Of course, no one knows your company as well as you or your employees. But do you personally adjust your leg when you break it? It is yours too and you know everything about it. However, you benefit from the knowledge and experience of an orthopaedist/surgeon who knows the human skeletal system much better than you do. He knows how to immobilise your leg so that it heals properly and continues to serve you without complaint. It is the same with image and crisis. Everyone seems to know everything, like about sport and politics, but suddenly a problem arises and you don’t really know what to do about it, where to start.
Like the Ten Commandments
Imagine a purely hypothetical situation: an employee of your company accepted a financial benefit from a satisfied customer. It quickly becomes apparent that the customer may have been satisfied, but in addition to this, moral dilemmas and guilt have been awakened in him due to the giving of the benefit/bribe. With his doubts satisfied, yet with a gnawing conscience, he shares the story, e.g. on a forum or publishes a post on one of the Facebook groups.
From this point on, the situation develops hyper-fast: negative comments appear, stigmatising the employee’s behaviour. Other reactions from customers are also not the most pleasant. To make matters worse, the media starts to take an interest in the topic and the crisis escalates. And somewhere on the sidelines, perhaps even the CBA is watching the whole situation.
Could this situation have been avoided? Could the crisis have been averted before it started?
Yes!
A Code of Ethics should be created. It would be very naïve to think that having a company Decalogue will completely eliminate unwanted and dangerous employee behaviour. But, following the principle that prevention is better than cure, creating and implementing such a document could eliminate the situation described above. Moreover, by creating a Code of Ethics, it is the company that defines the rules of the game, the values it follows and what it can demand from its employees.
The Code of Ethics is a set of principles and rules that guide the company’s activities, define the company’s vision and mission, and regulate the relationship between the company and its employees. Imagine being invited to Buckingham Palace and your school’s alumni ball. In name it is the same event, but how different the rules are in both cases. After all, you won’t fall into the arms of the long-lost Queen Elizabeth (probably never seen) any more than you would into the arms of your former school love. What falls out, how it falls out and under what circumstances it falls out is precisely defined by the Code of Ethics.
The Code reinforces the trust of employees and stakeholders in the company. It supports the building of its reputation and image as an organisation that is responsible, reliable, impartial and committed to its mission, which is to guarantee occupational, technical and environmental safety. The code also defines the behaviour of people associated with a particular company (brand) in the market and in the social, economic and social environment.
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