Employees as ethics ambassadors

The employees who assist senior management in promoting ethical policies, code of conduct, and related policies within the organization are referred to as ‘Ethics Ambassadors’. These ambassadors are appointed full-time or may be taken on in addition to an employee’s day-to-day job. The ethics ambassadors have an important role to play in nurturing awareness and improving employee knowledge, acceptance, and implementation of the ethics programme. Although these ambassadors are not part of the undeviating ethical functions of the organization, they form an informal network spread across the units situated at various geographical locations covering diverse employees with similar responsibilities. The responsibility assigned to an ethics ambassador is appropriate with his/her skills, experience, and motivation based on the sector in which the company operates or the company has experienced major ethics lapses in the recent past. The ambassadors need not necessarily be ethics experts. However, they must know the company’s ethics policies for which they have to be properly trained to facilitate conversations on ethics and identify ways to solve ethical issues when they arise. The conveying of ethical messages also involves communication in the local language and context, translating codes of ethics, writing or translating training programs, etc. to meet the requirements of the local environment.

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