Project Management Code of Ethics: Employee Ethical Training – Best practice to sustain the Business Integrity

Project Management Code of Ethics: Employee Ethical Training – Best practice to sustain the Business Integrity

Tejas S. Fanse

Business Administration and Project Management University of the Cumberlands

Williamsburg KY, USA

Texas A&M University, Kingsville TX, USA

Arpita V. Shirbhate

Department of Civil Engineering KDK College of Engineering Nagpur, MH, India

AbstractFor any organizational success, employees must be trained to follow for ethics implemented. This training program will give employees a basic education of ethical behavior needs to sustain at the workplace. As training program will benefit employees as well as organization, there are challenges to put training program in a place. Ethical training program is one of the keys for organizational development and its success. The primary motto of this program is to promote behavioral ethics throughout the company and avoid any unethical behavior or conduct in any way that hamper reputation, business, and harm to other employees.

KeywordsEthics; Ethical Training; Organization; Business

1. OVERVIEW

   Ethical education program includes various types of topics, regularly subjected at the workplace which give advantage to employees at the basic level which is self-decision-making skill for the action they are taking to convert it into for well-being on truthful track. Its always been that legal law teams are in the organizations or for some, law firms get hired for any legality issues. In this scenario, when employees already trained for ethics to be followed, it is found that, it can prevent legality matters and risk of financial losses to go in deeper dive.

   Ethical Training Program is one of the important parts of organizational behavior. Training also provides to find out employees morale to improve so that they can confidently do their work by implementation of intuitive thinking, ideas which eventually help themselves at personal as well as organizational level (Wood, 2019). Being recognized at the workplace, can improve moral and get satisfaction as a human being will keep the workplace vibes in a positive way, this directly leads to the higher efficiency, productivity and lowering turnover rate (employee quitting the workplace). Ethics training makes the employee thinking to behave in ethical manner, report or stop any unethical/ misconduct and helps to understand cultural differences. This research paper will show what are types and challenges to implement the program at work.

2. PURPSOSE OF THE RESEARCH

   The generalized purpose of this research is to give organization an idea about how these training educate the employees as workplace and how the program can be smoothly engaged at the organization to show the benefits from it. Also, fruitful purpose can be an exploration of effectivity of the program and its various approached to implement it at

   workplace to train employees in way that they follow ethical culture/ behavior. With the rudimentary though on training is to develop the raining program tailored to the organization and implement it through employees for their better understanding of how ethical principles and its rules and regulation along with standards to root a highest integrity, accountability as well as positivity to work which in turns more productivity with less hassle (Kreismann, 2021).

   As there are various industries divided into their scale, product, market, services etc. so the variety of people involved in it. As mentioned earlier, for different types of industries a little tweak to the standard education program for delivering ethics training would be fun learning and easy to understand from basic shop employees to top management. There are several ways to deliver the training at workplace like online training which employee can access from their given infrastructure (computers, laptops, mobiles, tablets) even at their convenient timings and furthermore even at home too. Many companies have their auditoriums, classrooms for training and bigger meeting sessions- training can be given in person too, by explaining each term and its pros and cons and consequences. Few high-tech companies even have simulated programs based on real life incidents and actions, which are easy to understand and simulated to the facts.

   In addition to this, training material can be given such as portals open to all employees, some handbooks, flyers which are intended to eye catching pictures for any conflicts at the workplace, any type of harassment, data privacy along with each employee comply to the legal requirements by the company.

   Research on the topic can be served as a measurement of ethics training impact/ influence on employees their behavior with colleagues at workplace, their attitude towards the assignments and its results and overall organizational behavior. Simultaneously, it can be a measure for organizational results like, how organization could retain their employees, how they could improve morale of the employees and how firm could help employees to create positive work culture to improve performance (Fengrui, 2023). Ethics training research is an extensive area where, it can dig deep towards identifying culture at organization and its leadership committee for promoting such effective trainings for betterment of bot employees and organization.

   Furthermore, due to vast field of research on such trainings for variety of industries globally, along with cultural differences, mentality, geographical areas, organizations business continents, evaluation measures must be in place. Purpose is to highlight how these trainings achieved the intended goals towards employees (Seo, 2021). Employees can have ethical dilemmas and may not be able to make decisions even after finishing the training program so, training body should design or suggest the organization to make a basic and strong case training material with effective way of delivering it to employees, can be helpful. Identifying, which training media helpful, like online, in-person or few private sessions? Or can it be included in other programs? Such educative programs will find out what are the most vulnerable areas where employees may sink into ethical dilemmas. If the training given, organization can nourish such areas in well manner so that ethics, values, integrity, accountability gets rewarded. Such type of research is purely intended for ensuring whether organizations, complying to the requirements of trainings as per law.

3. LITERATURE REVIEW

   Employee Ethics Training is vital for any organization success. Its a proven criteria that while working on various projects, selection of proper communication tool became critical to reach to success platform. For a project manager, the type of communication and its media should be used in the project that can eventually shows success/ failure is important (Fanse, 2022). This education program provides a type of tool to employee, that they can use it for making for ethical decisions at workplace, making it better to work with improved efficiency. This research article gives important facts about why ethical training is required. Code of ethics in entire aspect of an organization in various shapes can be defined as below:

   Fig 1: Globalized Code of Ethics

   1. Importance of Ethical Training

      • Step towards integrity culture:

        With effective delivery of the training material, leads to develop cultural integrity at workplace. Due to training program and understating of employees, they will behave in ethical manner which is aligned to the core values of the organization.

      • Legality Compliance:

        By providing ethics training to employee, they will understand the variety of laws and regulations that companies must follow to stay in compliance and not absorbing any fines for out of compliance. This way, employees help the organization to stay in compliance to make the workplace better to work, without any risk and hazards (Seo, 2021).

      • Improvement in decision making:

        Decision making will improve because, ethical dilemmas will go away due to training and the tools provided in training so that employees make better decisions aligned with core values of the company.

      • Risk Reduction:

        Ethical training will reduce risk, how? If employee behaves unethically, organization is more prone to acquire any financial losses as well as involvement in legal matters. Training will provide the path and measurements to employees that they should and have to act in ethical manner to stay in compliance and the progress at individual plus organizational level.

      • Organization Reputation:

        This aspect is well known across the globe regarding organization. This helps organization through various ways like companies which are famous for organizational behavior usually business cases are strong for them means customer attracted towards them in addition to the talent acquisition for workforce is top notch due to work environment. Usually, such organization have best employee retention rate and so the better workforce and higher the business (Nathan, 2020). Training will provide the secure behavioral aspect to employees so that they will stick to values of the company results in advancement of brand value with reputation amongst competitors.

   2. Approaches of Ethical Training

      To go for training at organization, ethical training comes with several approaches, this article listed some for leaders.

      Ethical training & education program includes few formal and informal training sessions highlighting ethical leadership (Seo, 2021). These formal programs surround the comprehensive study and quizzes, real life situations and simulations throughout videos and structured typically giving rules and regulations about specific company and standard when it comes to globalized organizations. On another side, informal trainings are like sharing and telling stories through casual conversation in set time sessions, sometimes it will be case studies.

      In this training, if discussion about ethical leadership is happening and it should be, it would be a development of

      ethical model of specific company from Top to Shop (Upper management to operator).

   3. Types of Employee Ethics Training

      Employee ethics program have various modes to spread the education and awareness about ethics. Research article literates the reader about media used in various training programs.

      • Classroom based training program:

        This is one of the traditional ways of delivering the training in a defined amount of time at the workplace. Employees will learn about ethics and its implementation from instructor, who can be an employee at same workplace or can be third party agency providing the training. These sessions usually set up in a classroom settings and learning is through lectures, case studies and discussion with each other on various topics.

      • Classroom Computer-based training (CBT):

        This training type involves the technology and infrastructure provided by an organization. Higher technology is used in this program to deliver study material to the employees. As using technology, sessions can be done remotely where employee can finish up trainings at their own time of choice sometimes within a specified time or throughout the year (Wood, 2019). Due to technology, this training formats are designed in a way to enjoy it and learning with fun type. These are interactive programs with real life situations thru simulations, cartoonist videos, quizzes, and lot more with interactive chats with others or robots for more learning.

      • On job trainings on ethics (OJT):

        These are the most effective ways of giving training and demonstrating the facts, better understanding by employees and easy to explain for instructor too. Ethical behavior training can be given like hands-on- training.at workplace. In this type of training, some situations even created intentionally, unknowingly to employees at training and tested which can involves ethical dilemmas for employees and ask them to take fair. Ethical decision to overcome or handle the situation.

   4. Effectivity of the Training

      Whenever, training program is given for any type of skillset, it has requirement that how it got implemented and how effective it imposes the training value on employee or to the workplace (Seo, 2020). To make sure if this ethical program/ training going well or went well, training committee should involve employees in the process of training development too. On timely manner, defining body should take valuable feedback from employees, random check on ethical behavior is get followed at workplace. Identification of any ethical issues will be a greater part which are more potential to get involved at workplace, if not treated in time can lead to financial and branding loss to company along with legal matters (Mostafa, 2020).

      To verify impose the effectiveness of ethical training, online or live support team should be launched to help employees with

      ethical dilemmas. Also, provide various opportunities for implementing training contents at workplace, also should give feedback on their behavior and suggestions for improvements (Mostafa, 2020).

   5. Implementation challenges for Training

   Article shown various approaches, benefits, types of ethical training program, even though at workplace, there are many restrictions, challenges a company can face when wanted to implement the training and ethical behavior (Nathan, 2020). One of the main challenges is to motivate employees to participate in training program, they can think it may not be necessary and burden in addition to work. So, delivering importance of it will create motivation in them.

   Another issue that, some people will resist to change specially when they involved in unethical behavior for greater period. For this challenge, company can provide support to employees and reinforce the training contents. Also, as much as possible creating an environment which support the ethical behavior will turn resistant employees to behave ethically (Mostafa, 2020).

4. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

   Now-a-days, most of the organization takes effort to improve work life balance, work culture to maintain the standards and stay in compliance by, industrial organizations, state laws or even country laws. Practical applications for employee ethical training are listed below:

   1. Promoting Ethical Behavior and Follower

      Basic and one of the key benefits from ethical training program is that employee will understand the importance of ethics and automatically promotion of the agenda (Wood, 2019). Ethical behavior not only will be helpful at workplace, but it can improve employee at personal level which eventually help organization, its business, and the society too at its entirety.

   2. Ethical dilemma remedy

      Training will surely help employees who are facing ethical dilemmas at the workplace while taking fair/ ethical decision for the action they are taking or already taken. Help desk will provide help and support to employees for their part of action.

   3. Regulatory requirement

      Such educative program will bolster the foundation of an organization where, it needs to be in a compliance with legal forms such as anti-bribery law, whistleblower protection and any discrimination laws in a place.

   4. Employee job satisfaction engagement and Retention

   When employees given a training for ethical behavior, they will feel secure at the workplace and will not have any feeling about to leave the workplace due to worst work culture, feeling of behaving unfair with colleagues (Kreismann, 2021). Training will promote employees moral as well as gives satisfaction for the work they are doing; they will feel more engaged at workplace instead of scattered mindset. These are basic steps towards integrity and higher efficiency at the company, employee retention will be high at such workplaces.

5. CONCLUSION

As seen from the article, ethics training program plays an essential role to educate employees at workplace to maintain high ethical standards in the operation of business. Training basically shows what are the values of company, how to maintain standards and stick to policies so that organization also be complying. Impressive and effective training program should include various approaches and types of training program through various medias for employees flexibility. Also, training should be continuous throughout the year so that any employee can refresh their learning contents. As training is beneficial in most of the ways, it will improve employees morale, job satisfaction and public trust in at workplace. Risks like imposing legal matters and financial liabilities can be avoided with the help of ethical behavior. Overall, organization should take initiative to continue this program and build a culture for integrity, ethics, trust and responsible behavior of all employees which eventually develop a person at personal level and help organization, stakeholders, customers and society.

REFERENCES

[1] Wood. (2019). An Exploration of the Effects of Ethics Training and Its Relations to Ethical Decision-Making, Ethical Leadership, Moral Reasoning, and Education among IT Specialists. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

[2] Kreismann, & Talaulicar, T. (2021). Business Ethics Training in Human Resource Development: A Literature Review. Human Resource Development Review, 20(1), 68105.

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[3] Fengrui Guo, Zhongyi Xue, Jiaxu He, Fakhra Yasmin, & Fakhra Yasmin. (2023). Ethical leadership and workplace behavior in the education sector: The implications of employees ethical work behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1040000

[4] Seo. (2021). How Do Organizations Address the Tension between Codes of Ethics and Employee Creativity?: The Role of Ethics Training. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

[5] Nathan, Newman, A., Zhou, A. J., & Zhou, S. S. (2020). The relationship between ethical leadership and employees internal and external community citizenship behaviors: The mediating role of prosocial motivation. Personnel Review, 49(2), 636652.

https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-01-2019-0019

[6] Fanse, T. S., & Shirbhate, A. V. (2022). Organizational Behavior Entity: Communication Modes in Project Management. International Journal of Research in Engineering, Science and Management, 5(2), 174-176.

[7] Mohammed Sayed Mostafa, A., & Shen, J. (2020, February). Ethical leadership, internal CSR, organisational engagement and organisational workplace deviance. In Evidence-based HRM: A Global Forum for Empirical Scholarship (Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 113-127). Emerald Publishing Limit