Workplace ethics refers to the way employees in an organization govern themselves and their overall work attitude, but it can also refer to the morality, or lack thereof, permeating a workplace. The way a company operates and is perceived by both the public and competitors often comes down to the workplace ethics. A truly ethical workplace should model ethical behavior from the top down, and from the inside out. Workplace ethics are reflected in how organizations treat their suppliers and customers, how they interact with others, how they perform their tasks, and how they communicate both internally and externally.
What are Workplace Ethics?
Workplace ethics, also referred to as business ethics, describes the ethical dimensions of organizations and company activities. The term encompasses nearly every issue that may arise in a business, including production, distribution, marketing, sale, and consumption of the goods and services being offered.
In a 2018 survey of ethics in the U.S. workplace conducted by the Ethics & Compliance Institute (ECI), 47% of respondents had personally observed conduct that violated either the law or organizational ethics standards. When discussing workplace ethics, a good way to understand its detriments involves looking at the ways in which businesses have displayed and promoted negative behaviors in the past. In the Global Business Ethics Survey of 2019, misconduct was shown to manifest in several different negative ways. Read more
