Ethics Training Essay

Ethical training is aimed at helping workers to incorporate a high degree of ethical standards in their daily lives as well as help the workers recognize their decisions’ ethical considerations (Lewis, Goodman, & Fandt, 2006). It enables the workers to understand the code of ethics as well as encouraging the workers to abide by the code of ethics. Nowadays, many organizations are providing ethics training to their workers in addition to providing a code of ethics. The ethics training is meant to reinforce the code of ethics and it greatly enhances the ethical behavior of workers in an organization. To begin with, ethics training programs are useful in helping workers to avoid rationalizations which are oftenly used to justify unethical behaviors (Lewis, Goodman, & Fandt, 2006). Some of the rationalizations used to justify misconducts in organizations include the reasoning that the activity being undertaken is in the interest of the organization, the reasoning that one will never be found out, and the reasoning that the act is not exactly illegal (Lewis, Goodman, & Fandt, 2006). Secondly, ethical training provides workers with a general framework which the employees can use to deal with the ethical issues that they encounter (Lewis, Goodman, & Fandt, 2006). This enables the workers to behave ethically as before workers act they are required to identify consequences and analyze options. In addition, ethics training provides a forum where employees and the management can discuss about the ethical dilemmas that the employees are facing and following this the employees are given guidance on how to approach the dilemmas by applying the ethical policies of the companies thus helping the employees avoid unethical behavior (Lewis, Goodman, & Fandt, 2006). Lastly, ethics training programs are useful in helping managers and supervisors to practice self discipline especially when it comes to decision making when faced with difficult situations (Lewis, Goodman, & Fandt, 2006). For an ethics training program to be effective, there are things that need to be included in the program. One of these is an interactive session where the employees are given an opportunity to ask questions about the ethical dilemmas they may be facing and have the questions answered (Ferrel & Fraedrich, 2006). The cases could also be fictional. The other thing to include in an ethics training program is a code of ethics. An ethics training program should be aimed at communicating the contents of a company’s code of ethics to the employees (Ferrel & Fraedrich, 2006). This is done face to face and should also explain the importance of ethical behavior. An ethics training program should include all the organization’s employees. Both the employees and the managers should undergo ethical training as the training would be of little importance if the leaders do not act as role models of ethical behavior (Ferrel & Fraedrich, 2006). In addition, this can demoralize the employees who behave ethically as they feel that the company’s policies are not being employed equally. The training methods used to train should also be interesting and could include things such as videos, posters, and group discussions (Ferrel & Fraedrich, 2006). The training program should also include education on the importance of values as well as education on the importance of compliance with laws and rules with the aim of inspiring principled behavior among employees (Ferrel & Fraedrich, 2006). For example managers can be informed about questions that according to the law are illegal to ask interviewees. It is also important to incorporate a decision making model which is a set of questions to help the employees make ethical decisions (Ferrel & Fraedrich, 2006). References Ferrel, O. C. & Fraedrich, J. (2006). Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases (7th ed. ). Florence, KY: Cengage Learning. Lewis, P. S. , Goodman, S. H. , & Fandt, P. M. (2006). Management: Challenges for tomorrow’s leaders (5th ed. ). Mason, OH: Thomsom Learning.