In a previous article, we discussed hiring practices for your team and focused on employees who were out of your current area, perhaps even in an emerging market.

Now that you’ve made a superstar hire, what’s next? Acquiring top talent certainly has its challenges, but now that they are part of your team it’s well worth it to ensure that you have a strong onboarding and training program in place. You are making a large investment – not only in money, but time and resources as well.

You may be surprised to know how expensive it is to find, hire and bring on new employees.  Even more shocking is how much it costs to lose and then replace one. What we will focus on now is reducing turnover and keeping that talented person who just joined your team.

Training your new employees for long-term success starts on day one

Starting at the beginning, let’s look at your employee’s first day. This first day is as important for a top executive as it is for an hourly employee because it sets the tone for the rest of their employment.

If the employee’s first day is chaotic and unorganized, then you are sending the message that it’s okay if they work in a crazy and hectic way. It will also imply that your entire company culture is that way as well.

The employee has no other focus than to watch and observe everything going on in your business, and how people interact with you as well as with each other. They are listening intently and trying their best to fit in as quickly as possible.

The first day should be organized and well-planned. The space and tools which will be needed for the job should be available, ready and established. Give the new person some time to meet the team. Organizing a welcome breakfast or a team lunch is a great way to do this. Establish a well-organized place where employees have access to all the information they will need to be successful in their new position.

Think about what it would be like to be a new employee starting at your company.

• Do they know your dress code ahead of time?
• If they drive to work, do they know where to park?
• How do they get in the building?
• Do they need a key, a passcode, or an escort?

Imagine the employee arriving, and realizing that they have no place to park without a pass! And then they can’t get in to the building, which causes them to be late on the first morning. Stressful! It’s only day one and you already have a frustrated employee who isn’t off to a great start.

More importantly, they feel that you didn’t care enough to address these issues beforehand. All the while, you are feeling that they didn’t care enough to show up on time.

This is an elementary example, which I hope proves that it is easy to eliminate these problems if you take a minute and, with the help of your team, establish that all important issues are addressed so that their first day is smooth sailing.

Offer continued guidance, open communication and a roadmap for future advancement

Now that your new employee has their first day under their belt, it is time to deliver a very clear directive as to the job they will be doing, the resources and people to look to for guidance and a plan to move forward from that point.

I have found that progressive companies are, at this very early stage, addressing future roles and career advancement potential. If you do a great job in your current role, this is what you can expect down the road. This goes a long way to ensure that your new employees stay and turnover is kept at a minimum.

Everyone wants to know that they can grow within the company if they do their job well.

Part of any good employment relationship is solid and open communication. This may entail formal performance reviews at certain times of the year.  More importantly, it’s essential that for the first 30 to 120 days you check in with one another on a regular, informal basis. These brief, regular meetings ensure that things are going according to the plan you established on day one and, if necessary, changes are made, issues addressed and information exchanged.

Train, promote and then bring in the next generation of talent

Ongoing learning and training is an easy but crucial component to your development process. If you do not currently have a program which enables your employees to develop their skills, implementing one will go a long way towards building a strong and tenured team.

Employers who encourage their employees to learn and develop are well-rewarded. Employees stay because they are being encouraged to grow and develop WITHOUT having to make a career or company change.

Another very easy way to ensure a strong team is cross-training. This is an incredibly quick way to advance collaboration and good will. At its core is learning new skills, but an added benefit is the opportunity to walk in someone else’s shoes and the understanding that comes with seeing things from a different perspective.

Supply chain tools and technologies are changing rapidly, and allowing employees to experience and learn from others within the company helps to keep everyone up to date and engaged in how your business is advancing.

Once a well-defined onboarding and development program is in place, it becomes easy to advance your employees throughout your organization.

Promoting from within helps keep everyone motivated and leaves you with the ability to change directions quickly and efficiently.

If your business is still growing and you need to hire regularly, then I suggest starting an internship program. Partner with colleges in your area and engage their graduating supply chain students. Offer jobs, pending graduation, to the students who best fit your company’s needs. Now they are ready for your well-developed onboarding and training program, which will drive their career with the hopes that they stay at your company for years and years to come. It sure beats the revolving door employment model we currently use.

Ultimately, you are making a talent investment which will pay you back year after year.

The post Give your new employees every chance to succeed by following these simple steps appeared first on Trade Ready.

To deal with whistleblowing only on the legislative level, through process, or within the halls of academia is superficial.

We need to investigate what either drives or hinders whistleblowing in the deep structure of the human mind, and to leverage that research for a fuller understanding of current whistleblowing issues.

Behaviour is at the root of all of society’s big problems, with trust being critical to harness lasting change.

With corruption identified at the front and centre of social ills, it’s worth exploring and understanding if social scientists consider whistleblowing a mitigating behaviour to corruption.

There are three main areas to consider:

• Employee Loyalty and Whistleblowing
• Altruistic cheating
• Whistleblowing legislation and 50 Shades of Grey

Most whistleblowers tell stories of shock and betrayal when they discover they have been emphatically condemned as disloyal to their group and organisation, leaving them with misplaced feelings of shame and guilt.

“Keeping one’s promises” and honouring agreements are among the highest values we are taught to observe. But how can individuals in organisations, under certain circumstances, act as if those values are actually absolute, overriding other moral and ethical considerations?

Being a team player shouldn’t mean ‘taking a dive’ on integrity

Due to our evolved sociology, humans behave as herd animals. Our sense of well-being and self-image is largely dependent on our peer group. It is because of this that we may be driven to participate or conceal unethical behaviours we would otherwise abhor.

The threat of expulsion and the irrational expectation of being cast adrift is an ever-present fear.

The practice of keeping an organisation’s secrets gradually blinds us to moral ambiguities. The consequence is that we may become less and less mindful of what is being demanded, as loyalty to the institution becomes stronger than any other, including the interests of outsiders.

History is replete with examples where institutional secrets are kept and, as a result, greatly prejudiced the welfare and safety of others. Examples range from the child sexual abuses in the Catholic Church, to spying on citizens, threats to the environment and even the safety of food products.

One only has to look at the current unravelling of the cheating at VW to see how groups value ‘secrets’ over the societal good. In the case of VW, the consequences, including the significant costs to our health and the ecosystem, are just beginning to be known as the facts present themselves.

The VW bosses have admitted there was a culture of rule-breaking being tolerated within certain areas of the company that led to the misconduct of individual employees and weaknesses in some processes.

If prosecuted by the SFO (Serious Fraud Office) under the 2006 Fraud Act for false representation, VW bosses will be looking at a possible jail sentence of up to ten years.

Furthermore, the long term damage to the environment and health is estimated to have caused at least 32.2 million tons of extra carbon pollution into the atmosphere, equal to roughly 6.8 million cars. In addition to its environmental impact, pollution by nitrogen oxides (or NOx) has been linked to grave health problems, namely asthma and other serious respiratory illnesses.

It is a dramatic model of what happens to society when ‘those in the know’ remain silent.

Whistleblowing in business is often frowned upon because it appears, incorrectly, that individuals are blowing the whistle on their team. Instead, it is important to understand that individuals blow the whistle on a particular practice that is immoral and/or illegal, expecting the practice to be halted.

Because companies have been able to get their employees to view themselves as part of a team, like in sports, it is easier to demand loyalty. Thus, the rules governing teamwork and team loyalty apply.

But businesses are not games. Sports, games and victory in both are socially constructed conventions and are participated in within rules that are enforced by a referee (a literal whistle-blower).

Both business and games have the element of competition, but games take place within a larger social context that is different from competition in business. A team can lose at sport with few consequences. Losing at business has much greater consequences which permeate into society.

Would you condemn a Good Samaritan?

Whistleblowing must be not only permissible, but also expected, when a company is harming society. The issue is not one of disloyalty to the company, but of whether the whistle-blower has an obligation to society, even if blowing the whistle brings them victimisation and retaliation.

Would you condemn a Good Samaritan interfering in the prevention of someone doing harm to themselves or someone else? Probably not. The same applies to whistleblowing.

Now, take into account the consequences of staying silent. Chances are high that sooner or later, the truth will come out and the entire organization will suffer the results.

If individuals aren’t able to speak out or formally blow the whistle on small ethical lapses, these lapses cascade into much larger acts of malfeasance, becoming ‘business as usual’.

The culture becomes embedded with the rationalisations and justifications for not speaking out as opposed to one where courageous conversations are ‘business as usual’.

Often, an employee with the knowledge, evidence and intention of blowing the whistle seeks advice either internally, from within management, or externally.

Intervention at this stage can be enormously helpful, for both company and individual, so long as those in the company’s leadership, who are empowered to act, are prepared to listen and respond.

Altruistic cheating all too often goes hand in hand with employee loyalty

The vulnerability of our irrational inclination to frame and justify cheating is alarming. Ethical decision making research suggests that cheating and dishonesty should be studied at both individual and group level, as group members influence each other through their own ethical and unethical behaviours.

Contrary to what one might expect, unethical decision-makers are judged most unfavourably when attempting to obtain small (5%) gains in profit when compared to those acting to achieve large (50%) gains, or indeed in attempting to prevent a loss of either size.

An individual seeking a small gain is framed as a ‘bad’ person, since gain seeking is worse than loss prevention and there is not that much external pressure to go after a small gain; ie., being unethical is seen as more of a personal choice when the gain is a small benefit rather than a large one, such as the behaviours that drove the VW emission scandal.

Additionally, by focusing on the social utility (benefit to others at group level), people can more freely categorise their own actions in positive terms and avoid negative updating of their moral self-image. As a result, people feel less guilty about their own dishonest behaviour when others (in addition to themselves) can benefit from it.

Neatly stitched to Employee Loyalty is Altruistic Cheating, to which we are all vulnerable:

When people’s dishonesty benefits others, the others are more likely to view dishonesty as morally acceptable and, therefore, feel less guilty about benefiting from the cheating. Why?

• Individuals cheat more when others can benefit from their wrongdoing
• Cheating increases with the number of beneficiaries
• Altruism serves as a moral justification for self-serving cheating
• When cheating also benefits others, it involves less guilt

Can we remove the grey ‘danger zones’ from compliance regulation?

Every time there’s a grey zone, people abuse that grey zone.

The same applies to organisations and governments initiating legislation, both of whom have challenges of how flexible their rules should be. This applies to whistleblowing in addition to codes of conduct and fiduciary responsibilities – the range of grey zones within them allows misbehaviour.

Synchronising whistleblowing legislation and process with behavioural training for Courageous Conversations will help us to figure out for ourselves what is good in a pro-socially effective way.

Having Courageous Conversations negates small problems becoming scandals or large problems but this is not an innate skill, rather it is a learnt behaviour.

We can all learn the skills and strategies to become more adept at addressing challenging social situations at work and in our personal lives by using our best thinking, values and social support.

The post How can we upend the systematic condemnation of whistleblowers and reduce corruption? appeared first on Trade Ready.

Philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand recognized in her masterpiece “Atlas Shrugged” that corruption leads to the interference of trade and, eventually, to a doomed society.

Several different studies and articles confirm the negative consequences and costs of corruption for a country.

But it does not stop there. As business is part of society, corruption also dooms companies.

The known corporate corruption cases of the past show that it is impossible to control bribery and limit it to just one area or region. Even if corruption is practiced only in receptive sectors and/or countries, it is not a sustainable business strategy.

The infection can begin with one simple bribe

Companies are like living organisms that can be infected by the virus of corruption.

Similar to a viral contagion, corruption will spread throughout an organization if not treated intensively at the onset of symptoms with an antibiotic called “zero tolerance.”

To illustrate this point, let’s imagine that a sales employee pays a bribe to a procurement person at a potential customer’s company to ensure a project win. From this point in the decision-making process, the combination of price and quality plays only a subordinate role.

The winning factor is the bribe.

Inside the selling company, the impact is a decline in the importance of production and project management relative to sales. Management attention and employee focus shifts to sales, as this function is considered most valuable for the company.

In this situation, the selling company ensures business by strengthening relationships through illegal payments.

Production and project management employees are less motivated, as they feel they are no longer valued.

In response, these teams produce lower-quality work. Poor motivation leads to a decreased sense of employee loyalty, which can result in higher rates of theft, sabotage, internal fraud and employee turnover.

Meanwhile, management loses interest in how tasks are achieved, preferring instead to focus only on sales results.

The virus easily spreads from department to department

The growing infection soon spreads to the procurement department. As the internal priority is clearly the “successful” sales department, procurement loses its independence and is now advised by sales.

Procurement is pushed to use certain providers, based on whether the bribery model requires a third party or if the supplier is a family member of the prospective customer. As with the production team, we find the same effects of employee demotivation.

Corruption is not part of a culture, but a learned behavior often used to create a shortcut through complex legal environments. Many companies have an extensive system of guidelines, policies and tools.

Employees who see that bypassing external laws is acceptable corporate behavior may also assume this practice applies to internal regulations.

Conflicts of interest can increase, as internal connections become more important than the quality of employee output.

A common result is that talented employees offered the opportunity to work elsewhere will leave, while less talented employees remain.

In addition to the psychological effects on employee behavior, corruption also affects transparency and internal processes.

Winning a project with a bribe sends the wrong message to the development team, as they can only analyze the relationship between price and quality to the project win rate, but cannot include illegal payments as a key factor.

The infection starts effecting quality of work, competitive edge

Due to this hidden information, the development team wrongly concludes that the company’s solutions are competitive and that investment is unnecessary. In contrast, competitors that work with full transparency foster the development of better solutions.

Over time, the company that succeeds because of bribery loses its competitive edge. To compensate for this weakness, it has to increase the size of bribe payments – a situation that the potential recipients exploit.

Eventually, the bribes are not large enough to justify the difference in competitiveness. And if a significant number of talented employees have left to work at another company, it will be difficult to switch strategies to foster the development of superior products or identify less costly production methods.

By this time, the virus has also infected the bribed company. Because of bribe payments, the procurement employee has selected a sub-optimal solution for the company. Now this company is not using the best and/or the most cost-effective materials for its own production.

It becomes less competitive and no longer offers attractive solutions. A sales employee working for the bribed company needs to find another factor to win business, and may be tempted to offer a bribe.

You can kill the virus

If we see a company as a living organism, then some kind of preventive treatment should be prescribed for this disease.

Compliance workshops can work much like vaccinations. With relevant case discussions and role-playing exercises, employees can learn about potential situations they could face, how to react, and what consequences could occur.

Like an antivirus, this knowledge stays inside the employee and can be activated when needed.

Bureaucracy provokes corruption and vice versa.

To avoid this downward spiral, a company should establish internal processes that are as simple as possible to ensure transparency and employee accountability. Compliance Officers cannot do their jobs only from behind closed office doors.

They must be easy to reach and well-known across the company. Trusted employees can be offered the additional role of “Compliance Promoter,” and IT tools can ensure that an anonymous reporting system is available 24 hours a day.

Compliance training sessions cannot be limited to presentations about rules and regulations. It they are, employees will only behave if they feel controlled.

Instead, companies need to establish a values-based culture where employees understand their role inside the organization and how corruption could affect their job.

In this culture, everyone is equipped to face difficult situations – and not just employees in typical risk groups such as sales or procurement.

Is your company protected against this kind of “corruption contagion”? What kinds of “vaccinations” does your company have in place to stave off bribery and corruption?

The post How corruption spreads like a virus and what you can do to stop it from infecting your company appeared first on Trade Ready.