Eight easy steps to ethics success.

• Author: Ahmed, Jamal

More than a century ago, Day & Zimmermann's founder, Charles Day, set out on a journey of business excellence, drafting the first "Betterment Reports" to help modernize U.S. factories. To this day, "betterment" is a concept synonymous with the construction, engineering, staffing and defense firm.

It does this through an. eight step ethics and compliance program, which is focused on helping employees choose to do the right thing in everything they do.

Any company can adopt these eight steps to begin or improve its comprehensive ethics program.

The first step is setting up an ethics office, which consists of the executive sponsor of the ethics program, the vice president, internal audit and chief ethics officer and the ethics and compliance programs administrator. This office is responsible full-time for the structure, content and administration of the ethics program across the entire organization, and for keeping it aligned with -- and sometimes leading -- industry best practices.

The next step is to orient all employees to the code of ethics and standards of business conduct. This begins with the company's vision, mission, values and cultural insights, which in turn provides a guide for doing what is right. Supplemental orientation materials address five aspects of the workplace: environment, information recording and reporting, protecting resources, conflicts of interest and community relations.

The firm wants employees in every aspect of the business to be fully armed to do what is right and to know what to do when in doubt. The materials stress that these standards apply not only to relationships with each other, but also with customers, subcontractors, independent contractors, vendors and consultants.

Words alone are not enough. All new employees attend an initial Ethics 101 course, followed by annual refreshers. To keep these courses fun and engaging for employees, we are now using digital gaming technology and competition.

Step three is the digital compliance training, which is mandatory for all exempt and certain non-exempt employees. Using various job groupings -- senior managers and executives, team leaders, supervisors and managers -- ensures courses are tailored and effective. Different employee groups will have different requirements as to the frequency of training per year. This is tracked and monitored closely, using reporting tools to ensure employee-wide completion.

Next, we establish a consistent curriculum or program...