Ethical Communication in the Workplace

Poor Ethical Communication Isn’t Worth The Risk

Communicating ethics in the workplace can be challenging. The topic is vast, and the implications of misconduct are serious.

42% of employees believe their company has a weak ethical culture – and 35% observed misconduct but didn’t report it.
(Source: AccountingWeb)

Common topics include harassment, bribery, fraud, inappropriate gifting (and receiving) and conflicts of interest. The challenge for internal communicators is how to effect behavioral-change, and awaken employees’ understanding of this serious area.

That's why embedding positive ethical behavior takes more than a one-off ethics training session. Something this important demands a comprehensive, integrated communications plan.

Honesty survey on desktop — Use highly visual channels to promote ethical behavior and survey staff on related topics

SnapComms Ticks All The Boxes For Workplace Ethics

Today’s diverse workforce requires a range of tools for effective ethics communication. That’s where SnapComms excels. High-impact channels inform and raise awareness, while passive visual channels reinforce correct behavior.

Employee surveys can capture key indicators across the workforce, allowing compliance managers to drill into specific areas and shed light on attitudes and engagement levels that may require attention

Screensavers are perfect for reinforcing messages on ethical behavior. For example, harassment in a corporate office, or ethical dilemmas around patient care for healthcare workers.

Scrolling desktop tickers send short, impactful messages that can remain on screen until the required action has been taken by users (eg. clicking on a link).

Digital newsletters keep ethics top-of-mind by collating interesting and relevant articles in a single, visually-appealing format.

Discover Our Range Of Channels For Internal Communications

Desktop Alerts: Push priority messages direct to desktop

Employee App: Engage staff with your content direct to mobile

Digital Signage: Transform large screens into message boards

Use SnapComms Software To:

Raise awareness

Maximize interest in and attendance at training sessions through customized desktop Screensavers or Wallpapers. Circulate a staff survey to assess levels of current knowledge.

Foster buy-in
Identify high-risk knowledge gaps

Maintain focus

Improve staff awareness of important policy or process updates via ticker messages which direct to your corporate intranet.

Keep ethics top-of-mind
Mitigate risk

Enliven ethics

Bring ethics to life through interesting scenarios relevant to your different audiences. Deliver engaging targeted content through video alerts. Test pre-training assumptions and post-training understanding via quizzes.

Position ethics as a real-world issue
Validate training effectiveness

Embed change

Cement learnings from training through eye-catching Screensavers. Consolidate updates, real-world examples and interesting snippets in a dedicated ethics digital newsletter.

Build sustained behavioral change
Ensure staff can identify, understand and react to all ethical situations

Delivering Results For Workplace Ethics

Minimized risk

Less potential for serious and costly misconduct which can impact productivity, morale and organizational reputation

Stronger commitment

Actions aligned to company position on contentious issues (eg. pro-choice versus pro-life in healthcare; whistle-blowing in financial services)

Sustained improvements

Long-term employee behavioral change around compliance with ethical standards

Enhanced reputation

Perception and standing increased among customers

Staff retention

Positive stance retains top-performing employees

Staff retention

More effective messages through real-time data-driven insights

Features To Enable An Ethical Workplace Culture

The SnapComms platform provides even more tools to your communication toolkit - helping improve your workplace ethics activities.

Recurrence allows you to repeat display of unread ethics notifications until staff have acknowledged them. Frequent, repeated messages pushed out over time is key for behavioral-change learning, while variations in content and format help avoid information overload.

Targeting options deliver notifications to defined recipients only, increasing relevance and readership rates. An application of this could be communicating around bribery to only staff in the purchasing department.

Customizable formats can distinguish different ethics messages and emphasize high-priority messages. An example of this is color-coding message templates differently for harassment, professional conduct, fraud and so on.

Schedule messages to specify a target delivery time, for example to coincide with a particular event or reiterate earlier messages after a suitable gap. Many organizations run Ethics Awareness Weeks or similar events; preparing and scheduling messages in advance can ensure communications around launch and reinforcement activities are delivered at optimum times.

Reporting features provide simple tracking of message delivery and click-through rates. Insights from this can help fine tune wording and improve response rate.

For sustained progress and improvement, track the impact of ethics communication in the workplace using dashboard reports.

Want to learn more about how SnapComms can work for you?

Send a brief description of your communication requirements, and we'll get back to you with a guide price!

Related Resources For Workplace Ethics

Blogs

Ethics and Compliance Survey Results

Ethics and Compliance officers took our survey to reveal their priority communication themes.

Ethical Communication in The Workplace

Protecting Your Organization And All Its Employees

Poor Ethical Communication Isn’t Worth The Risk

SnapComms Ticks All The Boxes For Workplace Ethics