Professional Integrity at Workplace
Professional integrity is one of the key cornerstones of a set of acceptable ethical behaviours at the workplace. It is the practice of demonstrating strong adherence to moral and ethical principles and values such as honesty, honor, dependability and trustworthiness. People who behave with professional integrity generally uphold a moral standard of conduct, both in professional as well as personal endeavors.
These standards govern how professionals carry and conduct themselves in a professional work environment, their work ethic and their communication practices. Professional integrity is what gives employees a reason to trust the leaders.
Here are some suggestions we all can consider to maintain our own professional integrity and help build a culture of ethics and integrity at our respective Workplaces.
1. Egalitarian Culture
As a corporate leader, do you want your workplace to be operating in a smooth, creative manner with your employees satisfied and productive? The key to achieving this ambition is treating everyone the same way. We cannot have different set of rules for one group and different ones for another. This means treating every employee the same way as you expect to be treated.
Professional Integrity is all about honesty, wholeness and being the same person in all situations and with all people. Treat supervisors, coworkers and even the interns with the same level of professionalism and respect, regardless of their job titles and length of service. The same applies to customers. Every customer should be treated with respect, regardless of the business share s/he produces, as they eventually pay for our salaries.
Suggested reading: Click here
2. Fairness in Rewards System
Perceived fairness of employee rewards is often at the root of why employees leave organizations. The idea of fairness also determines if an employee will ever go an extra mile to help achieve organisational goals or even the objectives of his/her own job. For these reasons, it’s vital for organizations to ensure that their employee rewards are rooted in principles of fairness.
Research demonstrates that employees’ perception of fairness and equitable treatment is a core driver of retention, engagement and performance. In fact, unfair treatment is corrosive. Just the perception that treatment is unfair can have devastating effects on the organization
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3. Admit When You’re Wrong
J.K. Rowling wrote: “The best of us must sometimes eat our words”. As soon as we realise we’re wrong, we must ensure that the next words we utter aim to rebuild our identity, our reputation, and our relationships. For many of us, finding out that we were wrong can feel as if we have committed a crime. If not, then at least a threat to our self-identity. When that happens, we’re likely to act out in ways that undermine us even more, such as arguing, blaming others, withdrawing, or digging in our heels.
Being wrong is messy. This becomes messier when this list becomes never-ending. Being wrong without self-reflection is irresponsible, even if you hate self-reflection. Research has shown that reflection boosts productivity. Yet very few people make time for it.
Suggested reading: Click here
4. Let Employees Speak Up
It’s important for leaders to know that, when it comes to teams, only weekly team meetings , Have your Say sessions or One-on-One meetings are just not enough. Leaders should worry more when employees don’t participate in or hardly speak up during townhalls or any of the above interactive sessions. Instead, this should be enough to tell us that everything isn’t really hunky-dory.
Listening to the employees and their grievances is a powerful and important way to help business grow, so how can we get them to speak up? It’s simple: Let’s be a better listener. When our employees do speak up, let them clearly and completely deliver their message, and then summarize to make sure you heard them correctly and proceed from there. When our employees see for themselves that that they have a boss who is an empathetic listener, they will more likely speak up more often.
Suggested reading: Click here & here
5. Keep Promises
When we don’t keep promises to our employees, it communicates to that person that we don’t value him or her. We have chosen to put something else ahead of our commitment. Even when we break small promises, others learn that they cannot count on us. Tiny fissures develop in our relationships marked by broken promises.
We are not only communicating all of this to others, we are telling ourselves that we don’t value our own word. We think it is okay to let someone down, to say something we don’t mean, or to fail to follow through on something we said we would do. Not keeping a promise is the same as disrespecting yourself. Ultimately it can harm our self-esteem, and our life.
Suggested reading: Click here
Bottomline
In short, high integrity is the basis for maintaining leadership. Being loyal to a company, producing the results expected of you and being trustworthy and reliable are all qualities that characterise someone who has professional integrity. Our ability to maintain professional integrity at the workplace has a powerful impact on our productivity, performance and reputation. Behaving with professional integrity takes practice, strength of character and self-awareness.
About the Author
Muhammad Sajwani is the Founder and Managing Director of Evolve HR which aims at transforming, enriching and evolving Human Capital of Pakistan, Evolve HR thrives in challenging assumptions that hinder organisational aspirations, by creating innovative solutions that yield maximum impact, scalability & benefit to a wider base of stakeholders. As a Business Coach and Organisational Consultant, Sajwani knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.
