What Enron Didn’t Teach Us
Years after multibillion-dollar scandals rocked corporate America, more than half of employees at both public and private companies admit they have witnessed lying, ethical breaches, or criminal behavior on the job — and most fail to report it, according to a new study.
From: Inc.com By: Angus Loten
The crackdown on corporate crime sparked six years ago by accounting scandals at Enron and WorldCom has done little to foster ethical behavior in the workplace, where many employees are still afraid to speak out about misconduct, a new study finds.Despite tougher laws against white-collar crimes, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and other strict oversight regulations, workers today are more likely to witness conflicts of interest, abusive behavior, or outright lying from company executives, according to the Ethics Resource Center, a Washington-based research group.Among 2,000 public- and private-sector employees surveyed nationwide, 56 percent said they had personally seen at least one violation of company ethics standards, policies or the law in the past year, up from 43 percent in 2003, the study found.
At the same time, less than 42 percent said they reported the incident through company channels.
For the entire article go to inc.com
Few things can be as demoralizing to companies as unethical business practices. Corra has heard stories from different sectors and different incidents involving unethical business practice. Most often it starts at the top and works its way down through the ranks. But not all the time.
Sometimes you get “creative” employees who want to cut corners to look good at their jobs. They will do almost anything to get results. Lying and cheating are far from out of the question.
That is but one more reason to run background checks on all your employment candidates. See what they have been up to in the past. See if they really are who they say they are. See if they are lying about information provided. If they lie in their application, odds are they will lie elsewhere.
Corra suggests the criminal check, obviously and the education verification among the other background searches you may select as part of your pre-employment screening program.
Check them out before you hire.
