Your company is only going to be as successful as the team of employees responsible for making it work. And you take great care in your onboarding processes to select only the best-fit candidates. You provide robust training initiatives so everyone knows how to perform their jobs and understands the mission of the organization. You provide them with increased benefits and incentives, hoping to inspire them to do their best work. But there is another tool you could be using to improve the overall employee experience. Ethics hotlines are changing how workers feel about their employers’ company cultures in a big way. Here are a few ways an ethics hotline can help improve yours.

Employees Feel Heard

With an ethics hotline in place, your employees have a voice. Your teams know they have anonymous reporting resources available to them should they ever feel unsafe, threatened, or concerned about the behavior of others. When you provide a channel for everyone to be heard, employees will understand that they matter to you as the company leader and to the company overall, thus improving the employee experience.

Employees Trust a Speak-Up Culture

Ultimately, when employees encounter unethical acts, you want them to speak up about it. In today’s changing workforce, they want to speak up about it, too. When you implement an ethics hotline, you provide the anonymous reporting mechanism so everyone can do just that. You can promote internal procedures for reporting to managers or HR. But your teams will trust the hotline method, especially if the reporting is in regards to those management or HR departments. Promote the act of raising a hand or speaking up when malfeasance occurs. Your employees will opt-in when you have a secure ethics hotline they can trust.

Transparency, Accountability, and Honesty

When you instruct your internal teams about a newly implemented ethics hotline, they’ll appreciate your efforts to make the company an honest, accountable, and transparent ecosystem. And it will cultivate a culture of loyalty among the ranks, too. No one wants to work for a shady organization with hidden agendas or company missions. Roll out the ethics hotline and reinforce your ethical company environment. Your teams will become fiercer about aligning their efforts and eager to contribute to companies they believe in overall.

Removing Toxic Contributors

When you set up an ethics hotline, you set the expectations with your teams that their employee experiences matter. Any toxic persons or situations can and will be promptly removed, preventing anyone or anything from making your workplace uncomfortable. The ethics hotline will reinforce your ethics policy and deputize workers with the ability to call out inappropriate behavior or unethical scenarios. When they know you prioritize removing problems, they’ll be more apt to report them.

Discouraging Bad Apples

When everyone within your business is playing by the same rules, everyone can operate safely and ethically. An ethics hotline is instrumental in identifying the bad apples and even discouraging others from cutting corners or behaving poorly. Instances can range from stealing lunch from the fridge or clocking in too early to data breaches or OSHA violating safety mishaps. But with an ethics hotline and a thorough communications strategy, employees will be discouraged from misbehaving when they know anyone can report them.

Consider improving your employee experience as an added benefit of the already impressive advantages of an ethics hotline. And let Ethical Advocate help you develop and manage yours for the best results.