Many Hoosier workers believe their companies have room for improvement when it comes to ethics according to Marian University’s first survey on business ethics in Indiana.
The goal is to find the areas where businesses are falling behind and help businesses make changes to better their ethics. The school also plans to use the study to help prepare students for the workforce.
The study showed more than half of respondents had observed workplace misconduct at least once and about two-thirds of those workers said they experienced retaliation for reporting it.
Younger Hoosier workers report feeling more pressure than colleagues to compromise their company’s standards.
Liz Coit is the executive director at Marian University’s Walker Center for Applied Ethics. She said Millennials and younger generations are increasingly choosing where to work based on a company’s corporate responsibility and shared values.
Coit said the biannual survey will help prepare students for possible ethical issues while on the job.
“So as a university, of course, that really helps us focus on, 'wow, what can we do to make our graduates more resilient,' if you will, right? Or to at least arm them, to be aware of where some of those pitfalls might come and why and what they can do in response to that,” said Coit.
She said the center will also be working with business leaders in the state to improve policies and relationships between management and workers.
"I look at this survey as pure opportunity, right?" Coit said. "It just is giving us information. Yeah, it does sort of put a grade on us, but that's not its intention. Its intention, really, is to give us what we need to improve."
The survey gathered responses from about 1,000 Hoosier workers in a variety of industries asking the same questions that are asked in an international version of the survey.
Contact reporter Samantha at shorton@wfyi.org or follow her on Twitter at @SamHorton5.
