percent of the employees in the Hudson/Walker study said they knew of or suspected ethical violations in their organizations in the past two years. However, most hadn't reported these problems because they either didn't think their organizations would do anything about it, felt the reporting process lacked confidentiality, or feared retaliation from management. However, this doesn't mean those employees didn't discuss it. They told friends outside the office, which holds its own repercussions. According to Drizin, "The reputation of a company goes down when this happens."

SETTING A GOOD EXAMPLE

Rest assured, as the owner of a small business, you have a built-in advantage: You'll be respected until you do something that forces your employees to question your integrity, or their own. Your company is still small enough that everyone knows the leadership, which offers advantages in setting a good example. In fact, in the Walker/Hudson study, companies with fewer than 100 employees fared better than larger ones.

Creating an ethical work environment starts with defining what integrity and ethics mean to your industry, then outlining your core values as an organization. Discuss where these values could be compromised day to day, and bat around strategies for dealing with them. Let your employees feel comfortable voicing the ethical dilemmas they face on the job, as well as the ones they see facing the company. Finally, make sure that the values honored in the office are applied across the board to clients and shareholders.