Growing Together: How Working With Integrity Benefits The Workplace

Every professional organization has a set of beliefs, behaviors, traditions, and values that define them. These unique characteristics are what make up the workplace culture and are what sets organizations apart from each other. Of course, all organizations aspire to have a workplace culture that’s viewed as positive and healthy – one that fosters productivity, accountability, and honesty among employees. While it’s good to have all these qualities, they’re essentially “parts” of a much greater and more beneficial “whole” – integrity.

When someone has integrity, it means they have strong moral convictions and values. They’re capable of making tough decisions, being truthful, taking responsibility, and sticking to what they believe is right regardless of the situation. This applies to everything they do at work.

As such, if you’re an employer, you want every member of your team working with integrity day in and day out. Because if they can do that, you can rest assured that even without your supervision, the organization will run itself and be perfectly fine, affording you some peace of mind.

So how do you do that?

As typical of any employee-employer relationship, you shouldn’t be the only one benefiting from your organization’s success. When it grows, everyone grows with it. Remember, this responsibility lies on you, the leadership, as much as it does on the rank and file. It’s a circular relationship and a team effort, after all. And it also means that your employees get to share in some of the same privileges you enjoy.

You see, like employers, employees also want peace of mind. Compensation alone is rarely enough to convince today’s workforce to apply for or stay in a job. They want to feel valued, secured, and involved. When you understand their needs, it becomes much easier to reach out and engage with them, which in turn helps you gain their trust and loyalty. When you have that, they’ll likely develop integrity towards their work.

To go back to the question of “how”, here are some concrete practices that you can follow in your own organization:

Define Your Mission, Vision, and Policies

Every organization has its own mission, vision, and purpose. These three buzz words are all in a way connected. They are what drives an organization to make an impact on society and become successful.

The purpose answers the question: Why does the organization exist? The vision, in relation to purpose, describes what the organization wants to achieve, while the mission explains how it plans to achieve it.

There are also policies and values, which serve as guiding principles as to how team members behave and operate, ensuring that they’re always progressing towards the organization’s mission, vision, and purpose.

Defining these aspects of the organization properly is key to giving your team some perspective and direction with what they’re doing. It aligns everyone’s interests and aspirations with the organization’s, bringing everyone together to work on the same goals.

Set An Example

For your team to believe in your organization’s mission, vision, purpose, and policies, you, as their leader, have to embody them fully. Set an example. Be a role model that they can follow. If you yourself cannot comply with what your own organization expects of you, how can you expect your employees to do the same.

Create Open Communication

Similar to marriage, having open communication with your employees significantly helps them feel at ease with you, allowing them to be more honest and transparent. Obviously, the relationship here is professional rather than personal. The idea, however, is the same. When you can communicate effectively with your employees, you’ll grow to respect each other’s opinions, even if you disagree. It’s like you’re trying to break that imaginary wall between the two of you.

This might be harder to implement in an organization with 100 or more employees. However, you can train team leaders or department heads to listen and develop that rapport with those under them.

It’s also worth mentioning that sometimes a bit of small talk goes a long way. Again, you still want to keep it professional, but getting to know people really helps in these situations. Find topics that they’ll be comfortable to talk about. Ask about their days. Lend an ear when they have problems. It’s really not that complicated if you think about it.

Integrity is not only essential in the workplace but in our everyday lives as well. Just imagine how hard it will be for society to function if no one was honest and trustworthy. By asking your employees to work with integrity, you’re empowering them to be better individuals. You’re imparting a valuable asset that they’ll carry with them even when they’re no longer working for you. And that asset can be passed on from one person to the next for generations to come.