Is it ok to steal a pen? – A new survey on the ethics of kiwifruit workers

Is it ok to bring office supplies home? Thirty percent of the kiwifruit workers think so.

How about checking your Facebook and your other personal uses of the Internet?

Forty-five percent of the 2018 Ethics at Work employee survey respondents agreed with this statement – although personal calls were found to be more acceptable, with 61% approval.

These are some of the more specific findings of the survey conducted by the Institute of Business Ethics (IBE). Introduced in the UK in 2005, it was conducted for the first time in New Zealand in association with Victoria University.

The ultimate goal of the survey is to highlight more serious issues of ethics and culture in the workplace.

For example, 29% of New Zealand employees surveyed said their organization had a comprehensive ethics program, while 10% said their organization did not have any. .

The survey asked employees how they had experienced ethical dilemmas in their daily working lives.

He examined whether they had witnessed bad conduct, reported it and prevented it from doing so.

Twenty-six percent of employees reported having witnessed work misconduct in the last year.

The most common types were: seeing people treated inappropriately (46%), harassment and harassment (38%) and security breaches (37%).

Thirty-four percent of those who had witnessed unethical behavior did not mention it.

IBE Director Phillipa Foster Back said that an independent national national study had the advantage of avoiding the pitfalls of internal investigations by companies, where workers may feel compromised .

It was also held in Australia for the first time this year, she said.

Of more than 2,000 employees surveyed in the three countries, 752 were in New Zealand.

Since the start of the survey in the UK in 2005, the attitude of companies towards those who have chosen to express themselves has changed dramatically.

It's an area in which social media seems to have had a positive effect, she said.

Because there was no place to hide anymore.

"So I think companies have recognized the need for proper systems, written from the point of view of the reporter – the person who has seen something that is wrong – and to try to encourage them to speak up . "

The most important message companies could draw from the survey was the need to provide the appropriate level of training and support to employees.

As a general rule, the first person that employees could and should talk about unethical conduct was their manager.

"But often, managers are not the best equipped to handle these conversations," she said.

New Zealand has distinguished results in Australia and the United Kingdom in a few areas.

When asked how often honesty is practiced at work, 86% of Kiwis said always or frequently, compared to 84% of Australians and only 81% of British workers.

According to Foster Back, this figure was even lower in Europe (78%) and more precisely in Germany (69%).

Meanwhile, New Zealand workers were less likely than their counterparts in Australia and the UK to tolerate changes in travel expenses or entertainment budgets.

In both cases, only 7% of Kiwis judged that all was well, compared to 14% and 13% (respectively) of British workers.

Read the full report here