Ethical Accountability in the Workplace

When people are working together, they ought to be governed by some ethical conduct. Every employee should be accountable for their behaviour in the workplace so that they can support the values and principles of a company. Therefore, a code of conduct is a directive that guides employees to act and treat other employees, customers and according to the values of the company, and inform them on how they could adhere to various policies in the company. The purpose of any code of conduct is to describe the values of business conduct and to offer clear guidance in respect to ethical decision-making systems. Most segments of a code of conduct refer to issues for which particular policies exist; this is due to the fact that any code of conduct involves various standards of behaviour that are set in the company’s policies. Thus, any employee is expected to familiarise themselves with policies that directly impact on their daily activities. Besides, any company needs to have a code of conduct, especially if the company is publicly trading, due to the fact that some laws policies and regulations are framed to control the disclosure of information among publicly trading companies. The code of conduct will outline the basic legal mandate of all employees in the company.

Application of this Code

This code is aimed at all employees, those in working contracts with the company, and the members of the company’s board of directors, which by default will also be referred as employees in this piece. People in working contracts with the company include vendors, consultants and suppliers who have been mandated to access some of the confidential properties and information that belongs to the business so that they can effectively perform their duties.

Compliance to the Code

Every person directly involved with the company must follow and adhere to these codes. Everyone is expected to familiarize themselves with these guidelines and comply with the code while undertaking their duties. Despite compliance, everyone is expected to understand their obligations under the company’s policies. On a yearly basis all employees are required to sign a yearly acknowledgement of corporate policies form. The individuals who do not abide by these codes are bound to be subjected to further disciplinary action, which can lead to legal prosecution or employee dismissal.

Responsibility

It is the mandate of everyone to report any suspected and known cases of unethical conduct that includes and not limited to violation of the code of conduct by other staff members in a manner that is linked with the company. The company is committed to safeguarding anyone who will report any case of unethical conduct from reprisal and will also offer the needed support to an individual who makes reports. When staffs report cases of unethical conduct, they will be protected in good faith. More details on this will be explained in the whistleblower segment.

Internal trading and Tipping

The relevant security laws do not allow employees to access non-public information and disseminate it to the public. Such information can be used to harm the company, or expose its trading strategies to competitors, in such a case, the person involved will be treated as a first-hand accomplice and will be charged or dismissed in accordance to the company’s disciplinary laws.

Media Disclosure

The purpose of the media policy is to make sure that all staffs comprehend and comply with the company requirements on media disclosure in regards to media interaction, and public presentation. In cases where an employee is delegated to speak on behalf of the company, the company will brief the employee before being interviewed to assess what should be given to the public and what should not. The people tasked to give their opinions to the media with respect to outside interest should realise that the comments made are strictly personal and the employee should always be careful not to compromise the company’s agenda.

Relationship with customers

Customer services is a central issue in any business. Therefore, the company’s customers deserve the highest quality service and standards in all transactions. Employees should therefore serve the company’s customers with respect and deal with all of them fairly. Everyone at the company is expected to act with integrity, and partake any role possible to provide clients with greater customer service. However, employees should be careful not to give customers promises that the company cannot fulfil.

Company Information and Property

No employee is allowed to disclose the activities and information of customers tom unauthorised company employees or external parties unless through following the due process of the company. Any information the company holds the is deemed as the property of the company. Employees must keep the company’s information confidential even after working with the company.

Conflict of Interest

Employees can take up outside roles, volunteering, and consultancy, or directly engage in business activities as long as these activities do not create a potential or perceived conflict with the interests of the company, interfere with the duties of the employee at the business level, or hugely affect the employee’s work performance, or such in the event that such activities are forbidden by law.

Any employee cannot receive financial benefits from an individual or other organisation that is considered a competitor when one is in a position to influence the company’s decision pertaining that particular individual or competitor entity. Employees are strongly forbidden to offer any preferential treatment on any ISC business matter or transaction to their family members, friends, or any entity that one could have a connection or affiliation with.

Whistleblowing

The company shall protect any employee that reports unethical conduct within the organisation. People in this department are also required to maintain confidentiality when dealing with cases until the investigation is done. Any act that aims at exposing the whistleblower’s privacy and confidentiality will be perceived as an act of accomplice with the charged. Therefore, those in charge of handling the company’s cases should behave in a manner that will protect and encourage whistleblowing.

There are various factors that one should consider before making any decision. An important factor to consider is whether the decision one is making is ethical or not, consider further consequences, and lastly one should identify various obligations, principles and rights. Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier (2015, p. 911) states that people should not confuse legal obligations with ethical obligations. For example, in this case, one has the legal obligation of reporting the child, who will in-turn be stoned to death because he has stolen an apple- legally such action is best, but ethically, killing a child because of he has stolen an apple is by all means unethical.

Utilitarianism

According to the Utilitarianism, everyone’s happiness counts in the society; therefore, as much as the actions of the boy have angered the one person, the boy also deserves to be happy. The proponents of utilitarianism argue that two things control man and that is by pain and pleasure. This is the best explanation of this situation- the boy was hungry (pain) and stole the apple to feed himself (gain pleasure), and in turn, his actions angered the public. Even so, utilitarianism urges that everyone needs to be happy in society. However, society fails to provide the necessary structures to make everyone happy. To balance the interests of people in the society, the utilitarian approach tends to evaluate social actions in terms of its outcomes, that is the net benefit for everyone on an individual level. In short, it strives to attain the greatest good for the greatest number of people, while at the same time leading to the least harm and preventing the greatest amount of suffering.

In this respect, it is obvious that losing one apple is a greater harm than losing a life. Therefore, when weighing the two, utilitarianism argues that life ought to be spared because the loss of it will create the greatest pain. Therefore, in this regard, the child ought to be spared from the wrath of the mob. Furthermore, the proponents of this theory argue that individuals should always way the situation and question themselves on the impact of their decision on the general balance of good over evil. Meaning that if lying gives the best consequences in a certain situation, then one ought to lie. So, if the lie will promote the general good for everyone, then it is justified to lie, and should not shun away from lying if they intend to protect the greater good. Utilitarian’s hold that the consequences of the general principle of morality ought to depend on balancing both the harmful and the beneficial consequences of an action, and in this case, the balance lies in sparing the life of the child.

Natural Law

The theory of natural law, state that the divine nature demands that man should protect life, and do what is right according to their conscience. According to Thomas Aquinas, who was the champion of natural law, humans should be guided by rationality and consciousness when undertaking various actions. Meaning that if one perceives an action to be irrational, then they should not pursue it. Rezaei (2015) who is a modern proponent of the natural law states that there is no rationality in taking a human’s life? Rationally, it is not right to take someone’s life because of an apple or any other material. There are three different thoughts of natural rights, which is divine natural rights, secular natural law, and historical natural law.

Divine natural rights are majorly based on religious ideologies founded in Judeo-Christian teachings. According to the divine natural rights, stealing is not allowed yet, at the same time human life sacred. Even with these restrictions, the divine law advocates that God is the supreme Judge and people should learn to forgive. Besides, since only God can give life, he is also the one who has the mandate to take it away. Therefore, since no man has the right to take away the life of another, this child should be protected at all cost.

Egoism

Ethical egoism beliefs that moral decisions are majorly based upon whether the outcomes of a decision are likely to cause a bad or good consequence. Ethical egoism states that every individual is an ethical egoist and that they have the capacity to make decisions that serve their interests. The fact that everyone is an ethical egoist they are likely to make decisions that would result in directly benefiting the society (Albert, Reynolds, and Turan 2015, p. 471). Ethical egoists claim that people should only partake decisions which improve their interests, but if a decision does not in any way enhance your social interests, then one should not engage in them.

The case of the boy, versus the mob, giving out the boy to mob does not serve anyone’s interest even in the event that one is the owner of the grocery store that the apple was stolen from. Practically, grocery owners are likely to dispose of stale fruits and vegetables, which exposes them to huge losses, yet they never kill people because of this loss, so why should a grocery owner champion for the death of a boy because he stole one apple? From this perspective, it is clear that the giving up the boy for mob justice does not solve any problem, since, both the grocery store owner and the child would have lost something, yet gained nothing. If both the grocery owner would not get back his apple, then killing the boy is also not sensible. Therefore, using the tenets of ethical egoism, the life of the boy should be spared; after all rationally, nobody deserves to die because of an apple.

Therefore, based on all theories of decision making the boy’s life ought to be spared using every means possible, which involves telling a lie to attain the best outcome possible.

There are several pieces of legislation in various in the UK equality and diversity laws. The equality and discrimination act outlines that no one protected characteristic has a higher priority than the other. At no point should an employer make discrimination claims based on the grounds of single protected characteristics such as female employees. Secondly a range of similar but unrelated characteristics such as an employee being of a particular gender and also a specific age group. The Equality and diversity act give guidelines on various processes within a workplace, which ranges from the recruitment process, working hours and employee welfare. Following these guidelines, various gaps can be identified from these job postings (Waughray 2016, p. 71). However, there are limited situations where an employee could act in a manner in which employers might act in a discriminatory manner, that is if their actions can objectively justify the discrimination as to what is documented as “appropriate means of achieving a legitimate aid.” Therefore, an employer can use the positive terms of the law to employee staffs that it perceives to be at some disadvantage because of some protected traits and have been marginalised in the organisation, or participation in the company is somehow low, or the population has some specific needs that are connected to a certain characteristic. Therefore, an organisation could be able to show evidence that the positive action taken is justified and will not in any way discriminate others.

Both men and women have equal chances of employment and the right to fair compensation, which implies to loss favourable pay benefits in regards to the terms and conditions in their engagement contracts, especially when both parties are undertaking similar tasks. The equality and diversity act aim at preventing workplace discrimination and encourages equality and access to equal opportunities and even foster a harmonious working relationship between individuals of various backgrounds and characteristics. In some cases, an employer is allowed to ask health-related questions before making a job offer to establish whether a candidate can conduct various essential roles such as lifting heavy loads or so that the employer can take an affirmative action in terms of assisting the disabled people, and evaluate without concealing the identity of the candidate whether they are disabled or not, and also confirm if the potential employee has a disability in cases where there is a genuine requirement for such jobs. Generally, any form of preferences within a workplace is only justifiable in the equality and diversity act when the employee is doing so based on merited reasons, such as improving the welfare a certain group of individuals that are deemed to be disadvantaged in one way or the other, or when the role specifically requires the attention of a specific gender (Browne, McGlynn, Bakshi, and Banerjea, 2016). For example, if the duties involved in a vacancy calls for specific interventions that are directly aimed at a certain gender, and it is clear that the targeted group is likely to work with intervenes of the same gender then it would be justifiable to employ people of that gender. To be specific adolescent girls are likely to open up more to women than men when it comes to assessing issues that might be affecting them.

It is clear that this vacancy calls for a specific group of people (Indians), with specific qualities (aged 18-35). Such stipulations are against the United Kingdom policy on diversity and equality. Besides, the description of the advert reveals a role that can be conducted by people of both genders and so the specification of women is not justified. Furthermore, the recruiter does not stipulate why the company only needs women aged between 18-35 years. Such biases are against UK equality and diversity setups. In other words, the explanation given by the company does not warrant the justifications of discriminating a particular age group, gender or race.

Secondly, the United Kingdom is a racially diverse country, that also includes migrants. Originally, the Country was purely a European dominated state; however, due to globalisation and movement of people, the country is turning out to be a cosmopolitan state. Therefore, no company is allowed to recruit only candidates from a specific group of people, especially when there are other races around. The preference of a certain race cannot be justified from the job description. In short, the candidate preferences for this vacancy is not in line with the diversity and equality act, and therefore can be deemed as illegal.

Take a deeper dive into The Evolution of Zero Hours Contracts with our additional resources.

This job opportunity also presents some discrimination although the employer has justified the discrimination. The job aims at introducing young people to the public relations scheme, and therefore people with the experience in this field are discriminated. Therefore, in such a case, the UK equality act allows for such discrimination. The justification for this discrimination can be identified in the fact that in the United Kingdom, youths have the highest number of unemployment are marginalised in the labour market. Most recruiters have complained that these sections of the population lack the knowledge and skills that they need. Therefore, since this advert majorly targets the youths, the employer is justified to establish such restrictions.

Other restrictions such as the education level, is considered as a merit for the job and therefore every company, and even the government has the right to establish such restrictions. Besides, factors such as age are also essential, since the legal working age in the United Kingdom, is 18 years. Therefore, placing such restrictions are in accordance with the law. The last factor, which is having a work permit, is also a legal mandate for any employee, especially if they are not the citizens of the state.

References

Albert, L.S., Reynolds, S.J. and Turan, B., 2015. Turning inward or focusing out? Navigating theories of interpersonal and ethical cognitions to understand ethical decision-making. Journal of Business Ethics, 130(2), pp.467-484.

Browne, K., McGlynn, N., Bakshi, L. and Banerjea, N., 2016. Acting on equalities: are local authorities in England meeting the duties of the Equality Act 2010 and addressing sexual orientation & gender identity?.

Rezaei, J., 2015. Best-worst multi-criteria decision-making method. Omega, 53, pp.49-57.

Gigerenzer, G. and Gaissmaier, W., 2015. Decision making: Nonrational theories. In International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (pp. 911-916). Elsevier.

Waughray, A., 2016. Is Caste Discrimination in the UK Prohibited by the Equality Act 2010?. International Labor Rights Case Law, 2, pp.70-76.