Honesty

One of the strategies that can greatly enhance your success as a businessperson is that of inculcating your employees with knowledge about ‘honesty as a business policy’. If you manage to do this effectively, then you are likely to greatly reduce incidences of employee theft in your business organization. You are also likely to enhance the levels of customer satisfaction: as the employees who are well inculcated with the ethos of ‘honesty as a business policy’ are likely to be more honest in their dealings with the customers.

There are several ways in which you can go about training employees on honesty as a business policy. The first approach you can use is the one where you can organize training seminars – where the ethos of ‘honesty as a business policy’ are inculcated in the employees. If, for instance, your business revolves around the sale of, say, the best exercise equipment, you can have blocks of time when specific employees are given time off, to attend seminars where they can be trained on ‘honesty as a business policy’. The other approach is where you can have the trainers visit your organization, and train all your employees at once on the ethos of honesty as a business policy. Thus if, for instance, you are a vendor of the best front-drive elliptical machines and you’d prefer to have all your employees trained on the ethos of ‘honesty as a business policy’ at once, you can use this approach. There is also the informal training approach: like where you can opt to be simply emphasizing on the need for honesty in your day to day business meetings. You can do that consistently, right up to the point where the ethos of honesty as a business policy are deeply inculcated in your employees.

One challenge that chief executive officers face is that of promoting honesty as an aspect of corporate governance. It is widely appreciated that proper corporate governance is only possible in an environment where honesty is embraced. Yet is also widely appreciated that, by default, human beings are not usually very honesty. By default, human beings tend to be dishonest: thanks largely to our inbuilt survival instincts, which promote selfishness – in turn often leading to dishonesty. Thus, if honesty is to be embraced as an aspect of corporate governance, a deliberate effort has to be made to cultivate and promote it. This leads us to the question on how that can be done: that is, how exactly honesty, as an aspect of corporate governance, can be promoted. And in today’s blog post, we are going to be looking at two effective strategies that can be used, to promote honesty as an aspect of corporate governance.

The first effective strategy that can be used to promote honesty as an aspect of corporate governance is the one that revolves around proper orientation and training of new staff members. The objective here would be to show the prospective members of the organization that honesty is a greatly valuable attribute in the organization, and that they will have to embrace honesty for them to thrive in the organization. This expectation can even be communicated to the prospective members of staff before they join the organization. Let’s assume, for instance, that a given prospective employee has been communicating with HR through his or her SBCglobal email account. The SBCglobal email we are making reference to here is, by the way, the one that is associated with Att.net email. It is the one that is described and reviewed at considerable length at the Emailaccountsonline website. So, if the prospective employee has been communicating through SBCglobal email, it should be possible for the HR people to send a prospectus (using the same email account): this being a prospectus containing the organization’s policies. It is through such a prospectus that the premium placed on honesty would be emphasized: so that the prospective employee has a clear picture of what is expected of him or her well before they step into the organization.

The second effective strategy that can be used to promote honesty as an aspect of corporate governance is the one that revolves around the establishment of proper rewards and punishment mechanisms. The nature of human beings is such that they will only embrace something if it is rewarding. Conversely, the nature of human beings is also such that they will only desist from something if they know that they are likely to suffer punishment for it. Thus, an organization needs to have an incentive-based system through which honesty is rewarded and dishonesty is punished. Only then will it tend to make good progress towards having honesty embraced as an aspect of corporate governance.

If there is one group of people who are expected to exercise very high levels of honesty, then it has to be that of retirement benefits schemes administrators. As you may be aware, the world is moving away from the system where employers were simply expected to pay lifelong pensions to their retired employees. The modern world seems to be more in favor of contributory retirement schemes. Those are schemes where the employees and the employers make contributions, with the money being invested, so that it can benefit the employees upon retirement. The people who manage such money are the ones who are referred to as the ‘administrators of retirement benefits schemes’. And very high standards of honesty are expected of such people.

The first reason as to why the administrators of retirement benefits schemes need to be utterly honest simply has to do with the vast amounts of money they manage. I often read the articles that are posted on the retirement section of the New York Times. Looking at the figures quoted in such articles (in terms of the monies that are managed by various retirement benefits schemes), you come to the conclusion that these are indeed very huge sums of money. And if the people who manage them happen to be lacking in honesty, then there is potential for great harm to be done. Firstly, the people whose money is managed (or, as it were, mismanaged) by the retirement benefits schemes would suffer a great deal. Imagine the pain of a senior citizen, who worked for a company like UPS for a lifetime, going to the Upsers website, and logging in (as a retiree) — only to learn that there is a problem, and he won’t be getting his monthly pension check… Needless to say, it can be devastating. Secondly, the society at large would suffer a great deal, if the management of the retirement benefits schemes was to fall into the hands of people who lack honesty. We had a taste of this in the 2008 financial crisis: where mismanagement in one sector (the financial sector) had a ripple effect in the entire economy. Mismanagement of the retirement benefits schemes would have a similar, if not worse, impact.

The second reason as to why the administrators of retirement benefits schemes need to be utterly honest has to do with the social impact of their work. It becomes clear that if the administrators of retirement benefits schemes were to fail in terms of honesty, we would start seeing hordes of senior citizens moving around in desperate circumstances, some homeless, some begging, some ailing… you get the picture. And that would be a huge shame on the society at large — like if, for instance, someone who spends his or her entire life in, say, the UPS or DHL parcel handling floors, ends up desperate in old age, on account of the money meant for his pension having been mismanaged. For these reasons, then, the people who manage retirement benefits schemes have to be utterly honest and diligent in their work.

It is a widely held perception that most parliamentarians are not honest people. It is widely believed that the parliamentarians are often not honest to the people who sent them to parliament. This is where many people hold the belief that the parliamentarians don’t really represent them and their aspirations. Yet ideally, in a republican system, the parliamentarians are supposed to represent the views and aspirations of the people who elect them. We also have people who hold the view that the parliamentarians are actually crooks, who get paid by lobbyists to pass laws that favor the lobbyists interests (often at the expense of ‘the peoples’ interests).

Against that background, a question comes up, as to what can be done to promote parliamentary honesty. I have agonized over this question for quite a while, and I have come up with several suggestions. These suggestions are, in other words, strategies that can be used to promote parliamentary honesty.

Firstly, if we wish to achieve parliamentary honesty, it is critical (and this should really be a matter of common sense) that we elect truly honorable people: people who are likely to be honest. It is important for the electorate to look beyond parliamentary candidates’ rhetoric. It is important that the records of all people aspiring for parliamentary seats be examined closely. It is important to ensure that the vetting process for parliamentary candidates is thorough.

Secondly, if we wish to achieve parliamentary honesty, it is critical that we put in place strict oversight mechanisms for the parliamentarians. The ‘recall’ clauses should be put into use, whenever constituents feel that their parliamentary representatives are not being honest. Thus, parliamentarians who fail the honesty test should be recalled.

Thirdly, if we wish to achieve parliamentary honesty, it is important to put in place stringent campaign financing laws. The idea would be to ensure that campaign financing is done using clean money – and not money from people who have vested interests. If you allow people with vested interests to finance campaigns, you shouldn’t be surprised when the same people attempt to subvert the parliamentarians’ honesty.