Ethical Decision-Making and Leadership in the Workplace

A Satisfied Workforce

Although the workplace should be free of harassment and intimidation of every sort, and management should provide a setting where all employees are treated with dignity and respect, ideally, employers should go much further. Most people spend at least one-third and possibly as much as one-half of their waking hours at work. Management, therefore, should make work a place where people can thrive, that fosters an atmosphere in which they can be engaged and productive. Workers are happier when they like where they work and when they do not have to worry about childcare, health insurance, or being able to leave early on occasion to attend a child’s school play, for example. For our grandparents’ generation, a good job was dependably steady, and employees tended to stay with the same employer for years. There were not many extras other than a secure job, health insurance, and a pension plan. However, today’s workers expect these traditional benefits and more. They may even be willing to set aside some salary demands in exchange for an environment featuring perquisites (or “perks”; nonmonetary benefits) such as a park-like campus, an on-the-premises gym or recreational center, flextime schedules, on-site day care and dry cleaning, a gourmet coffee house or café, and more time off. This section will explore how savvy managers establish a harmonious, compassionate workplace while still setting expectations of top performance.

Happy employees are more productive and more focused, which enhances their performance and leads to better customer treatment, fewer sick days, fewer on-the-job accidents, and less stress and burnout. They are more focused on their work, more creative, and better team players, and they are more likely to help others and demonstrate more leadership qualities. How, then, does an employer go about the process of making workers happy? Research has identified several pitfalls that managers should avoid if they want to have a good working relationship with their direct reports and, indeed, all their employees. One is making employees feel like they are just employees. To be happy at work, employees, instead, need to feel like they know each other, have friends at work, are valued, and belong. Another pitfall is remaining aloof or above your employees. Taking an authentic interest in who they are as people really does matter. When surveys ask employees, “Do you feel like your boss cares about you?,” too frequently the answer is no. One way to show caring and interest is to recognize when employees are making progress; another might be to take a personal interest in their lives and families. Asking employees to share their ideas and implementing these ideas whenever possible is another form of acknowledgement and recognition. Pause and highlight important milestones people achieve, and ensure that they feel their contributions are noticed by saying thank you.

Good advice to new managers includes making work fun. Allow people to joke around as appropriate so that when mistakes occur they can find humor in the situation and move forward without fixating simply on the downside. Celebrate accomplishments. Camaraderie and the right touch of humor can build a stronger workplace culture. Encourage exercise and sleep rather than long work hours, because those two factors improve employees’ health, focus, attention, creativity, energy, and mood. In the long run, expecting or encouraging people to regularly work long hours because leaving on time looks bad is counterproductive to the goals of a firm. Accept that employees need to disengage sometimes. People who feel they are always working because their management team expects they must remain in touch via e-mail or mobile phone can become tremendously stressed. To combat this, companies should not expect their workers to be available around the clock, and workers should not feel compelled to be so available. Rather, employers should allow employees to completely disengage regularly so they can focus on their friends and families and tend to their own personal priorities. By way of international comparison, according to a recent article in Fortune, Germany and France have actually gone as far as banning work-related e-mails from employers on the weekends, which is a step in the right direction, even if only because disconnecting from work is now mandated by law.

Employers must decide exactly how to spend the resources they have allocated to labor, and it can be challenging to make the right decision about what to provide workers. Should managers ask employees what they want? Benchmark the competition? Follow the founder’s or the board’s recommendations? How does a company make lifestyle benefits fair and act ethically when there is backlash against family-friendly policies from people who do not have their own families? Unlike the purchase of raw materials, utilities, and other budgetary items, which is driven primarily by cost and may present only a few choices, management’s offering of employee benefits can present dozens of options, with costs ranging from minimal to very high. Work-at-home programs may actually cost the company very little, for example, whereas health insurance benefits may cost significantly more. In many other industrialized countries, the government provides (i.e., subsidizes) benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans, so a company does not have to weigh the pros and cons (i.e., do a cost-benefit analysis) of what to offer in this area. In the United States, employee benefits become part of a cost-benefit analysis, especially for small and mid-sized companies. Even larger companies today are debating what benefits to offer.

Management has to decide not only how much money to spend on benefits and perks but precisely what to spend the money on. Another decision is what benefit choices management should allow each employee to make, and which choices to make for the workforce as a whole. The best managers communicate regularly with their workforce; as a result, they are more likely to know (and be able to inform top management about) the types of perks most desired and most likely to attract and keep good workers. Men and women do not always want the same benefits, which presents a challenge for management. For instance, many women place about twice as much value as many men do on day care (23%–11%) and on paid family leave (24%–14%). Also valued more highly generally by women than by men are better health insurance, work- from-home options, and flexible hours, whereas more men value an on-site gym and free coffee more than women typically do.

Age and generation also play a role in the types of perks that employees value. Workers aged eighteen to thirty-five rank career advancement opportunities (32%) and work-life balance (33%) as most important to them at work. However, 42 percent of workers older than thirty-five say work-life balance is the most important feature. This is likely because Generation X (born in the years 1965–1980) place a high value on opportunities for work-life balance, although, like Baby Boomers (born in the years 1946–1964), they also value salary and a solid retirement plan. On the other hand, Millennials (born in the years 1981–1997) appreciate flexibility: having a choice of benefits, paid time off, the ability to telecommute, flexible hours, and opportunities for professional development.

The menu of benefits and perks thus depends on several variables, such as what the company can afford, whether employees value perks over the more direct benefit of higher pay, what the competition offers, what the industry norm is, and the company’s geographic location. For example, Google is constantly searching for ways to improve the health, well-being, and morale of its “Googlers.” The company is famous for offering unusual perks, like bicycles and electric cars to get staff around its sprawling California campus. Additional benefits are generous paid parental leave for new parents, on-site childcare centers at one location, paid leaves of absence to pursue further education with tuition covered, and on-site physicians, nurses, and health care. Other perks are gaming centers, organic gardens, eco-friendly furnishings, a pets-at-work policy, meditation and mindfulness training, and travel insurance and emergency assistance on personal and work- related travel. On the death of a Google employee, his or her spouse or domestic partner is compensated with a check for 50 percent of the employee’s salary each year for a decade. In addition, all a deceased employee’s stock options vest immediately for the surviving spouse or domestic partner. Furthermore, a deceased employee’s children receive $1000 per month until they reach the age of nineteen, or until the age of twenty- three if they are full-time students.

In addition to offering benefits and perks, managers can foster a healthy workplace by applying good “people skills” as well. Managers who are respectful, open, transparent, and approachable can achieve two goals simultaneously: a workforce that is happier and also one that is more productive. Good management requires constant awareness that each team member is also an individual working to meet both personal and company goals. Effective managers act on this by regularly meeting with employees to recognize strengths, identify constructive ways to improve on weaknesses, and help workers realize collective and individual goals. Ethical businesses and good managers also invest in efforts like performance management and employee training and development. These commitments call for giving employees frequent and honest feedback about what they do well and where they need improvement, thereby enabling them to develop the skills they need, not only to succeed in the current job but to move on to the next level. Fostering teamwork by treating people fairly and acknowledging their strengths is also an important responsibility of management. Ethical managers, therefore, demonstrate most, if not all, of the following qualities: cultural awareness, positive attitude, warmth and empathy, authenticity, emotional intelligence, patience, competence, accountability, respectful, and honesty.