Are business ethics or profits more important?

Profits

1 of 8

by Carole Hill

• 

Write now Print Invite a writer™ Add to Favorites RSS Feed Contact this writer

You can't deny that making a profit is the motivation behind any business! After all, without sounding curt, they aren't there for their health! The heads of big corporations and for that matter, leaders of any size company, are all watching their numbers, as they say, and some spend endless hours writing reports, even drawing up those flow charts, that they think are going to inspire the employees.

From my varied experiences of working in both large corporations and small companies, the message is the same. Leaders preach the same story to their employees to work harder and keep production rolling.

However, in most recent years, big business has felt the economic pinch and in an effort to keep profits rolling, have had to cut corners to keep the numbers out of the red! This has been defined as "down sizing". In some cases, the employees are the ones who feel the pinch when those little extras are taken away, and bonuses are diminished, and in worst cases, the inevitable happens; the staff must be cut.

As a company attempts to move forward, with less steam because fewer employees are left to do the work of more than one employee, trying to pick up the slack of those that were let go. Employees work twice as hard, but production is still threatened.

This starts a snowball effect. When more is expected of existing employees, to keep longer hours by coming in earlier or staying later, sometimes working through lunch periods in order to complete tasks creates what I like to call "internal combustion."

When employees are working harder, and probably for no overtime pay or other compensation (I say that because I have come to learn that overtime pay is not mandatory to a salaried employee), this creates stress, mental anguish, fatigue, low energy and even conflicts among the staff. An employee is not only put in a bad situation at work, but his home life is affected as well. A hard working employee now has new pressures to face, perhaps missing time with children who have already gone to bed, diet is jeopardized because this person either has to grab fast food on the way home, or eat a less nutritionally balanced concoction at late hours. Simple home chores are neglected because this person is just too tired to do anything else around the house. He goes to sleep and repeats it all again the next day. Needless to say, the tensions and negativities lead to "low morale" at home and at work.

I realize I am painting a desperate picture of how profit making can create desperate measures for the leaders and also for the employees. Hard to know if the profits made, as a result of causing so much conflict that trickles down, are really worth it. But I suppose it isn't a question of a leader wanting to cause all these conflicts; it just happens because the leader is under his own competitive pressures to keep the numbers soaring, to save his own neck.

There may have been more concern about the ethical demeanor inside the halls of a company, but with economics taking precedence, it is often true that a company must make a profit in order to exist. It may seem callous to say, but for those employees that got let go during a financial crunch period, a business can always hire a new employee, and often times, a younger, less experienced candidate who will suffice to get the job done, at a lower rate of pay.

As far as moral ethics are concerned, I believe most employees do try to make the most of their time at the office and do try to keep their associations with co-workers congenial. But I believe business ethics differ from the moral aspect of a business, and have an impact on the status of the employees, which in turn influences production and ultimately, the profits.

Learn more about this author, Carole Hill.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.