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How effective is your company’s ethics training?
By Lauren | October 14, 2008
Last Thursday’s episode of “The Office” featured an absolutely hilarious spoof of corporate ethics seminars. From the opening moments of trainers singing “let’s get ethical” to the tune of Olivia Newton John’s “Let’s Get Physical,” the show lampooned just about every aspect of how ethics training can go awry. Escalating confessions during the “immunity period,” an inexperienced trainer who just wants to “get through the manual,” an unhealthy emphasis on personal phone calls and pilfered office supplies rather than big-picture ethical problems, post-training paranoia and strained interoffice relationships all feel very familiar for anyone who’s survived a badly-run business ethics training.
In the wake of the subprime mortgage mess, a lot companies will probably decide that it’s time to offer ethics training to their employees. Here’s hoping that they do it well, and for the right reasons. It’s extremely important to train employees in business ethics, but the training has to be effective if it’s going to be worth the time and trouble invested in it. Effective ethics training is interactive, specific to the ethical issues that are most relevant to the company, understandable and positive, and yields measureable results. And doing it once is not enough. To build an ethical company culture, management needs to offer ethics training on a regular basis and follow up to make sure employees not only got the message, but put it into practice.
It’s also important to consider who will do the presentation. Unless your company is big enough to have a professional ethics compliance officer on staff, it’s usually a good idea to bring in an outside speaker to conduct the training. Outside speakers present a fresh face to your employees, have presentation skills that other people often lack, and don’t have to worry about interacting with their co-workers once the training has been completed. If you want your employees to understand and buy into your company’s ethics program, treat them to an expert presenter who can make the case that strong ethics are essential to good business.
To watch the business ethics episode of “The Office” online, visit http://www.nbc.com/The_Office/video/episodes/?vid=741021#vid=741021.
Topics: Business Ethics, business communications, ethics |
October 14th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
And ethics begins with how people are taught to act. Office Supplies
October 31st, 2008 at 10:33 am
[...] presents How effective is your company’s ethics training? posted at The Business Ethics Blog, saying, “Given that the subprime mortgage mess was caused [...]