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Bradwell Mhonderwa Business Ethics
The evolution of business ethics as a management discipline has resulted in tools that were traditionally used to measure HR variables in the workplace now being used to measure the impact of ethics on business operations.
These tools include employee surveys, interviews, trainee feedback and audits, among others. Employee surveys are proving to be one of the most powerful tools an organisation can use to measure its ethics tempo.

Employee surveys measure a combination of behaviours or reactions by employees after observing acts such as misconduct and victimisation.

To ensure employee surveys used to measure an organisation’s ethics pulse are comprehensive, HR variables such as motivation, job satisfaction/dissatisfaction, staff moral and absenteeism must be included in the survey.

Inclusion of these HR issues will help to provide a complete and accurate reading of the company’s ethics.
Information gathered through employee surveys helps the organisation to get a good reflection of its ethics climate and business conduct.
Such information can then be used as baseline data for comparison with future data to detect patterns and identify trends over time, including comparing findings with those of similarly situated firms.

The validity of interviews in gauging employee perceptions on ethical issues is well documented.
To interpret enterprise-wide ethics survey findings better, ethics measurement must include individual interviews, group interviews and focus groups.

The process should as well include review of relevant internal documents such as policies and procedures, the mission statement, and the strategic plan.

Exit interviews are a key source of information on ethical matters. Incorporating ethics-related questions in exit interviews provides a channel for employee feedback, and normally it tends to elicit honest responses.

If questions are crafted properly, employees leaving the company can reveal a lot about the firm’s ethical mood.
The interview might for example be structured in such a way that responses bring out whether management and supervisors model ethical behaviour or whether unethical behaviour is punished in the organisation.

Audits that assess a company’s ethics risk and the effectiveness of ethics processes are an important ethics measuring tool.
Auditors can evaluate ethics infrastructure in the organisation and assess the effectiveness of such structures against best practices and set outcomes.

This evaluation can be made more comprehensive by including the firm’s enterprise-wide risk profile in the evaluation process.
Analysing calls that come through whistle blowing is another effective way of evaluating the impact of the business ethics in the company.

Experiences in various organisations show that the key to picking up useful information from whistle blowing data is to look beyond the raw data and analyse the actual content of the calls.

It is common that most of the calls made through whistle blowing are about HR issues than about misconduct that is being committed in the organisation.

Calls from whistle-blowers are more meaningful when they are tracked over time to determine patterns and trends.
Feedback captured from trainees after delivery of ethics training is another important way of evaluating ethics effectiveness.

The training period provides employees with an environment where they can freely express their concerns without fear of victimisation.
Sometimes organisations can measure the success of their ethical culture by simply listening to what employees say about company ethics in their informal groups, or in their everyday talk.

Not only can this approach generate valuable information, but it also sends a powerful message to employees about the importance of open discussions about the organisation’s ethical culture.

The measurement of the ethics climate however is not a one-size-fits-all setting.  The use and importance of each tool is very much related to the context of the particular organisation; i.e. its size, complexity and its existing culture.

Each organisation is different, with unique cultural factors and risks. As a result,a meaningful analysis of the impact of company ethics to its operations is possible by first understanding the unique characteristics of that company.

Managers should understand that the only surest way to close the gap between the company’s  values, and inherent mentalities such as “how things really work here” is by implementing a well-researched ethics management programme.

Such an endeavour will translate company listed values into operational standards and will reinforce organisational processes such as ethics training, ethics rewarding and auditing.

Research shows that the most successful ethics programme is the one that is successfully embedded or aligned to the company’s mission statement and strategy.

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