It is very difficult for good and ethical people to imagine cheating while doing a business. How can we prevent engineers, managers or employees from not acting ethically? We better follow ethical sourcing in our company!

Why do I need to look for ethical sourcing?

According to researchers in this field, we often face endless stream of ethical dilemmas at work. I am sure you can relate to that. The question is, are there any solutions to that? What are the helpful insights to help us when we face these obstacles?

Are you a business owner or a manager responsible for the run of the company and you want to do it to the best of your abilities? Unfortunately, employee misconduct is not that uncommon in the world.  Dissatisfied workers violate rules in companies and other codes of conduct.

What is unethical behaviour?

For example, employees act unethically if they decide to misuse company’s time. Or maybe by taking credit for other’s work. Sometimes, you might have even experienced harassment among colleagues in your company, right? These are not very flattering situations, but they do happen. Therefore, dissatisfied employees raise many ethical issues in the workplace.

Despite the dimension of such behaviour, it can happen that employee misconduct goes unreported. Why? Well, we are all just humans and it might be for variety of reasons.

Firstly, colleagues at work might feel threatened by their coworkers. Secondly, if they decide to report unethical behaviour, they might fear the feedback and potential punishment of doing so.

Still, considering the different natures of each human, these behaviors might simply get unreported. Either to avoid the conflict or to keep their job. Simply said.

What can I do to mitigate employee misconduct?

There is not an exact guide on how to mitigate employee misconduct while alleviating fears of revenge for those who witness it. Even-though there is no simple answer to that, there are some methods of addressing these ethical issues in the workplace. The method includes these main points of action:

• Introduce a policy
• Provide resources and education
• Employ a confidential system
• Be consistent

And now, let’s dive into each of these points deeper and discuss what exactly can be done when opting the ethical sourcing in your company. I hope you will find it helpful and informative.

Introduce a policy

The size of the company matters. Usually, smaller companies do not have that much documentation developed regarding different situations that a company might face. However, most large companies apply codes of ethics.

These ethical codes often clearly state the definition “of” and the punishment “for” an employee misconduct. Such document serves to provide information about the a company’s mission statement and philosophy. And they also define standards to which employees must hold themselves.

Nonetheless, companies should from time to time revisit these codes of ethics and ethical sourcing. To accommodate to new trends and just overall stay up to date.

Provide resources and education

Once you have a certain policy in place, your employees might refuse to change. Maybe it is only because your employees do not understand how to implement certain changes and act accordingly. However, just because they may face a tough time at first, they are fully capable of adjusting to new practices.

That is why as an employer you need to provide enough of educational support and opportunities. Then, you will be able to successfully implement different policy changes and set new goals in your company. Explain the rationale behind your vision to your employees to maximize that successful implementation.

Employ a confidential system

After you have introduced policies in your company and provided resources and educational systems to implement them, you need to secure confidentiality. Now, your employees understand that they will likely not face any repercussions for reporting a nonethical behaviour. However, they might still feel scared about being -the one- to speak.

In order to prevent this issue, managers can set up a confidential system for reporting ethical violations. Deal with your employees in these circumstances confidentially and protect their privacy. It will not only comfort them, but allow them to open up in a first place. And remember, never punish an entire team for the action of one or two colleagues.

Be consistent

Have you been able to do it all, research possible ethical sources to implement within your company and acted upon it? Well now, you just need to be consistent about it. Your employees will certainly appreciate that. Possibly their trust in you will grow that way. Following a strong code of ethics contributes to financial success and security of your company as well. I think that makes pretty much a good business sense right?

So, introducing new policies and having the conduct signed by your employees, they agree to hold themselves accountable for new and higher standards. If they decide to not do so, they need to face the consequences for that! You as an employer must agree to hold accountable to the same standard. Compromising the agreement leads to a huge system fail. And after having done so much work, that is exactly what we want to prevent from happening.