An Ethics Ambassador journey or Why good people do bad things

What is an Ethics Ambassador anyway?

Last week I travelled to Newcastle to meet with members of the global network of Johnson Matthey's Ethics Ambassadors. Together with my colleague Angela Alderman, I had a chance to share with fellow Ethics Ambassadors our experiences of launching and promoting the Johnson Matthey's Code of Ethics “Doing the Right Thing”.

One might ask “What is it like to be an Ethics Ambassador for a business with a dynamic mix of functions and colleagues spread across multiple sites? What is an Ethics Ambassador anyway?”

In the Good Practice Guide on Ethics Ambassadors published by the Institute of Business Ethics, it is explained: “Ethics ambassadors are employees selected to formally assist senior management in promoting and embedding the ethics policies, codes of conduct, business principles, statements of values or other similar policies of their organisations.” Yawn…! If you are bored already I would not blame you as it sounds very formal, prescriptive and corporate. Contrary, being an Ethics Ambassador for me is a challenging but very exciting role.

Dear reader (hopefully, there will be some after I publish this post),

Are you involved in the company values communications either due to your communications role or as a company employee? If yes, it would be very interesting and helpful to hear your views on how you see the role of an Ethics Ambassador. What is the key to succeeding in making company values and ethics principles close to employees’ hearts and thriving within an organisation?

Is there a perfect recipe for a communications campaign?

There are hundreds of books written on the best practices in Corporate communications, which of course are a great help while embarking on the communications role journey. However, none of these books will give you a recipe for the perfect company values communication campaign because each organisation and even each business or division within an organisation have their unique ethos. So what works for one does not necessarily work for another. For us, it was important to make our campaign convenient, relevant and appealing to a wide vibrant audience of nearly 600 employees.

We are all good people and don't do bad things, right?

The initial reaction from people when they hear that I am an Ethics Ambassador is very interesting to observe as it is rather protective. “Oh!”, they say, “I should be careful then what I am saying while you are around”. Then it becomes something along the lines: “Why do we need Ethics Ambassadors? I am an ethical person and I am sure that my colleagues are as well!”. There is no doubt that most of us don’t set ourselves to be unethical while performing our roles within an organisation.

According to the US Management Association 2006 Survey of 1,121 global managers and HR leaders, 69.7% of respondents defined "pressure to meet unrealistic objectives and deadlines" as the main reason why good people do bad things. Only 9.5% were allocated to a “desire to steal from or harm the organisation”. A critical factor in maintaining a highly ethical behaviour of employees is to promote recognition of ethical dilemmas and awareness about the massive impact which our actions (considered small and insignificant by some in the first place) can have on the organisation. The recent well-known examples of VW, BP, Mitsubishi talk for themselves.

What does it take to be a good Ethics Ambassador?

For me, the below defines key responsibilities of an Ethics Ambassador:

#1 - Reach out to employees to raise awareness of our ethical principles

#2 - Build employees skills to recognise ethical dilemmas

#3 - Be approachable and available to help and talk through specific issues

#4 - Encourage to Speaking Up and explain how to get help

                        Have I missed anything?

#5 - Ah, of course: To keep the Johnson Matthey's Code of Ethics alive.

Any other thoughts?