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Think you are a person of integrity and that you bring your highest standards of ethics to your workplace each day? You may reassess your thinking as you explore the topic of workplace ethics in this article. Lapses in workplace ethics can occur because of simple issues such as toilet paper, copy machines, and lunch signup lists.
Some failures to practice everyday workplace ethics are invisible. No one but you will ever know about the decision that you made, but each lapse in ethics affects your essence as an individual, as an employee, and as a human being. Even the smallest lapse in workplace ethics diminishes the quality of the workplace for all employees.
Each failure to practice value-based workplace ethics affects your self-image and what you stand for far more than it affects your coworkers. But the effect of your behavior on your fellow employees is real, tangible, and unpredictable, too.
What are signs that you know that your actions are substandard? You make up excuses, give yourself reasons, and that little voice of your conscience that chatters away in your head, tries to convince your ethical self that your lapse in workplace ethics is okay.
Examples: Following are examples of employees failing to practice fundamental workplace ethics. The solution? Change the behavior, of course. You may never have thought of these actions as problems with ethical behavior, but they are. And, all of them affect your coworkers in negative ways. Here are sixteen examples of employees failing to practice fundamental workplace ethics.
1. You are using the company restroom and use up the last roll of toilet paper, or the last piece of paper towel. Without thought for the needs of the next employee, you go back to work rather than addressing the issue.
2. You call in sick to your supervisor because it’s a beautiful day and you decide to go to the beach, or shopping, or ….
3. You engage in an affair with a coworker while married because no one at work will ever know, you think you’re in love, you think you can get away with it, your personal matters are your own business, the affair will not impact other employees or the workplace.
4. You place your dirty cup in the lunchroom sink. With a guilty glance around the room, you find no one watching and quickly leave the lunchroom.
5. Your company sponsors events, activities, or lunches and you sign up to attend and fail to show. Conversely, you fail to sign up and show up anyway. You make the behavior worse when you say that you took the appropriate action so someone else must have screwed up.
6. You tell potential customers that you are the vice president in charge of something. When they seek out the company VP at a trade show, you tell your boss that the customers must have made a mistake.
7. You work in a restaurant in which wait staff tips are shared equally, and you withhold a portion of your tips from the common pot before the tips are divided.
8. You have sex with a reporting staff member and then provide special treatment to your flame.
9. You take office supplies from work to use at home because you justify, you often engage in company work at home, or you worked extra hours this week, and so on.
10. You spend several hours a day using your work computer to shop, check out sports scores, pay bills, do online banking, and surf the news headlines for the latest celebrity news and political opinions.
11. You use up the last paper in the communal printer, and you fail to replace paper leaving the task to the next employee who uses the printer.
12. You hoard supplies in your desk drawer, so you won’t run out while other employees go without supplies they need to do their work.
13. You overhear a piece of juicy gossip about another employee and then repeat it to other coworkers. Whether the gossip is true or false is not the issue.
14. You tell a customer or potential customer that your product will perform a particular action when you don’t know if it will, and you didn’t check with an employee who does.
15. You allow a part that you know does not meet quality standards leave your workstation and hope your supervisor or the quality inspector won’t notice.
16. You claim credit for the work of another employee, or you fail to give public credit to a co-worker’s contribution, when you share results, make a presentation, turn in a report or in any other way appear to be the sole owner of a work product or results.
This list provides examples of ways in which employees fail to practice workplace ethics. It is not comprehensive as hundreds of additional examples are encountered by employees in workplaces daily.
To read this article in its entirety, go to: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/did-you-bring-your-ethics-to-work-today-1917741
By Susan M. Heathfield
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