Ethics Monitor Key Features

The Ethics Monitor survey was designed to produce reliable, meaningful results.

Ethics model

The Ethics Monitor is based on an underpinning model that explores 3 key dimensions of ethics: ethical behaviour, unethical behaviour and the organisation’s ethical boundary.

Respondents

The Ethics Monitor assesses the perceptions and experiences of internal stakeholders such as employees and executives, and external stakeholders such as clients and suppliers.

Confidentiality

The anonymity and confidentiality of respondents and their responses were specifically addressed in the survey design to allow respondents to share their views frankly, without fear of come-back:

• The survey does not produce results for responses at an individual level or for groups of less than 10 respondents.
• The survey is only available on our website i.e. not on the participating company’s website where they could drill down to attempt to identify responses.
• Survey participants are given a single, identical log-in weblink, thus avoiding identification via personal log-in details. While this feature may allow participants to complete multiple surveys, this is likely to be limited to dissatisfied employees. The consequent emphasis of these views was considered acceptable when balanced against the importance of surfacing ethical problems and the benefits of anonymity.

Customization

The Ethics Monitor is customized as much as possible as this increases the value of the survey by producing more detailed results. There are 6 areas of customization:

1. Additional survey questions to evaluate the ethical issues that are pertinent to the organisation;
2. Location, to include different branches or different operating divisions;
3. Departments or functional areas or divisions or projects;
4. Work levels or hierarchical groupings or bands;
5. Workplace values, to include the organisation’s values;
6. Stakeholder groups, to include the key internal and external stakeholders.

To enhance the survey’s confidentiality, the customization criteria numbered 2 to 5 can be used only if the it comprises more than 10 people. If not, it needs to be combined with another group to exceed 10 respondents.

Mobi Friendly

The survey can be completed on any mobile device making it easier for respondents and increasing response rates.

Frequency

The Ethics Monitor works best when conducted annually, both to manage an organisation’s ethical status and to monitor its progress over time and relative to previous results. However, if the organisation is in a poor ethical state or in a situation of low trust, it is preferable to conduct the survey more often until a measure of confidence has been reached. This is important for raising the honesty level of the responses and to avoid the exaggerated or extreme responses that are common in low-trust circumstances, especially from employees.

Length

The survey comprises 60 standard questions for employees and takes approximately 5 minutes to complete. There are 11 standard questions for external stakeholders.

Cost

The cost of the survey is based on whether a customized or standard survey is used and on the total size of the respondent group.