Subscribe to my Feed
« The Ethics of “Avatar” | Home | Will special interests abuse campaign contributions? »
Fairly enforce your company’s internal rules
By Lauren | January 22, 2010
Continuing my Friday series on keeping your business out of court, let’s discuss a mistake that many companies make: writing unreasonably strict internal rules, then failing to enforce them even-handedly.
Recently, I had an opportunity to contribute to an article in The Conference Board Review titled, “Workers Behaving Badly” that described a common problem. In an effort to look like they take ethics seriously, companies write lengthy codes of conduct for their employees, and teach classes on compliance once a year at most. Then, they enforce the rules unevenly. An administrative assistant gets fired for pilfering his kid’s school supplies from the supply room, but everyone in the company knows that the top salesperson submits her expense reports every month with hundreds of dollars of undocumented extra goodies and never suffers so much as a slap on the wrist.
Where’s the legal risk here? There are at least two. First, there’s the unhappy customer who uses the company’s code of ethics as “Exhibit A” in a breach of contract suit. (If a company adopts a policy, it effectively promises to comply with that policy when dealing with customers.) Second, uneven enforcement of company rules can lead to charges of illegal discrimination by employees who believe they received harsher discipline than other employees who were younger, or of a different race, gender, religion, or other legally-protected characteristic. Unless you can explain why Employee A got more lenient treatment than Employee B, you may end up spending an awful lot on legal fees.
Employees are human, and they’re going to slip up from time to time. If a code of ethics is too elaborate to use or sets an unachievable standard, you’re inviting violations. Write your rules to set reasonable standards of conduct for real people, and make sure you train your employees often enough that they understand where the bright lines are. Then, make sure you hold your superstars to the same standards as everyone else.
To read the Conference Board Review article, go to http://www.tcbreview.com/workers-behaving-badly.php.
Topics: Business Ethics, Risk Management, business communications, customer relations, ethics |