Someone who has received comprehensive ethics training while working with a large defence contractor and does continuing research in business ethics, Carter prepared an Ethics Toolkit which is completely free.

All too often, it’s either sensationalistic stories of businesses ‘gone bad’ or prolonged preaching to businesses to "do the right thing", as Carter points out. But interestingly, what he notes is conspicuously missing is oftentimes, the ‘how-to’ of managing ethics at the workplace.

“But it isn't from lack of examples that managers aren't better at managing ethics in the workplace -- they require more practical information about managing ethics...,” he says. A point Carter notes has been articulated well, before. Carter draws reference to Stark in his article, "What's the Matter with Business Ethics?" published in the Harvard Business Review (1993, May/June, pp. 38-48). Carter also quotes Wong and Beckman (Journal of Business Ethics, V11, pp. 173-178) who note that "researchers are claiming that current literature is filled with strong arguments for more ethical corporate leadership and incorporation of ethics in business curriculum, but what is conspicuously missing is the "how to" in actually putting ethical goals and theories into practical action."

Coming back to my discussion with Sam, he put it into context for himself by referring to companies at the onboarding stage with their employees, for example. The new guy comes in, he gets cracking straight away and does the overtime when faced with particular timelines. He considers the long hours put in, claims the overtime and then thump ! a whack on the head. “You know, old chap, you can claim overtime, but you cant claim for more than five hours at any one time?” A-ha, now you tell me....

Sam is quite clear about considering this as unethical. You just shouldn’t be cutting down on overtime. “Some of the things I have seen in the past, things that could very well be called blackmail or threats.... these HR practitioners just dont practise what they say.”

So, what should the company do then?

“Well, for one, if you can’t pay them more, then pay them something anyway. Give them meals. Ask your people whether it’s ok by them. I know employees ask for a lot. But the problem is that HR just doesn’t know how to talk. You know how to talk to upper management but that’s simply not enough. You pass the buck when decisions need to be communicated. But seriously, the reality is management relies on you to give them a temperature check, to clue them in on what’s going on. And they need this intel to make their decisions. So in actual fact, HR is partly to blame when things go south.”

Sam thought back to a retrenchment exercise he was involved in, back in the day. He called it a good approach. Back in the mid-80s, the company he was attached to decided that the best approach was to lay it out on the line, to tell the truth.

“It made everyone prepared for the change. Dont get me wrong, the folk didn’t get much money but they appreciated the truth and they planned around it, ” Sam notes.

Ethics is a process and a discipline and therefore you need to spend considerable time on a regular basis on this issue so that firstly, you get your head around the ideas you want to propogate, and secondly, so that people get a sense of the culture and approach to how business is done. It needs to move beyond a simple set of do’s and dont’s and as clarified by Carter, its about moving from the argument stage to planning and actioning it.

Curious about how Sam deals with people who somehow don’t meet the required standards, he says, “Well, I for one, am not for getting rid of people. In one of my previous postings, the CE wanted me to get rid of someone and called me in. He asked whether the guy could be retrained and I said yes. The thing is, I dont want to get rid of people. I think the problem lies in how you manage them. People need to be dealt with a certain level of respect and humanity and not be commoditised. You cant go by the book all the time and deal with things on a generic level either. I learnt that the hard way in my younger days, when I had to terminate an employee.”

The said employee was not coming in to work; this was happening over a two week period and frankly, everyone was getting pretty fed up with the situation. He had to go. “I went by the book”, Sam recounts, “we went to court and I was checked on all the paperwork. And then the judge asked me one very simple question. Did I visit the employee?”

Well, no. It was as simple as that. A bitter lesson.

There is no distinction between corporate and individual ethics to Sam. He likes to keep it simple and as he puts it, “it’s all about behaviour.”

“It should not make any difference whether it’s practised in your own personal environment or within a corporate context. You can’t really make a distinction between the two environments; thats why people get confused. Rationalising it any other way is really about compromise then. ”

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Sam Elias is the Technical Director at Kareer.com.my. Sam conceptualised the resume management system for their online recruitment site.

In this role, he looks at the development of the IT infrastructure and the kind of business model they need to adapt and move towards. Sam, who currently reports to the Chief Operating Officer, has been in HR for more than ten years. There are two people in the HR team, a total of thirty five employees in the organisation.

Sam is also a Senior Consultant and Trainer in the areas of HR, recruitment, process improvement and system development.