To the av­er­age per­son, busi­ness ethics sounds like an airy fairy con­cept with lim­it­ed rel­e­vance to the re­al world. The prac­tice of busi­ness is to buy cheap and sell dear, and not to both­er in some in­stances whether the cheap price ob­tained or the dear sell­ing price, is eth­i­cal or not. To the av­er­age per­son, busi­ness ethics is a pub­lic re­la­tions stunt em­ployed by large suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies to look good.

The pace, scale and com­plex­i­ty of mod­ern busi­ness has forced a change in how busi­ness is done. While it is ac­cept­ed that it is fool­ish to do busi­ness with some­one who is not trust­wor­thy, the ques­tion aris­es whether you can trust some­one who is not eth­i­cal in all of their be­hav­iour.

Short time­lines, tight sup­ply chains and nar­row­ing mar­gins mean that chances can­not be tak­en that sup­pli­ers or cus­tomers will not ho­n­our their con­tracts as ex­pect­ed. Sup­pli­ers and cus­tomers are now be­com­ing part­ners and stake­hold­ers in busi­ness, and re­la­tion­ships with them are be­com­ing more and more un­der­pinned by trust. Trust is built on ex­pec­ta­tions of truth in words and con­sis­ten­cy in be­hav­iour. It is im­pos­si­ble to do prof­itable busi­ness with some­one who says one thing one day and does some­thing dif­fer­ent the next. There is al­so ex­po­sure to le­gal penal­ties. Com­pa­nies in­volved in in­ter­na­tion­al trade have to rep­re­sent their prod­ucts to po­ten­tial or cur­rent clients based on their ex­pect­ed in­puts by the sup­pli­ers. A com­pa­ny that is in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, or that know­ing­ly fal­si­fies in­for­ma­tion on in­puts sup­plied, can cre­ate se­ri­ous prob­lems for its busi­ness part­ners. A com­pa­ny with a good rep­u­ta­tion and sol­id brands has much to lose, and should not take chances with its brand val­ue.

Em­ploy­ees' work ethics

An­oth­er is­sue chal­leng­ing the prac­tice of good busi­ness ethics is the val­ues which em­ploy­ees bring to the work en­vi­ron­ment. Much has been said over the years about the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of em­ploy­ees' work ethics. The im­pact of poor work ethics re­sults in low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty owed to high lev­els of ab­sen­teeism, tar­di­ness, theft and ac­cep­tance of bribe-tak­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, many em­ploy­ees seem not to un­der­stand the con­cept of con­flict of in­ter­est nor see any­thing wrong with it. The re­sult of this is high­light­ed in the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum's Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness Re­port 2010-2011rank­ings. Though T&T ranks at 43 (out of 139) in the area of "Re­liance on Pro­fes­sion­al Man­age­ment," we rank at 83 in "Will­ing­ness to Del­e­gate Au­thor­i­ty" and 126 in "Co-op­er­a­tion in Labour-em­ploy­er Re­la­tions."

A com­pa­ny that wish­es to be ef­fi­cient and com­pet­i­tive in the fu­ture can­not ac­cept this state of af­fairs. There is a strong busi­ness case for the in­tro­duc­tion of struc­tured pro­grams to sup­port eth­i­cal be­hav­iour in com­pa­nies, size notwith­stand­ing. These pro­grammes should be more than a mere en­cour­age­ment to be hon­est, and should be based on clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed val­ues that are linked to the over­all vi­sion and mis­sion of the com­pa­ny. The Man­u­al of Busi­ness Ethics for Small and Medi­um-Sized En­ter­pris­es pre­pared by the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (IIC) and the US De­part­ment of Com­merce de­scribes the fol­low­ing ben­e­fits among oth­ers:

En­hanced rep­u­ta­tion and good­will: A rep­u­ta­tion for in­tegri­ty is im­por­tant for se­cur­ing the loy­al­ty of cus­tomers, for re­cruit­ing and train­ing the best staff, for win­ning com­mu­ni­ty ac­cep­tance and ac­cess­ing bank and sup­pli­er cred­it.

Risk re­duc­tion: The process of de­vel­op­ing a busi­ness ethics pro­gramme in­volves the com­pa­ny in iden­ti­fy­ing and as­sess­ing the fac­tors that could pose risks to rep­u­ta­tion and fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, and de­vel­op­ing and im­ple­ment­ing the busi­ness process­es that re­duce those risks.

Re­duced costs: Pro­vid­ing em­ploy­ees with clear guide­lines of how to con­duct day to day busi­ness, such as where and when to ob­tain quo­ta­tions; how to car­ry out ten­ders,; how to con­clude con­tracts and how to avoid con­flicts of in­ter­est can re­duce trans­ac­tion costs and im­prove the sup­ply chain func­tion.

Pro­tec­tion from un­eth­i­cal em­ploy­ees: A pro­gramme would in­clude clear guid­ance in re­spect of the mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion and unau­tho­rised use of com­pa­ny re­sources, and the con­se­quences that could flow from vi­o­la­tions, in­for­ma­tion that em­ploy­ees with un­de­vel­oped val­ues may not ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate.

Pro­mot­ing high stan­dards

The method­ol­o­gy of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pro­gramme at the com­pa­ny lev­el is very sim­i­lar to that of an ISO se­ries busi­ness process im­ple­men­ta­tion. There is al­so con­sid­er­able over­lap with the in­tro­duc­tion of a strate­gic plan if one has not been done be­fore. First, a di­ag­nos­tic as­sess­ment (gap analy­sis) is per­formed of the cur­rent state of the com­pa­ny. An ethics pro­gramme, a busi­ness code of con­duct man­u­al, and an ethics re­port­ing mech­a­nism is then pre­pared based on the re­sults of the as­sess­ments and the re­quire­ments of best prac­tice. Com­pa­ny staff is trained to im­ple­ment the busi­ness ethics pro­gramme while col­lat­er­al sup­port com­po­nents are be­ing pre­pared. These com­po­nents in­clude a com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy and ma­te­r­i­al, and a mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion el­e­ment.

The pro­mo­tion of high stan­dards of busi­ness ethics re­mains cen­tral to the mis­sion of the T&T Cham­ber.

We strong­ly en­dorse the dri­ve to­wards sup­port­ing good prac­tices in busi­ness and rais­ing lev­els of aware­ness of the need to fight un­ac­cept­able lev­els of cor­rup­tion and mal­prac­tice, which can ul­ti­mate­ly im­pede growth, job cre­ation and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. As such, every mem­ber on join­ing the cham­ber un­der­takes to ob­serve the TTCIC code of con­duct, and we take se­ri­ous­ly any vi­o­la­tions of this code. To take one step fur­ther, our cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty com­mit­tee, which rep­re­sent­ed the cham­ber last year at a two-week train­ing pro­gramme or­gan­ised by In­ter-Amer­i­can In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (IIC) and the Ko­re­an Cham­ber of Com­merce-on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a busi­ness ethics pro­gramme-will be host­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­er­al lo­cal busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions, a sem­i­nar on this theme.

The pro­gramme will be launched on Sep­tem­ber 7 at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, where in­ter­est­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in a se­ries of work­shops be­tween Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber. Busi­ness­es par­tic­i­pat­ing in the work­shops will be coached on how to im­ple­ment a busi­ness ethics pro­gramme with­in their or­gan­i­sa­tions. The cham­ber be­lieves that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a for­mal busi­ness ethics pro­gramme can con­tribute to an im­proved cul­ture at a com­pa­ny, and im­proved over­all per­for­mance. Ethics in busi­ness should not be tak­en light­ly and we be­lieve that such a pro­gramme is well worth prac­tis­ing for the growth and de­vel­op­ment of busi­ness.