If you want to improve your business, improve ethics and compliance to build a company culture employees will love. Having a great ethics and compliance program in place has the power to strengthen your teams.

While these programs might not seem that exciting or helpful at first, they create a better workplace culture. As a result, employees are able to focus less on what’s wrong and more on what’s right.

Less Time Covering Up

When your business’s teams include unethical people, especially management, employees aren’t focused on work. Instead, much of their job is covering up the unethical practices. For instance, a manager may have accounting doctoring the books to cover up personal expenses or other types of fraud.

Implementing ethics and compliance for company culture creates an environment where this practice isn’t tolerated. The employees feel supported when they come forward. Instead of feeling threatened by their boss, they say no and report the manager. As a result, your teams get to focus on doing their jobs correctly and ethically versus covering up what they’re doing wrong.

Understanding Compliance Processes

One of the worst things for your team is when you don’t have clear compliance processes in place. You get a mix of people trying to do the right thing, but no one really knows the correct method. And, you also get people who give up on trying to get it right and just skip over compliance completely to save time and frustration.

Focusing on detailed training ensures your entire team is always on the same page. Employees aren’t tempted to take shortcuts simply because they don’t have any idea what to do. Plus, if your team’s not arguing about the correct processes, they’re able to work together easier.

Fear Of Getting Caught

If your company culture doesn’t make ethics and compliance a priority, your employees will take advantage of that. This means the ethical employees get left behind and often pushed out. As a result, your teams aren’t nearly as strong since you’re losing valuable members.

When your business refuses to tolerate ethics and compliance issues, unethical employees may either leave or choose to do the right thing for fear of getting caught. An effective strategy is a whistleblower hotline. Train employees on how to use it and follow through when reports are registered. When unethical employees know anyone could report them at any time, most decide it’s just not worth it. A more ethical culture makes employees happier and they feel safer.

Make Teams Proud Of Their Employer

Ethics and compliance can strengthen your teams by making them proud to be a part of your company. When people hate their jobs and their employer, they might not care if they take shortcuts, steal from the company or just don’t put their best foot forward. After all, if the company isn’t ethical, why should the employees be?

Creating an ethical and compliant company culture isn’t always easy, but it gives your company a reputation for doing things the right way and treating employees well. This attracts better talent, helps you retain employees and strengthens your teams. Plus, without high turnover, teams are able to grow stronger together without constantly having to get to know new people.

Start establishing a more ethical culture today, including detailed policies and processes along with an ethics hotline.