Arguably, harassment and discrimination are the biggest ethical issues affecting business owners today. If harassment or discrimination occurs in the workplace, the result could be catastrophic for your organization, both financially and reputationally. If we look even more closely at this ethical issue, we find that 54% of women claim to have experienced unwanted sexual advances in the workplace and 23% say that the case of sexual harassment actually involved a superior. The most important step in addressing sexual harassment as a serious ethical dilemma in companies is to implement employee training.
Start by making sure that everyone who works for you knows the rules, that those rules are posted in the workplace, and that you apply a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment. From there, you'll want to make sure that your company's leaders set a good example, that you continuously monitor inappropriate behavior, and that you provide employees with a safe and discreet way to report cases of harassment. In addition, there should never be any fear of reprisal for reporting sexual harassment; victims, whether presumed or proven, should receive their full support. It's also best to take preventive measures to reduce the risk of sexual harassment.
This may include having employees sign agreements in which they commit to following company rules, not allowing “little things” to go unnoticed, limiting the service of alcoholic beverages during company events, etc. If sexual harassment occurs in your company, recognize the allegation, investigate the case thoroughly, respond with care, and administer disciplinary action if necessary. One of the most current ethical issues in business is the question of the personal behavior of employees on social networks outside of working hours. Of course, there's still a big gray area of situations that may or may not make it ethically justifiable to fire an employee for their behavior on social media.
When it comes to employee etiquette on social media, the bottom line for most companies is that the employee can be justifiably fired if the activity is considered unfair or financially harmful to the company. Of course, neither you nor your employees would want to get to a point like that, so what can you do to minimize employee “bad” behavior on social media? Addressing ethical issues in companies related to social networks can be difficult, mainly because most situations will fall into the gray zone. To help eliminate confusion or lack of clarity for you and your employees, the best thing you can do is create a set of rules and policies that clearly describe what is (and not) acceptable for employees to do on social media. Your company's guidelines on employee behavior on social media should be accompanied by training sessions and regular reminders for the entire company via email.
Similarly, if there's ever a case of misconduct on social media and you're forced to fire an employee, it may be a good opportunity to re-address the issue with other employees. All that said, a recent study found that a whopping 78.2% of small businesses have not designed or implemented an environmental management system. However, it should be noted that small businesses have reasons not to implement environmental management systems. Those reasons include the financial burden of making changes, the complications that can arise when implementing the changes, the lack of sufficient guidance on how to adopt an environmentally friendly attitude in the company, etc.
How can your company avoid these obstacles? Last but not least, theft is one of the most common phenomena around the world. According to a Finance Online survey, 39% of companies have experienced more than one case of employee theft. But what exactly does that mean? Does stealing from employees involve more than “just stealing inventory”? The answer is yes. Fortunately, the government has enacted laws to address most ethical dilemmas related to the environment in business.
The most common ethical issues, that is, the issues on which there is more debate and tension, tend to arise when a code of ethics is ambiguous about a particular situation, when there is a confrontation between two codes because of a particular ethical dilemma, or when a code does not address a scenario at all. As with all ethical issues in business, the first step in preventing unacceptable behavior is to educate employees, ensure that everyone knows the rules, and have a system in place to distribute disciplinary measures when necessary. Some of the most common ethical issues relate to abortion, euthanasia, human cloning, torture, animal rights and the environment, and corporate fraud. There are few ethical issues in businesses that are more serious than the health (26%) and safety of their employees and customers.
What that means is that, if there is a lawsuit for an ethical issue in your company, the process of defending yourself could cause serious harm. Establishing a code of ethics for the operation of your company will help you establish a solid foundation of basic trust between you and your employees, customers, partners, suppliers, etc. Regardless of how familiar you are with the different categories of discrimination, you can use the set of guidelines for each type of discrimination published by the EEOC to ensure that you operate correctly with respect to this ethical issue in business. Beyond the legal limits it crosses, ethical dilemmas in business related to poor accounting practices can endanger innocent people.
Ethics comes into play when you decide exactly how to implement a cybersecurity plan for your company. If you're a startup or small company, creating a code of ethics for your organization should be a top priority. To minimize dangers, disputes, and financial problems, it's critical to protect your company from any ethics-related issues. Fortunately, the law often provides answers to questions related to ethical issues in business (we'll see some examples later), but that's not always the case.
All personal feelings aside, it remains a fact that current events have modified current ethical issues in business and, to a large extent, have increased the focus placed on ethics in the workplace. . .
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