The Nature Of And Need For A Massive Workplace Campaign In Ethical Behavior

FOR THE PRESERVATION AND PROMOTION OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY

By Donald B. Ardell

An element of REAL wellness not included in current health promotion is applied ethics.  I think ethics education would add consequence, interest and effectiveness to worksite wellness programming, and benefit most exposed to ethical lessons.  If led by skillful facilitators, ethics awareness would help employees explore common personal and business conflicts in non-controversial ways.  This would show that ethical perspectives often play a subtle role, not a controlling influence, on decisions. Employees would be guided to explore unexamined, unrecognized and unclear assumptions that shape their ideas about right and wrong. In this manner, worksite deliberations on matters of applied ethics would likely prove consequential for both companies and individual employees.  Explorations of applied ethics would make more people aware of ethical gray areas warranting clarification. 

I think ethical matters are more consequential to individual employee and organizational productivity than medical matters related to risk factors, which gets all the attention in corporate health efforts.  Of course, it is not an either/or choice – companies could offer both. 

Applied ethics is likely one of the more fruitful areas of REAL wellness.  The field of health care is rife with ethical quandaries fit for exploration and ripe for new dimensions of wellness programming. The study and testing of right or wrong judgments applied to hypothetical issues would surely generate animated interactions.  Today, worksite wellness is rather boring, and many opt out or participate reluctantly, mainly for the incentives but without whole-hearted embrace of the idea.  The ethical discussions would raise levels of understanding dramatically in a short period of time.  In doing so, worksite wellness would facilitate moral and ethical character building. Nothing in the current agenda of medical management or risk reduction offers any possibility of such an impact.

Ethics are a vital element in the common decencies: Ethics affect human interactions in business and in social discourse.  Consensus on ethical matters are likely to render most communications, agreements and understandings more reliable, trustworthy and successful. 

http://tpjmagazine.us/2008-12-14-ardell