IBE 2024 Ethics at Work survey: French employees are more ethically aware – a challenge for managers?
The Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) has just published the latest edition of its Ethics at Work report, based on a survey of over 12,000 working adults in 16 countries (including France). The publication – which presents a series of patterns and trends on this topic - aims to stimulate and inform conversations about ethics and culture at work.
10/14/2024
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IÉSEG, through its Center for Organizational Responsibility (ICOR), has been one of the national partners in this IBE project helping to provide insights for developments in France.
The IBE notes that employees’ views of ethics at work in France have remained consistent since (the last report in) 2021 in some respects. For example, they are still as likely as in 2021 to say that honesty is practised always or frequently in the workplace, and to be aware of misconduct.
It also adds that employees in France are also more likely than three years ago to be aware of the elements of an ethics programme provided by their organisation. “However, they still rank low on this question and remain among the least likely to be aware compared to other countries. Their opinion on their line manager’s commitment to ethics has also worsened since 2021. Compared to the global average, they have a worse view on their organisation’s ability to effectively engage with internal and external stakeholders. Employees in France are also among the most likely to say that they have experienced retaliation after raising concerns about ethics.”
Insights from France from Simone de Colle, Professor of Business Ethics & Strategy at IÉSEG:
“Once again, the new edition of the IBE Ethics at Work survey offers a very useful picture of the state of business ethics in France and many other countries. It highlights some positive progress while also pointing out some challenges (some new, some persistent) for the effective integration of ethics in the workplace.
Having been the IBE national partner for France since 2018, we at IESEG can reflect on this 6-year data span to highlight, in our opinion, the most important findings of this year’s survey.
First, the positive news. It can be summarized in one sentence: French employees are more ethically aware. This means that they are not only more aware of the key building blocks of ethics programmes that are present in their organization, such as, for example, written codes of ethics (58% vs. 47% in 2018) and reporting mechanisms (48% vs. only 33% in 2018), but they are also better able to understand the functioning and role of these ethical tools, as they receive more ethics training within their organizations (43% vs. only 26% back in 2018).
Another very positive finding is the significant decrease in the number of employees who felt pressured to compromise the ethical standards of their organization (10% compared to a worrying 20% in 2018). This is even more encouraging in light of the growing ethical awareness among French employees.
On the negative side, two pieces of data point to the continuing limited (and, to some extent, even worsening) effectiveness of existing ethics programs, whose main goal is (should be!) to promote ethical actions within “normal” business decisions (through ethical leadership, examples, internal discussions, stakeholder engagement, advice and Speak-Up mechanisms), rather than simply preventing unethical and illegal actions.
However, a very high percentage (36%) of employees say that their organisation rewards the achievement of good results, even when these involve ethically questionable practices. How can a proactive ethical culture be established within French organizations, if managers are perceived as prioritizing business over ethics? Clearly, ethical leadership requires managers able to show how ethical behaviour are supportive – not detrimental – to business performance. These results are even more worrisome if we note that there is a deteriorating trend since 2018, when this issue was raised by 28% of employees.
In conclusion, the Ethics at Work Survey reminds us once again that to embed ethics into corporate strategy it is not just a matter of strengthening the “ethics infrastructure” of the organization (writing more codes, increasing monitoring, tightening sanctions for non-compliance, and the like): we need to work on the managerial mindset, to move from an “ethics vs. business” approach to a more mature “Business AND Ethics” vision, where corporate purpose, integrity and sustainability are not an obstacle, but resources for responsible (and profitable) business.”
The results from the 2024 French survey have been published separately on this page:
France | Institute of Business Ethics – IBE
The full IBE report and individual reports can also be accessed here.
Ethics at Work: 2024 international survey of employees | Institute of Business Ethics – IBE
