Building company integrity - what is it, and how can it help me?

Making sure the right thing is what gets done

Company integrity is evidenced when boards show clear leadership in:-

Defining, role modeling, celebrating and rewarding best performance in the service of the company's aims
Being very clear about what is communicated to whom, when and how: customers, employees, directors and other stakeholders are confident that they know, and will always know, what they wish to know about the company's circumstances
Creating and maintaining clear and useful incentive arrangements for all contributors to the business mission:
- incentives are suitably focused on defined performance
- collateral impacts of success are taken into account
- rewards are deferred as necessary - they are linked to colleagues' performance, take account of stakeholders' experience and are transparent, according to circumstances.
Consistently conveying the company's ethos by being very clear about use of the company's symbols, icons, brand identities and stories
Providing ethical guidelines, an ethical decision-making protocol and support to all contributors to the business mission: each person knows what they need to do, to remain confident that they are acting consistently with company integrity.

Company integrity contributes to business goals by:-

Ensuring executives are well-briefed and able to deliver outstanding business performance through clear and consistent leadership in all the main areas of the business
Enabling openly-committed clear leadership that role models performance.
Creating and maintaining clarity in communications policy, incentive arrangements and what doing the right thing looks like,
Having an explicit, efficient and clear way of working. Behaving ethically enables the company to identify and solve problems more rapidly
Establishing company wide alignment to clear purpose, and so enabling the setting of more stretching goals.

Teams operating in a company with integrity:-

Have a much closer alignment of personal values with company values
Are very clear on what moves them, individually and as a team
Have close alignment on their understanding of how they need to contribute to business objectives
Get more sustainable results in less time: company integrity adds momentum and enables smarter, more effective actions to be taken with greater clarity, teams see clearly where they are, what the business needs, and that what they want from their life and work is aligned to their values
Grow both professionally and personally: working with clear and consistent alignment enables each team member to be the best that they can be.

For each contributor to the business, company integrity brings:

An integrity of work and personal life that empowers them to sustain excellent performance at work without damaging their personal circumstances
Easier relationships: the clarity that company integrity brings enables team members to base their relationships on shared values
More achievement: the clarity that company integrity brings provides support and encouragement to colleagues when they need it most. This can prevent the self-sabotage that often holds people back from their best actions when they are left alone with ambiguity
Increased self-confidence: the clarity that company integrity brings, extends a strong personal foundation through healthier relationships out into the business, and enables them to be confidently in control, gain better and more appropriate alignment from managers and staffs, and so to accomplish more.

TCL Sept 2011