Table of Contents
Employee’s Rights and Responsibilities
Employees have the right to be given, in writing, clear guidelines for ethical business practices. Employees have a right to a harassment -free work environment. An employee should be able to participate in their work activities without fear of physical, mental or emotional harm. An employee has the right to regular feedback from their manager. An employee shouldn’t have to wonder about their performance.
Additionally, employees have a right to receive training on business practices and they must be provided the company protocol for ethics violation reporting. The employee has the responsibility to report any violations within of company policy. It is crucial for all employees to understand what constitutes ethical business behavior and to be able to address unethical behaviors should they arise. In order for company policies to benefit the entire workforce, it is imperative that proper reporting be made to ensure enforcement. Employees cannot excuse unethical behavior by themselves or others once clear guidelines are in place.
Employers’ Ethical Responsibilities
An employer has an ethical responsibility to their employees to maintain the health of the business. This includes the financial, strategic, and legal health of the business. Maintaing the health of the business is crucial to ensure the ongoing job stability of each employee. When the financial or legal standing of the company is in jeopardy, it creates an unstable atmosphere for their employees. Employers are also responsible to provide employees with adequate enforcement of policies that protect the rights of the employee by maintaining safety at the workplace. A code of conduct or compliance policy is incredible beneficial with proper enforcement. When an employee can trust that their business leaders are holding others to a high standard, they feel secure in their positions.
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Ethical Business Dilemma
As a benefits account manager for a healthcare organization, the privacy of client data is of the utmost importance. A sales employee within the company decided to seek out private information of a potential client, by way of a professional connection from another organization with the purpose of obtaining the client for a company. This is a clear violation of the company’s compliance policy with regard to obtaining client data. It constitutes theft of information owned by the client. The employee is willfully disregarding established company and policy by acquiring client data.
Ethical Business Dilemma – Evaluation
A utilitarian view of ethics weighs the individual good versus the common good of a group. Ethical relativism views ethical decisions through the lens of cultural, societal, or religious experience. A utilitarian view of this scenario may consider theft of client data as minor affair because of the potential benefit the information could provide to the company. Society being of the common good could render this an unethical action because it compromises the security of all future clients. A realistic view could result in different standards depending on cultural, societal or religious norms. If the culture is accustomed to a “no holds barred” business approach, then data theft may be viewed as a normal practice. Neither view is completely objective in views of right and wrong. There is no legal right or wrong in either case. It comes down to personal views, choices and ethics.
Ethical Decisions
One ethical decision that employees have to face is the misuse of company time or time fraud. Many employees face the ethical decision of proper time reporting. In today’s society flexible schedules and remote positions have become a norm and work productivity can be extremely difficult to track. This can place the responsibility of tracking time upon the employee. Naturally there’s temptation to falsely report time that is not actually worked which represents a daily ethical decision.
When working in an environment that promotes flexible schedules and remote work employees can be faced with the ethical decision to use company resources. Most companies have explicit policies stating that company property should solely be used for business purposes only. The assignment of company laptops, phones, company credit cards, or company cars present a decision about restricting usage to solely business-related endeavors.
Ethical Decisions- Explanation
An employee that is reporting their own time will seldom keep specific track of the time they’ve spent working. It is common practice to estimate the number of hours spent working or use a productivity tracker to estimate the amount of time invested into a day’s work. An employee that reports time that was not spent working may justify their actions by claiming there are times they work that isn’t reported or tracked because of the line of work they do or because there’s no valid way to track their work. Therefore, they’re forced to make up the difference to ensure their productivity requirements are met.
Employees that hold company equipment face ethical dilemmas of having to maintain and track multiple computers, equipment, phones, business cards, or office supplies. The ease at which an employee could use company property would present the most difficult aspect of the dilemma. An employee could justify the use because of the inconvenience that accompanies separation of work and personal items especially regarding remote employees.
