Best Practices 10 & 11

Posted: 2/15/2007

 

#10 – Establish a Standard of Ethical Behavior; Train All Employees

Assuming that all employees want to do the “right” thing, employers should establish and communicate the company’s standard for ethical behavior. It’s important that the standard first clearly identify the company’s position on ethical operation of the business. That way, you are not applying a different set of rules to the employees than the overall operation. In effect, you’re demanding consistency between the business and each individual employee.

Ethics covers the appropriate and inappropriate actions related to:

-Equal employment

-Diversity

-Harassment

-Substance abuse

-Health and safety

-Political involvement

-Gifts

-Fraud

-E-mail and the internet

-Disciplinary action programs

 

#11 – Establish and Follow All Appropriate Privacy Standards

It’s important to maintain the proper separation between an employee’s personal life and their source of employment. The things that an employee chooses to share with his peers and supervisors are clearly a personal decision. Whether a business is covered by HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is certainly worth knowing and responding to appropriately. But, in actuality, every business has a moral responsibility to its employees to hold confidential matters confidential. Appropriate privacy standards and policies should be put into place and closely managed.