New training models and technologies are providing organizations tools to measure, monitor, and address ethical and unethical behaviors, but ethics training still has far to go to be effective, according to both Christopher Adkins, executive director of the Notre Dame Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership. He and Maureen Mohlenkamp, Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory principal, Deloitte & Touche LLP, discuss developments in ethics training and how data analytics and technologies may be creating both challenges and opportunities to improving ethics in organizations.
Q: What changes are you seeing in ethics training for leadership?
Chris Adkins: Ethics training has needed a serious redesign for some time, and we are seeing three changes to make training more effective. First, many organizations recognize that compliance training is not enough. Simply knowing the rules and how to call the ethics helpline does not necessarily mean employees will raise their voice when they see ethical issues in the workplace. Even if employees want to say something they often hesitate, worried that they may not be heard, or even worse, that voicing may lead to formal or informal retaliation. Overcoming this hesitation requires training to help employees learn how to voice their values with in-person, experiential practice in everyday workplace situations. More and more organizations are investing in this training, as a way to simultaneously support employees, reduce risk and proactively reshape their culture.
Another significant change in ethics training is a focus on helping senior leaders consider how their own ethical leadership shapes the culture. This requires leaders to examine the signals they send in their everyday behaviors, and how these signals make employees feel safe to voice ideas and concerns. In my training sessions with senior leaders, we use exercises that help them identify the leadership behaviors that create such trust, and those that may be counter-productive. We then redesign the everyday processes, such as the weekly meeting or decision-making models, that encourage voice and explicitly elevate ethical concerns.
Third, more organizations are seeing the connection between ethics and greater sense of purpose in the workplace. Employee engagement, performance and retention often increases when employees feel they are contributing something beyond profit creation. Ethics training can help employees see this connection and practice the so-called giver strategies that help others, their organizations, and their own careers at the same time.
Q: What are companies doing to measure ethical behavior?
Chris Adkins: Traditionally, ethical behavior has been measured by the number of transgressions, calls to the ethics helpline and the follow-up steps taken. Monitoring employee turnover and conducting exit interviews to identify the reasons that highly talented people leave can be an effective way to measure and identify ethical issues while assessing employee engagement. Measuring one’s culture has become the primary challenge for many organizations. Assessing culture is complex as culture can be defined as the values, beliefs and assumptions that lie beneath the surface yet drive the way people do things. To get beneath the surface, one can begin by examining organizational citizenship behaviors—demonstrations by leaders and employees who exceed expectations to engage in activities that help the organization build and sustain an ethical culture. Monitoring such behaviors can help an organization understand employees’ engagement and identify those individuals in the organization who are thinking beyond themselves. As more employees engage in organizational citizenship behaviors, others see these behaviors as the norm and thus are more likely to engage in those behaviors as well.
Q: What are some ways to strengthen ethics training?
Chris Adkins: Ethics training still has a way to go to be effective, despite the millions of dollars invested companies are not always seeing the outcomes they need and expect. To optimize the impact, one should design training by recognizing that values and leadership are learned differently than analytical skills. We learn values and leadership through our social experience with others, often by modeling the behaviors of role models. Ethics training needs to move beyond rules and analysis and become more social and experiential, tapping into individuals’ past experiences and providing social models that they can emulate.
We are learning all the time at work, and whether we learn the right lessons depends largely on who we have around us, as well as the opportunity for everyday feedback and reflection. When I work with both executives and emerging leaders, we often discuss unlearning some of the unethical leadership behaviors they have acquired by association with others over time. It’s important to replace those negative leadership behaviors with positive ones, and that can be done by identifying positive ethical influencers in their past and in their current organization. Once these influencers have been identified, they can choose specific behaviors they can emulate in their own situation, and seek out mentors or coaches. This way, employees begin to own their leadership development, and focus on the positive behaviors they want to practice.
Finally, ethics training should be aligned and integrated with other leadership training, for example, diversity and inclusion training. So many of the core skills of an ethical leader also lead to high-performing teams and organizations, such as empathy, building trust, effective feedback, managing conflict, and appreciating strengths and differences across cultures and generations. Making a clear connection between ethics and performance can be a powerful way to engage employees in ethics training and reinforce development of these core leadership skills.
Maureen Mohlenkamp: To Chris’s point, it’s also important for an organization to identify the stories that will convey its ethical values and to celebrate those. Ideally, companies should identify ethical influencers with whom employees can relate to in their day-to-day work. In telling their stories, these ethical leaders can nudge employees toward appropriate behaviors and good decision-making as studies show positive examples have a greater influence on behavior than highlighting negative examples. Internal and external social media tools are sources for finding those influencers, but consideration should also be given to quiet leaders who support the ethical vision and have a useful story to tell, but who may not be broadcasting it. So to be effective, ethics training needs to be closely tailored to the organization and the day-to-day issues and challenges their employees experience, and the ethical decisions they may face. Using social networking and data analytics tools, companies can more easily identify influencers who employees are more likely to follow and listen to when presented with an ethical dilemma.
Q: How can organizations make speak-up or whistleblower programs more effective?
Maureen Mohlenkamp: First, it’s critical to have a culture that encourages employees to speak up when they see something wrong and to ask questions if they are unsure about the appropriateness of a situation or behavior. Many organizations have the basics of a helpline, but there can be a lack of uniformity in helpline investigations. Some have multiple teams using multiple systems, and each team can have its own risk taxonomy and processes to categorize and investigate cases, which can lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. With a common taxonomy and common set of risk profiles, companies can generate a more accurate data profile and use modeling to see commonalities across reported cases. In addition, predictive analytics can help an organization identify which businesses and functions are more subject to risks of wrongful behavior. With that information, an organization can begin communicating what’s being observed across the enterprise, which allows it to reinforce the correct behaviors and decisions that can offset risks.
Greater communication also can help address the fears that remain a major deterrent to reporting. In order to understand whether or not that is a real issue within an organization, it’s important to conduct a culture or ethics and compliance survey that asks employees whether they fear retaliation for reporting concerns, and whether they would call the helpline if they had an issue or concern. Surveys provide data you can measure to affect behavioral change. Organizations should ask questions regarding fear and trust because anything you can do to increase trust and reduce fear leads to higher-performing teams and greater employee engagement. That’s language any business leader can relate to as stronger-performing teams directly support improving the bottom line.
Q: How is technology being used in ethics training, and what impact is it having?
Maureen Mohlenkamp: Organizations are very concerned about privacy implications involving monitoring employee behavior in any type of predictive way. Some are gaining more comfort with the notion of risk sensing, whereby an organization can look at detailed transactions data and look for anomalies based on past experiences. For example, if certain employee behaviors or transactions show a sharp spike up compared with past behaviors, it may indicate some level of action that may come close to or cross an ethical line and should be looked at more closely. The combination of ethics training and risk sensing through technology is starting to provide organizations a new level of control in identifying risks much earlier in the process, before they become bigger issues down the line. It also underscores the importance of gathering intelligence on specific areas of conduct that need to be addressed through more training and communications.
Chris Adkins: A new frontier is opening up in terms of access to data and analytics about employee decisions and actions. From the disclosure of customer information to third parties, to using analytics to identify at-risk individuals, leaders need a clear set of ethical principles and guidelines, and such principles do not yet exist in many industries. While one can imagine how analytics can help deter a breach of ethics, there are essential issues around privacy and discrimination, as well as ensuring trust among customers, clients, employees and organizations. The Deloitte Center at Notre Dame will be designing conversations with business leaders, policy makers and researchers to navigate this new territory.
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