All Posts Tagged With: "ethics"
10 Critical Questions: Your Workforce
Several articles on Baldrige.com have emphasized the value of employee engagement and satisfaction. “Valuing workforce members” is a Baldrige core value, as the Criteria state: “An organization’s success depends increasingly on an engaged workforce that benefits from meaningful work, clear organizational direction, and performance accountability and that has a safe, trusting, and cooperative environment.”
The best way to evaluate how well you are creating an engaged and satisfied workforce is through a Baldrige assessment using the Baldrige Criteria. You can find out how to do that here.
The Criteria consist of powerful questions, rarely asked, about how an organization functions. If you cannot do a full assessment but want insight into how to improve your workforce focus, here are 10 critical questions to ask and answer:
- How do you determine the key factors that affect workforce engagement and satisfaction and assess performance on them?
- How does your culture promote open communication, high-performance work, and an engaged workforce?
- How does your organization benefit from the diverse ideas, cultures, and thinking of your workforce?
- How does your workforce performance management system engage employees and support high-performance work?
- How does your learning and development system address your organization’s core competencies and strategic challenges, action plans, performance improvement, innovation, ethics, employees’ needs,…
New Study of Corporate Citizenship
A new study by the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship found that two-thirds of company leaders believe ethical and values-based leadership in the executive office is an important factor in difficult economic times. Leaders also cited effective corporate governance practices (61%) and more effective industry self-regulatory policies and initiatives (58%) as important factors.
All three of these factors are addressed in the second half of the Leadership Category in the Baldrige Criteria. Companies that want to improve in these areas can ask and answer the questions in Item 1.2 (here) and read how Baldrige Award winners respond (award application summaries here).
The study shows that more companies are doing more than just talking about corporate citizenship. Forty percent of the respondents assign a team or individual to work on corporate citizenship issues, up from 26% in 2007. More companies are setting policies for corporate citizenship and integrating it with their business planning processes.
The study also found that more large companies are “establishing corporate citizenship management policies and practices to ensure citizenship is integrated into the core business.”
As the study concludes: “Increasingly, customers, employees, business partners, and government demand that corporations take an active role in social, environmental, and community concerns. That’s why…
19Oct2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige and the Financial Crisis
There’s a good reason no big financial institution has ever won the Baldrige Award: Their applications would be fatally flawed.
In fact, it’s too bad every financial institution doesn’t have to submit a Baldrige application because their responses to the following Criteria questions (verified with a site visit just to keep them honest) would expose the dangerous and destructive practices that caused the financial crisis:
- What are your key strategic challenges and advantages associated with organizational sustainability?
- How do senior leaders personally promote an organizational environment that fosters, requires, and results in legal and ethical behavior?
- How do senior leaders create a sustainable organization?
- How do senior leaders include a focus on creating and balancing value for customers and other stakeholders in their organizational performance expectations?
- How does your organization review and achieve accountability for management’s actions, fiscal accountability, transparency, and protection of stakeholder and stockholder interests?
- How do you evaluate the performance of your senior leaders and the members of your governance board?
- How do you address any adverse impacts on society of your products and operations?
- How does your organization promote and assure ethical behavior in all your interactions?
- How do you consider societal well-being and benefit as part of your strategy and daily operations?
- How do you ensure…
Corporate Social Responsibility
A new book by Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter comes out this month. SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good is the result of more than three years of research at 15 companies. We’ll review the book as soon as it’s available.
Early word is that the book links social good to financial success. That’s not a universally accepted notion, but it is a growing one.
Corporate social responsibility, or CSR, is invading more and more boardrooms and executive meetings as businesses wrestle with what and how much to do to (a) improve their image, (b) act more ethically, and (c) support their communities. The ongoing litany of ethically-bankrupt companies, whether in energy, real estate, financial services, or other, less obvious, industries, makes good behavior a competitive advantage. New generations of workers demand social consciousness from their employers or they’ll look for work elsewhere. Social stock exchanges are springing up or being developed to support those companies that behave responsibly while serving the social good.
“Societal responsibility” is one of eleven Baldrige core values. The Leadership Category of the Baldrige Criteria asks key questions on this subject including:
- How do you promote and assure ethical behavior in all your interactions?
- How do…
