Code of Conduct, Code of Honor: Why You Need an Ethics Policy

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Ethics   Strategy  

Who are you as a company? Certainly you can identify yourself by the products and services you provide, perhaps the profitable nature of your firm. But how do you describe the place you work, the people you work with and the value you bring to the corporate landscape? Why would anyone want to do business with you for any length of time, and how do you communicate that?

Ethical Treatment
As individuals, we have a number of directions we may go in how we treat others and in how we wish to be treated. There are similarities between each of us, but there are discrepancies, too--ones that may be difficult in finding a compromise.

If an employee is to truly act as a representative of the company they work for though, there needs to be a set of common rules--a policy of ethics--that describe these principles. Much of your identity an organization stems from what you stand for and the codes of conduct the staff needs to follow. We may think that our workplace has a number of shared core beliefs, but a short conversation with most co-workers will demonstrate just how different our ideas and perceptions really are.

To create a policy means having a corporate rule “put down on paper” that helps establish a standard by which the entire company must adhere to. As with many standards, an ethics policy has the added ability to…

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