Work place ethics is the study of morality and the value that is worth pursuing within an organization (Cornelius 2). Ethics in itself is honorable and dependent on how one perceives the workplace environment and how their perceptions make them build strong moral values.
Within a small organization, which does not have enough staff and the management is not that rigid, ethical behaviors ought to be highly considered. However, this is not the case because what one member of staff considers a means of competitive marketing strategy, another member of staff may perceive such actions as unethical.
Unethical behavior can therefore be defined as morally unacceptable behaviors, which have been prohibited by the laws governing that particular body (Omolewu 3).
Is an employee hotline necessary?
The management’s idea of coming up with an employee hotline was important. This is because being a small manufacturing company, with no proper controlled management systems, employees tend to get carried away and venture into unscrupulous activities.
These activities include defrauding the company off its hard earned money, investing in personal activities using company property, falsification of important company documents, insider trading among other unselfish and unethical acts (Omolewu 5).
The employee hotline will make sure that certain deeds become realized in advance because an honest member of staff will come out clean and protect the interests of the company by exposing the real culprits. An example is when the company personnel responsible for auditing come up with falsified documents.
The person behind such move will have to pressurize particular members of staff in order to conceal the acts but when the mistake is detected, the perpetrators will have to be publicly exposed. In case of avoiding conflicts, the management could provide employees with a direct number that is linked directly to the human resources department.
The company could then in turn record and analyze the information provided by the concerned employee and then put the information into practical use. This would reduce fraudulent cases and regulate employees from becoming unethical.
Is this sort of whistle-blowing ethical? Yes/No, Explain and justify your response?
An employee who detects dishonest activities such as falsification of important company documents and reports the perpetrators to the company executives is highly advisable and recommended because every company requires honest employees.
Whistle blowing out of the sense of good moral responsibility is considered the best and is ethical because one upholds a high level of moral integrity (Bredeson and Goree 123). In so doing, the whistle blower protects the interests of the company and the public in general.
One underlying principle concerned with whistle blowing and the interests of the general public is that it protects the stakeholders who are involved in building the company from illegal and unscrupulous activities.
In case possible collusion between purchasing agents and vendors arises and the end result could cause harm to the people within the company or the surrounding environment, then it becomes paramount for an honest company employee to make such activities known.
However, whistle blowing becomes unethical when an individual tends to expose the company management for their own personal gain and sheer revenge (Bredeson and Goree 123).
What can management do as they establish this hotline to encourage employees to actually use it?
An open door policy plays a crucial role in terms of building employer-employee relationships because it tends to strengthen employee communication and improving the employer- employee commitments within the work place (Cornelius 281).
This means employees are barred from closed door conferences amongst themselves and that they have the freedom to discuss issues related to the company freely with the directors of the company.
Therefore, an organization having efficient open door policy incorporates good employee relation plan and in so doing, the employer-employee relation as well as employee-employee relations does not end up creating animosity or hatred since every individual becomes accountable for their actions.
Fraud becomes controlled and the personnel can be able to identify and resolve workplace issues ethically and in a morally upright manner.
Works Cited
Bredeson, Dean and Keith Goree. Ethics in the Workplace. New York, NY: Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.
Cornelius, Nelarine. Building Workplace Equality: Ethics, Diversity and Inclusion. New York, NY: Cengage Learning, 2002. Print.
Omolewu, Gabriel. “Strategies for Improving Ethical Behaviors in Organizations”. Forum on Public Policy. (2011): Web.