Starting a business depends on how much you are willing to break the bank. sustaining it you need to attract talent for jobs at your company. You can offer the best amount of salary but that’s not all that takes to make them stay. With an attractive salary, companies also need to focus on keeping a comfortable environment that makes employees feels like home. With that, companies need a no-politics policy.

But most importantly, companies need to follow a whole set of corporate ethics in order to remain on its grounds. Ethics at work might not seem like an important topic. But, the modern workplace is shifting. The employees are no longer just concerned with their finances, they are also concerned with American professional values. While we’re on it, let’s discuss what ethics really means then.

Ethics, in general, is quite a broad category and no, it does not just revolve on giving the salary on time. There are areas that come under ethics that need to be acknowledged in every workplace in the USA. Ethics specifically means codes or norms that should not be broken. These are often in the background. Most of the time, in the professional world, ethics are followed subconsciously. That is because ethics are what people should get used to. So much that they spontaneously follow it.

Ethical Code #1: Fraud And Manipulation

This is one of the most obvious concerns that are already known by the public. When you are being ethical, companies refrain from engaging in any manipulative financial behaviors. These can include but are not limited to bribery, fraud, insider trading and so on. One individual’s actions are always going to be associated with the company as a whole.

So, if someone on the inside acts unethically, this can compromise the reputation of your company’s name and history. This ethical rule works both ways: While companies should refrain from it, the employees should also remain strict on this matter.

Ethical Code #2: Sustainability

This term means all practices that are continued indefinitely in order to respect the workplace environment. In simple terms, it includes not only respecting people but the supplies you receive at work. And the supplies your company uses. Some of the best examples include using renewable forms of energy, not wasting electricity, installing solar panels, decreasing the pollutants generated by your company.

If you’re a company that manufactures chemicals, dumping the waste in the river that supplies water to nearby societies is unethical in this matter.

Ethical Code #3: Exploitation

The bigger the company is (in professional terms), the more sum/profits it will make. However, if your profit making techniques include exploiting the population that lives in your native area, taking benefit from tax loopholes, and so on this means your company is unethical. Say, you open up a factory in a developing country and exploit the environment protection laws over there to generate as much profit as you can, that simply means you are exploiting the loopholes in their law.

Ethical Code #4: Diversity/Inclusion

Ethical business practices also include the efforts made to respect workplace diversity and the inclusion of each member in your program. Not only does it mean respecting the ethnic minority which already works with you. But, it also means including people from diverse backgrounds during the hiring process. So, if you are a company that discriminates between sexes, races, and so on that simply means you are breaking the ethical code.

Ethical Code #5: Donations

This is one of the most practiced ethical code by a lot of large-scale companies of today. It basically includes making charitable donations to various organizations. You can donate a certain profit amount to numerous local groups of activists and stand with them for their good cause. Of course, funding a hate-speech group might not be the right decision here.

Whether you are an employee or the CEO of a company, you should know that breaking most of the ethical codes mentioned here can lead to someone taking legal action against you. So, following the codes can also protect you from major lawsuits, public humiliation and it can stop you from facing bankruptcy.