With hindsight, it is often easy for an organisation to identify the chain of events that led to an ethical risk materializing as well as the missed opportunities where the course could have been reversed. In advance, those moments seemed less important or it was believed that there would be enough time to rectify the situation. In the absence of a clear message or information about wrongdoing, there may not be sufficient impuls to react and put things right.
In many organisations, preparations for the introduction of a whistleblowing channel are currently underway. At the same time, they are considering how to get the most out of it.
These four steps ensure that your organisation really benefits from the use of the channel, rather than it being an administrative expense.
Increasing amount of people find themselves coming across the term Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) while designing sustainability strategies, drafting ethical codes, or preparing sustainability reports. Paying more attention to human rights impacts of private sector is an emerging trend, not the least because the EU is making steady progress with the new Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Directive. In the latest proposal, the directive is titled under Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence. The directive would make larger companies directly obliged to monitor human rights impacts in their sphere of influence.
Ethical, responsible or sustainable business is about much more than responsibility for the environment. It is important to internalise the idea of ethical business conduct, or business practice, in order to automate the way of working and generate the benefits of ethical behaviour.
Whistleblower issues are on the agenda, but you don't have time to implement them? Too many details and confusing information? What needs to be done now? Or what doesn’t? There are undeniably many details, but fortunately, in the end, it's not that complicated.
The EU deadline for national whistleblowing legislation and whistleblower protection was 17 December 2021. National laws were adopted within the deadline in several countries, but even more were delayed.
There are many risks involved in business operations that senior management and the members of the management team, in their own areas of responsibility, must identify and prevent. Illegal activities are a serious risk to a company and all management teams regularly discuss their prevention. The best way to shield your company from criminal activities is to invest in an ethical corporate culture and an operating model that will prevent misconduct.
As an employee, you may sometimes come across practices that are not OK. A supervisor or another manager may be abusing their position or they may even be requiring others to do things that would not stand up to scrutiny.
People often ask what is the reasoning behind giving or not giving someone a particular task. Here is a short list of practical ways of ensuring you don’t get caught in the trap.
In a nutshell, by acting unethically at the workplace you can weaken productivity and wellbeing at work at the same time.
Tolerating uncertainty and managing people in a changing environment requires managers and executives to pay more attention to people. Skills need to be constantly developed. Uncertainty will never go away and it has, in fact, become a part of the new normal.
