Transparency Is The Best Policy

Running a business these days in akin to walking on eggshells – no matter how carefully one treads, the risk of a wrong step making it to the public gaze is ever-present. Form the innocuous to the sinister, all our actions have the potential to cause embarrassment as well as financial or reputational damage, the likes of which are hard to recover from. Transparency in business operates on several levels. Form promoting a culture of merit and openness when dealing with employees via HR policies  and actions, to ethical dealing with suppliers and regulators – opportunities for irregularities abound. And how long does it take for a disgruntled employee or business partner to expose you?

In the recent past, wrna have seen the US government face leaks that have caused disruptions to its relations with allies simply because it allegedly spied on them. Commercial entities are on weaker ground when dealing inside information that is damaging, to say the least in our local context, many government departments and  state-owned enterprises regularly have their inner working exposed by leaks to the press that show their actions to be less than above-board.

The question then is: What do you do to prevent your company form facing a similar situation? First of all, we need to make a distinctions between secrecy and confidentiality. Much of what a company does needs to be confidential in terms of employee and financial information, business processes and formulations.a. In addition, there are guidelines by regulatory bodies on disclosures that should not disadvantages one party.

Ethics in business dealings should be easy to manage (just don’t do anything shady);  but should an incident occur, how an organisations deals with it becomes of paramount importance. Here, it is the established culture that will determine how things will be handled. Does the little guy let it in the neck while the big fish escape? Are harassment cases dealt with fairly? In this day of social media that has Polarised us and our opinions, even these have a way of getting out of hand.

I have been involved in many internal enquiries and have observed that even if someone is cleared of alleged wrongdoing, the company cannot go public with its findinga as this does ever more damage to the accused. This then become a classic case of ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t.’ It really helps if you establish a culture of honesty, integrity and openness. Then, the tide of goodwill tends to go in your favour based on your reputation for being ‘ethical and transparent’.

By Leon Menezes. The writer is a senior HR practitioner, Professor-of-Practice and an Executive Coach

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