Creating a culture of ethical behavior: protecting yourself and your business from unethical behavior.

• Author: Cummings, Judith
• Position: HR MATTERS

Bruce runs a 30-employee information technology (IT) consulting company with clients throughout Alaska. Last week, Bruce discovered that three of his employees have been exhibiting unethical behavior:

Charlie, a long-time IT consultant, has been padding his billable time. A major client called Bruce to report that their audit showed that Charlie had been adding an additional 10 percent billable time to meetings, phone calls and other work completed in the past quarter.

Sally, the company bookkeeper, was found with her "hand in the till." She had created a false vendor invoice and routed the payment check to her personal account.

David, a recently resigned IT consultant, was found to be have taken a copy of the client directory when he left the company.

PROTECT YOURSELF, PROTECT YOUR COMPANY

What can an employer like Bruce do to protect itself from unethical employee behavior? Certainly taking corrective action when the conduct is discovered is part of the solution. However, reacting to past breaches of conduct is not enough to protect an organization from unethical behavior. Proactive creation of a company culture of ethical behavior is the key to minimizing the problem.

Bruce is not alone in facing these kinds of concerns. In December 2008, Cyber-Ark, an IT security firm, surveyed office workers on Wall Street and found that 58 percent would take company data with them if they thought they could get away with it and were losing their job. The firm found that many workers anticipating being laid off were already downloading sensitive company data. Information that employees admitted to stealing included customer and contact databases, company plans and proposals, and product information.

Companies of all sizes have concerns about employee dishonesty. The Institute for Corporate Productivity reported in December 2008 that the current economic downturn has led to an upturn in workplace theft. The Institute conducted the study in November 2008, and found that 15 percent of companies reporting identified a rise in workplace crime. Larger companies have the greatest concern with 27 percent of respondents in large companies (i.e., companies having 10,000 or more employees) stating that workplace crime and unethical employee behavior had risen.

Employee-related monetary theft (including padding expense reports, missing cash and other financial-related crimes) was a particular concern. To address these issues, 28 percent of companies have increased...