Have you ever heard of an ethics department at work? It is certainly an unusual term but it’s presence is extremely crucial to any organization.
An ethics department’s function is to ensure that all staff members’ performances are consistent with the highest standards of integrity as required by the national and international law, this is vital because it acts as a way for organizations to avoid or manage any conflict of interest.
We look at L’Oréal’s Ethics Department, as an example of how organizations should promote their business ethics worldwide. Emmanuel Lulin, the Ethics Chief Officer at L’Oréal who’s responsible for overseeing L’Oréal’s ethics strategy and programs and regularly visits all of the Group’s operation around the world, talks with us about the promotion of business ethics in different countries worldwide.
Lulin believes that global corporations such as L’Oréal, has to have a common culture that unifies their values, that is why L’Oréal published a booklet in 2018 for all employees, which included their four principals. They asked all the countries they operate in, to give out quotes to explain the meaning of each principle. For example, if you are an employee in L’Oréal Egypt and you want to talk to an employee in L’Oréal Spain, you can refer to the booklet and read the quote about integrity in Spanish, then have its translation in English.
L’Oréal is creating a common language for all their employees. Instead of asking anyone to learn Spanish, they ask employees to learn the L’Oréal language, which are their 4 principles: integrity, respect, courage and transparency.
Lulin also brings up the Law Vs. Ethics debate, which is a very controversial topic, yet one that has to be addressed nevertheless.
The law may be understood as the systematic set of universally accepted rules and regulation created by an appropriate authority such as the government, which may be regional, national or international. However, it is not strictly the same as ethics, somethings may be legally considered lawful but ethically might seem awful.
-Emmanuel Lulin
The importance of an ethics department at work helps you choose between having the right to do something Vs is it right to do it. This proves to us that ethics is important since it forces us to think about the fact that not because something is the right thing to do, means you should do it.
