How to Instill Integrity into Your Business

Every company mentions ‘integrity’ in their pillars, values, or mission statement. It is something everyone aspires to adopt. Some might be genuine while others might just be checking it off their to-do lists while setting up their company. But without any real measures to integrate the practice, the word ‘integrity’ loses its integrity.

As Warren Buffett said, “In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And, if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”

Here are a few ways you can instill integrity into your business and make sure it doesn’t mean different things to different people.

Practice what you preach

The way to make sure that everyone at your company imbibes integrity is to lead by example. The leadership team needs to openly and obviously follow the rules set in place to integrate integrity into the company. Without any exceptions. The workforce will be looking towards the leadership team to follow in their footsteps and emulate their behaviour. It is during tough times that you can see integrity play a role where senior management needs to showcase that they will follow through. And that’s the only way to instill integrity into your business.

Get involved in drafting your ethics code

Integrity can not just be a formality to be completed by the legal team. It needs to be understood by all and it needs to adhere to the brand. So rather than taking standard documents that define and outline integrity, get involved and draft a document that suits your brand. This is especially important in organizations that are multicultural. The document should represent the personality of your brand, company culture, and geographical location, and it should reflect the company’s employees.

Be clear

Being clear about what the rules are is also important. The employees are looking to the leaders for clarity. There should be no ambiguity about it at all. What constitutes a violation should be explained in grave detail. But, not only do you need to be extremely clear about every aspect of the integrity document, but you also need to make it clear to the employees by talking about it openly. By just including it during orientation doesn’t make it something employees will follow. Unless they understand that it is actually core to the culture of the company. So top management will need to insist on its importance during orientation, as well as otherwise.

Make reporting violations easy

Make sure that the process of reporting any violations an employee might be witness to is easy and uncomplicated. Complicated processes will discourage employees from coming forward, so will processes that require them to call out the misdeed in public. They risk being ostracized which again means they will probably not get involved. Having none to few reports of violations could actually be a sign that there might be underlying issues. To tackle this, you could adopt an anonymous process and encourage employees to come forward. Assure them that their identities will not be revealed and action will be taken.

Showcase the repercussions

It is very important to deal with every violation in the proper manner. A certain complaint must be investigated thoroughly, and a fair and appropriate decision must be made. No matter who the person or persons in question are. If some violations are overlooked while others are crucified, an atmosphere of mistrust will brew, which will further cause more issues within the organization. All employees need to know that certain behaviors carry certain consequences and that is not negotiable.

Be consistent

Like anything else that needs to be developed over a period of time, you need to be consistent with ethical matters so that there is no doubt in an employee’s mind about what is acceptable and what is not. Even though you introduce the rules during orientation, you could still hold revision sessions and keep the practice fresh in everyone’s minds. Being consistent also gives the impression that the organization and all the leaders driving the company are serious about integrity.

So, keep talking about ethical dos and don’ts with all members of the organization, keep encouraging people to report violations, keep insisting on transparency, and keep demonstrating the consequences of violations.

Summary

Q. Why is consistency important to instill integrity into your business?

A. It is like anything else that needs to be developed over a period of time. To avoid any sort of doubt in an employee’s mind about what is acceptable and what is not, consistency is extremely important.

Q. Why is it preferable to get involved in the process of drafting your own ethics code?

A. Especially important in multicultural organizations, drafting your own ethics document allows you to make sure it adheres to your company, organizational culture, geographical location, and employees.