Tom Fox welcomes Alison Taylor on this episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. Alison is the Executive Director of Ethical Systems, a collaboration between leading academics in behavioral science, systems thinking, and organizational psychology. She joins Tom to talk about ethics and how it relates to ESG, stakeholders, corporate culture, as well as what place Gen Z and Millennials have in this discussion surrounding ethics and compliance in the future.
Ethics & ESG
The roots of ESG are ethical in themselves. Alison explains to Tom that the basis of ESG is that businesses ought to do good, and do no harm. “ESG really tries to deal with everything that’s beyond compliance…that companies should not just not break the law, but they should do stuff about climate change and human rights and that kind of thing,” she adds. ESG has a say about what businesses should and shouldn’t be doing in society. The problem in recent times is that ESG is more so related to the profit side of business and not what stakeholders care about. When ethics and ESG are treated in relation to the business case, they are treated as metrics and not important corporate social responsibility.
Ethics, Stakeholders and Culture
Tom asks Alison to explain whether a conversation about ethics can be had across a broader group of stakeholders. “The idea that a company could perfectly reflect the ethics and values of every one of its stakeholders is totally ridiculous,” she begins. What leaders should think about instead is the impact they have on their stakeholders. “Rather than talking about what we should and shouldn’t do, a conversation could be that companies should manage the negative impacts that they have on their stakeholders and try and enhance the positive ones,” Alison remarks. Another important thing for leaders to think about is if their organizations have a culture where employees don’t feel safe to bring up ethical issues. The best ‘speak-up’ program won’t be worth anything if your users don’t utilize it.
A Place for Gen Z and Millennials
Tom asks Alison to elaborate on where she sees the roles of Gen Z and Millennials in driving the discussion about ethics in the future. “Younger generations want a meaningful career, and they care much much more whether a business is ethical or unethical,” Alison states. If companies want to attract young people, they have to perform ethically and be known for doing so. Younger generations are much more tech-savvy, so if a business is operating unethically, they are going to leak that information via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. This can be detrimental to a companies’ public reputation. Shutting down ethical discussions internally is not the way for businesses to go when hiring younger generations. “If you think [that if] you can shut down this conversation, you’re gonna shut down internal conflict – what you’re actually doing is just pushing this outside and making it way worse,” Alison stresses.
Resources
Alison Taylor | LinkedIn | Twitter
Ethical Systems
