Ethics training is
meant to:
- communicate to the employee population the
commitment of an organization to ethical business conduct;
- raise employee awareness of ethical issues
that arise in the workplace;
- equip employees with skills to respond to
ethical situations;
- provide information about organizational
resources available to employees;
- respond to employee questions and concerns
related to organizational ethics standards, and
- reinforce commitments to practicing ethical
behavior.
Ethics training should typically extend
beyond compliance, to include a thorough exposition of the organization's operational
values and the expectations those values create regarding employee behavior. It should
also take into account the demands of the job and the individual set of values that each
employee brings workplace. There should be a degree of compatibility between the standards
and expectations of the employer, and the ethics of the employee and the training should
reflect this.
Trainers have long
recognized that there is not one "correct" or "best" training format.
Learning objectives, individual learning styles, subject matter and the needs of the
organization are four of the many variables that should enter into the decision regarding
training format and delivery.
Effectiveness of
Ethics Training
To date, many organizations have measured
the success of their training efforts in terms of participation and completion rates.
However, an employee's exposure to training content does not indicate it's utility.
Ultimately, the most significant outcome is the extent to which training equips employees
to make ethical decisions at work. Training is effective if employees learn how to
recognize the ethical content of the problems they are addressing and the ethical
consequences of the actions they take, and have a more thorough understanding of the
issues so that they can present and defend their positions from an ethical as well as
pragmatic perspective.
"© 2005, Ethics Resource Center. Used
with permission of the Ethics Resource Center, 1747 Pennsylvania Avenue
NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC. 20006, www.ethics.org.
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