Truthfulness in Business

I want to make a couple of points about truthfulness and honesty at work. I suspect my thinking here dovetails with Debashis Dutta's articles.

Work is a political process. Businesses are in the business of their business. In the end, each business expects of its employees honesty, integrity and a positive contribution to the bottom line. Perhaps one could argue that the latter is the most important, as the bottom line funds everything the business does.

Businesses rightfully teach good communication skills, fairness, and how to resolve conflicts. Each of these areas, again, contributes to efficient operation, which leads to a stronger bottom line. It is in the best interest of each business to "create" people who know how to run a business. It is not the place of a business to oversee each person's personal growth, unless everything the person learns can aid the company in its primary mission, which is capturing more market share. (Let's not be children here - the point of capitalism is profit. If you don't want to play in that arena, get out of the business. As Debashis has mentioned, such "bottom line" decision-making even occurs in the Social Work field, which, it would seem on the surface, is about personal development. It's not. It's about clearing cases and demonstrating to the government the need for more funding.)

Dar and I were talking about this the other day, as we discussed pd seminars. Dar's off to do Phase 1. As a teacher, there is no money for her professional development. If there was, Dar might be able to make a case for the benefits of Phase 1 on her communication and ability to relate, but it would be dicey. And honestly, Dar is not going with a primary focus on being a better teacher. She's going to learn more about herself. This is a project in personal growth. Why, oh why, should her business be required to pay for that?

Second, integrity and honesty demand that, if our values don't and won't match that of our company, we need to move on to where they do match, or build a company of our own. This one comes up a lot at my Port Elgin office, where many of my clients are on stress leave from a nuclear power plant. They are pained by the company's direction, and think the company should change to accommodate their discomfort. Then, as the plant doesn't change, they make themselves sick. I figure they are within their rights to agitate for change through their unions, but if they are opposed on principle to the running of the plant, they should leave. To whine, make themselves sick, and not leave is a sure recipe for disaster.

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