The Need

What are your company’s highest values? Are your employees likely to act on them?

In a recent survey, more than half of employees who observed misconduct did not report it, primarily out of fear that they would suffer retaliation, rejection or negative evaluation by coworkers or that nothing would happen.

How does your corporate culture encourage or hinder employee actions that reflect the company’s highest values?

Where do you get stuck and not speak up or act according to your beliefs?

Lapses in ethical conduct are often a result of small transgressions that build up and quietly destroy personal and organizational values and potential. Preventing such erosion not only increases positive action, but also mitigates risk, workplace intimidation and indifference. In disasters like the BP oil spill or the Enron meltdown, it is a few individuals who perpetrate the destructive incidents. But many more employees are aware of the slow “ethical drip” of bad decisions and do nothing.