Identifying Ethical Issues Within a Business
For many businesses, it’s never easy to navigate ethical internal issues. While there might be laws and statutes that exist to hold everyone accountable, they’re not enough to keep people from behaving unethically, which can cause some issues for businesses. However, it’s not always easy to define what precisely might be an ethical issue for a company. That is because such issues tend to encompass a wider range of areas beyond a company’s stated ethical standards.
Some of the most fundamental ethical issues within a company include promoting work that’s based on trust and integrity. However, there are some more complex issues too, such as empathetic decision making, accommodating diversity, governance, compliance with the company’s core values, and more.
For businesses to be able to manage ethical issues that arise internally, they first have to develop a good understanding of what those issues might look like. Then, after understanding how to detect and deter those ethical issues before they can turn into large problems, companies can instead focus on business growth and success instead of fixing internal ethical problems.
Workplace Discrimination and Harassment
One of the ethical issues that has impacted a lot of business owners these days relates to discrimination and harassment in the workplace. If either one takes place inside a company, the results tend to be catastrophic both in terms of its reputation as well as its finances. That’s why every business should be aware of the anti-discrimination regulations and laws that protect employees, which define different types of harassment and discrimination that employees might face. The bases of driscrimination prohibited by these laws and regulations range from things like age, equal pay, and religion, to disabilities, pregnancy, and race.
Workplace Health and Safety
All employees also have the right to safe working conditions according to the regulations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). There’s a number of commonly cited work health and safety requirements , such as fall protection, hazard communication, machine guarding, respiratory protection, scaffolding, and more. However, it’s important to note that health and safety aren’t just limited to the physical harm on employees, as there are plenty of work-related stress and mental health concerns that companies should be mindful of.
Accounting
Every organization needs to have accurate bookkeeping practices, because if they risk conducting unethical accounting practices, it becomes a serious concern. There have been numerous famous examples of this violation throughout the years, many of which have resulted in numerous employees losing their jobs as companies went out of business. That’s why the US Federal Government decided to establish the Sarbanes-Oxley Act back in 2002, which mandated new reporting requirements about companies’ finances; requirements that protect both shareholders and consumers.
