… Down Will Come Baby, Cradle and All.
Can something be both immoral and ethical at the same time?
This is the dilemma I fear most. In two recent blog posts, When the bough breaks… and …the Cradle Will Fall…, I explored the “upstream” impact of changing and evolving societal norms as a driver for regulatory change, and the “downstream” impact of regulatory change that is not the will of the people forcing societal change.
In both of those, much good has come about, and to be fair, much bad. Hopefully over time, the good outweighs the bad in the peaks and valleys of change. I started with the concept that morality, and - hence - ethics, drive to a sustained good over time. I thought I’d end this short blog series by exploring what happens when the drive is not towards sustained good, regardless of the inspiration. History has shown this in both extreme and subtle ways.
2020 brought events upon us that were neither the “will of the people” or evolution from legislation. Change was forced upon us globally due to unforeseen events. Some may argue that some of these should have been foreseen, but for sake of argument - and to check politics at the door - we won’t go there.
The biggest, and most obvious, changes are the impact of the novel coronavirus on companies, employees, and society. I would venture to guess that few companies, if any, had effective policies in place to cope with global pandemics of the scale and severity of COVID. Companies quickly had to cope with tremendous change and the reaction to that change far exceeded the policies in place, forcing many HR professionals to fly by the seat of their pants.
We saw one client, for example, send all 45,000 of their employees to work from home. Everyone cleared their desk, grabbed their laptops, and headed to the parking lot having no idea when they might return. As they set up their home offices, they quickly found that their VPN access was unable to support the connectivity of all 45,000 simultaneously. It was an IT / data security policy and requirement for good reason. This crippled them until capacity could be increased to support more normal operations as they were now in a work-from-home environment.
Other clients had similar experiences, as data they handled at work was highly sensitive. In their normal “at work” environment there were security cameras, doors, screens, blacked-out glass, and other precautions to prevent their screen being viewed by the wrong eyes. Those same precautions, driven by policy, were simply not available when working on their dining room table. With schools out, they were not the only one sitting at the table in many cases.
Companies tried to be compassionate and understanding. I know that here at ETHIX360, we had employees (in some cases single moms with young kids) who relied on daycare that was temporarily shuttered as well. This further complicated a “9 to 5” and forced employees to juggle being a teacher, a day care worker, and a full-time employee. To walk that high-wire, work had to be done in early morning hours or late at night after the kids were asleep. This had a tremendous impact on many policies that manage working hours, overtime compensation, and the calculations for earned benefits.
I want to believe that most companies tried to act responsibly, ethically, and morally. But I also believe that not all did. I can sadly say this with confidence because we provide the system of record for employee reporting of concerns. We saw tremendous spikes on allegations of timecard fraud and payroll grievances. We saw a rush of employees reporting concerns when they would see other employees on Facebook at the beach with their families yet claiming to be at work. Equally, we saw companies denying overtime pay to employees working shifts longer than 8 hours.
Meetings moved from conference rooms to Zoom, bringing a whole additional level of policy concerns. Not to pick on Zoom specifically, but numerous security vulnerabilities have been exposed and well documented. IT security professionals were cringing every time they thought about the confidential information now out in the ether in a very public way.
I know we all have many, many examples of things that happened, didn’t happen, should have happened, were overlooked, or were excused during these past months in 2020. I think the one universal impact was that when policies evolve from societal change bubbling up, we can see them coming. When policies result from top down legislation imposed on us, we can see it coming. When events happen that bring society and business to a halt, we rarely see them coming. That’s when ethics and compliance programs can come crashing down with baby, cradle and all.
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MEET THE AUTHOR
J Rollins is the co-founder and CEO of ETHIX360. J is a well known leader and innovator who has served on senior leadership teams ranging in responsibility from Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, SVP of Product Strategy and Chief Operating Officer.
ABOUT ETHIX360
At ETHIX360, our goal is simple: to provide an affordable, flexible, and comprehensive answer to employee communication, policy management, corporate training and case management on issues related to corporate ethics, code of conduct, fraud, bribery, and workplace violence.
