ESG Metric: Ethics reporting and advice
Ease of implementation: Easy
Suitable for: All businesses
Suggested functional lead: HR, leadership team
Summary
Employee surveys can be used to gather information on ethics within the company and make improvements. Ensure the employee survey is sent out to all employees with a clear deadline. Ensure the survey includes the ethics questions you would like to investigate as well as a section to report any misconduct the employees may have witnessed. Analyse the results and engagement carefully and make any changed within the organisation necessary. Further investigate any ethical misconduct reported in the survey and protect the employee against retaliation. Ensure ethics questions are incorporated in the employee survey annually. If engagement is low, incentivize the employee survey through prizes or raffles.
Background Information
Employee surveys can be a useful tool to raise ethical misconduct. They can be conducted internally or externally, where results are analysed by HR and recurring issues can be addressed. It allows for improvements to be made to current procedures as well. Over the span of 3 years, the Institute for Business Ethics surveyed approximately 10,000 employees in 13 countries to determine their attitude and perception on ethics in their company. They identified that over a third of employees believe their organisation has improved their ethical standards post-pandemic with only less than 8% believing the standards have decreased. It further concluded that that 86% of employees agree their organisation practices honesty, a key to ethical reporting. In terms of the reporting mechanisms available, 53% of employees say their company has a Speak Up mechanism in place to report misconduct in a confidential and anonymous manner.
Implementation Steps
Send out survey to all employees
Send out an employee survey to everyone in the company either via email or other communication channels. Ensure there is a section regarding reporting on any unethical behaviour detected or misconduct seen.
Set a deadline
Set a deadline for the survey to be complete. We suggest a deadline two weeks after the survey was sent out, to give employees enough time to respond. Assign responsibility to managers to remind their team to fill in the survey.
Analyse results and engagement
Identify how many employees filled out the survey and determine any trends i.e. Lack of engagement from certain departments or roles. Analyse the results of the ethics section from the survey and identify any cases that require further investigation.
Establish an effective response system
Assign responsibility to the appropriate member of staff to investigate and respond to the reports and reassure the employee the case is being handled. The investigation procedure must be timely and thorough. This may include collecting other documents, testimonials, electronic devices and other materials as evidence.
Protect the employee reporting the case
It is crucial that the people reporting misconduct are protected from potential retaliation. The employee reporting an issue must be reassured that their job is not in jeopardy and they will not be in danger of financial or phycological harm. Investigations must be executed if retaliation complaints are reported.
Ensure ethics questions are integrated annually
Employee surveys are subject to change quarterly based on the data an organisation would like to collect. Ensure the ethic section remain the same to be able to track trends annually and implement any changes necessary.
Use incentives to improve engagement
If engagement remains low or drops significantly, suggest incentives to answering the survey. Raffles are a good incentive to use as it in cost effective and means an employee will win a prize such as a lunch voucher.