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Don’t make ethics an afterthought
By Lauren | May 14, 2010
Continuing my Friday series about keeping your business out of court, let’s discuss a mistake that all too many companies make. Here’s an example:
Minute Co. is a consulting firm dedicated to helping companies improve productivity through time-use analysis. Litigious Ink, a company that manufactures fountain pens, hires Minute Co. to recommend improvements to its manufacturing processes. An ambitious young executive at Minute Co., E.G.R. Beaver, is assigned to manage the project. In an effort to increase his chances of making partner, Beaver significantly overstates the hours he worked on the analysis, then bills Litigious Ink a handsome price for a worthless report. Outraged, Litigious Ink’s President threatens to sue Minute Co. and its CEO, Otto Touche. Touche is shocked to discover when he investigates that Beaver has been overstating his hours and overbilling clients for at least two years. After all, Minute Co. has a code of ethics, and trains its employees on the code for an hour every year. Shouldn’t Beaver know better?
Sure he should … and so should Touche.
Most companies have a code of ethics, but a lot of them pay lip service to their codes once a year at most, usually by having an HR representative drone at their employees over a brown bag lunch. For the other eleven months and thirty days of the year, the same companies emphasize billable hours and profit margins to the exclusion of everything else. The message that sends to employees is that the code of ethics is nothing more than meaningless window dressing, and that the company’s real priorities are money and market share. Employees who want to advance quickly learn that it’s more important to generate a lot of revenue than to comply with the company’s code of ethics, and can get the company in a lot of legal trouble in the process.
There are lots of unethical ways to boost profits in the short-term, but they can have long-term legal and customer relations consequences. Your company’s employees are your ambassadors, and you can expect your company to be held accountable if they go over the line. Make sure your employees know that your company takes ethics seriously, and make discussions of business ethics part of your company’s day-to-day culture. Hold regular trainings on ethics, and make sure those trainings are engaging and informative. If ethics are your priority, they’ll be a priority for your employees, too.
Topics: Business Ethics, Lauren Recommends, Professional Ethics, Risk Management, corporate responsibility, customer relations, ethics |
May 16th, 2010 at 2:28 am
Unfortunately, many consulting companies have a reputation for not delivering as promised. That why we guarantee measurable results and a portion of our fee is a risk if we don’t deliver. As a result, 100% of our clients say we delivered as consultants. Integrity is our foundation.