What would you do if you caught your colleague stealing paper clips? What about telling someone a lie, being abusive or manipulating a situation to get something for themselves?

These are all examples of misconduct which may require you to act if you want your organisation to have a strong ethical culture.

Unfortunately, research conducted in 2007 by the Ethics Resource Centre found that conduct that violates the law or an organisation’s standards was on the rise, and misconduct in nonprofits had reached levels comparable to business and government organisations. That’s not good!

Rising levels of misconduct probably means that many organisations do not have a formal ethics and compliance program and without clear guidelines and consequences for employees, unethical behaviour is being tolerated.

If you want to improve your organisation’s reputation as an ethical workplace, you will need to:
1. Have a written code of ethics
2. Provide employees and volunteers with training about ethics
3. Give employees a process for reporting misconduct
4. Have consequences for employees who violate ethical standards
5. Include ethical conduct as part of employees’ performance appraisals

“Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.”
Potter Stewart