ETHICS TRAINING PROGRAMS

Values statements, policy manuals, and conduct codes aren’t enough. Organizations that are serious about ethics distribute these materials widely and then provide training in their meaning and application. Effective training programs are ongoing efforts to teach everyone from new recruits to high-level managers. We discussed whether ethics can be taught; we hope that by now, you’re quite convinced that it can. Ethics in organizations is about awareness of ethical issues and knowledge of appropriate conduct and these ideas can and must be taught to employees at all levels.

Training should be designed to suit the group of individuals being trained. A new employee needs different training than a manager who has been with the firm for 10 years. An assembly-line worker might require only an hour of training, with regular refresher sessions, whereas a manager might require several days of training that address a variety of issues. Furthermore, training needs to be based on program goals. Is the training supposed to increase awareness of ethical issues, convey knowledge of laws and policies, change attitudes or behaviors? Finally, ethics training need not— and probably should not—be solely the province of the ethics office. Ethics training should be incorporated into leadership development and other programs so that it becomes integrated more fully into the culture of the organization.

TRAINING NEW RECRUITS Many firms provide ethics training through new employee orientation. For example, to set the stage properly, every new Lockheed Martin employee gets a briefing on ethical and legal issues as part of the first day on the job. This training is complemented throughout each year of employment, with the intent of setting the stage properly from the first day.

TOP MANAGEMENT INVOLVEMENT IN TRAINING When organizations conduct ethics training for the first time, many of them begin the training at the top of the organization. Cascading is a term frequently used to describe ethics initiatives that begin at the top of the organization and work their way down, level by level. This technique is often used because of the importance of leadership to the credibility of ethics training. Each leader trains his or her direct reports, modeling the expected training behavior and the necessary commitment to integrity.

LOCAL MANAGEMENT INVOLVEMENT IN TRAINING Many organizations recommend having local management conduct the ethics training, using common everyday ethical dilemmas as the basis for discussion. Training sessions are thought to be more useful and effective if they address real ethical issues that people face every day in their own work setting. Examples of calls that have come in to the ethics office can be used as the basis for training. Employees make ethical decisions every day. Anybody who reports the time that they work—or decides how to divide their time across different government contracts, or decides whether they are going to engage in some kind of an outside business activity that might be in conflict with their job, or has to decide what to tell a customer about a delayed order—is making an ethical decision. Common everyday issues in training gives employees a feeling of comfort that the issue they’ve faced has been a problem for others and that they’re not some screwball who is worrying about something that doesn’t matter.