The Importance Of Integrity In The Workplace And How To Improve It

When integrity in the workplace is low, your team will feel it. They’ll suffer from lack of motivation, poor performance, and even dissatisfaction with the company culture, which can lead to increased turnover.

When integrity is high, your team will enjoy a deeper sense of camaraderie, stronger bonds, and a willingness to cooperate and work hard for the business.

No doubt, every manager would prefer a strong sense of integrity among their team, but how do you go about building it up when it’s low? In this article, the workforce-management experts at Sling offer tips to help you improve integrity in the workplace.

Why Is Integrity In The Workplace Important?

Ask 10 people to define integrity in the workplace, and you’ll likely get 10 different answers — most of which revolve around the quality as a whole (such as honesty, sound judgment, dependability, or loyalty).

And while those specific expressions are a big part of what makes up integrity in the workplace, they combine to form a principle of behavior that goes well beyond the sum of the parts.

Thus, integrity is doing the right thing through your words, actions, and beliefs when no one is watching. At its most basic, then, integrity is based on values — both yours and those of others — rather than personal gain.

More than that, integrity plays a significant role in making your business the best it can possibly be. Here are five ways integrity can affect your team for the better.

Builds And Maintains Trust

Exhibiting integrity in the workplace is key to building and maintaining trust among your employees and with your customers and clients.

Without trust in your business, team members, customers, and clients will gradually trickle away, leaving you short-staffed, always looking for new team members, or in jeopardy of closing down completely.

Promotes Strong, Resilient Employees

One of the main results of exhibiting integrity in your workplace is that your team has a set of guidelines — a standard operating procedure, if you will — under which they operate at all times.

This, in turn, promotes strong, resilient employees because they can rely on certain principles that influence everything from how they treat their coworkers to how they answer customer questions.

Helps Foster An Open And Positive Team

When your company operates with integrity and strong values at all times, your employees will feel more open — open to sharing ideas, connecting with their team, and being themselves.

Similarly, a culture of integrity in the workplace results in a more positive workforce. When your employees are comfortable at work, it is much easier for them to stay positive and upbeat even when things get difficult.

Promotes Better Leaders

Another reason why integrity in the workplace is so important is that it promotes better leaders. This, in turn, trickles down to the team members under those managers and gives them a role model to follow.

When your managers operate with a strong sense of ethics, your employees will, too. It all starts with building and maintaining integrity in your business.

Encourages An Ethical Approach To Decision-Making

With integrity as the foundation of your team’s behavior, you can then work to encourage an ethical approach to the rest of your business dealings — including the way you make decisions.

This can manifest in the way you create and develop new products, make moves to protect stakeholders, and develop policies to better serve your customers.

However it manifests, an ethical approach to decision-making can do a lot for your business.

How To Improve Integrity In The Workplace

1) Lead By Example

The best way to promote integrity at work is to lead by example. If you’re not willing to put in the hard work and exhibit integrity at all times, why should your employees?

Effective leaders are the trailblazers of their team: They’re out front clearing the way for the rest of the party to follow their example.

2) Keep Your Language Professional

Speaking with swear words in everyday speech is becoming more and more common these days. But not everyone is used to that type of communication, nor is it appropriate in most work situations.

To improve integrity, keep your language professional and demand that everyone on your team does, too.

3) Be Honest

Honesty is one of the cornerstones of a strong and productive workplace. Strive to always tell the truth — and ask for the truth from the members of your team as well.

When those around you feel safe to be honest, trust increases and your business functions better.

4) Arrive On Time

A big part of integrity at work is arriving on time and working until your shift is over.

As managers and owners, we demand that our employees clock in and clock out when they’re supposed to. The best way to make that a reality is to do the same yourself. Your team will see your consistency and follow suit.

5) Value Diversity To Improve Integrity In The Workplace

Diversity in the workplace involves hiring people from different cultures, viewpoints, backgrounds, and personalities for your team.

The primary reason diversity is essential for success is because businesses are becoming more global every day. Even within a single country, the opportunity to provide goods and services to diverse ethnic groups is a very real possibility.

Whether you run a mom-and-pop restaurant, a 10-employee coffee shop, or a 100-employee call center, diversity will help you improve integrity.

6) Build Collaboration Instead Of Competition

Collaboration is a philosophical and practical approach that emphasizes teamwork, equal participation, and innovative thinking as a way to further the interests of your business.

The foundation of effective team collaboration comes down to the company culture in which your employees work and the integrity that culture promotes.

When you define the values, norms, ethics, beliefs, and habits of your business, you set the tone and mood your team members will experience with their teammates, managers, and clients.

7) Promote Inclusivity

Inclusivity encompasses the practices and attitudes of a business that ensure all team members:

• Have equal access to the same resources and opportunities
• Are treated fairly and respectfully
• Can (and want to) contribute fully to the team’s and the business’s success

In simpler terms, workplace inclusivity stresses the fact that the thoughts, ideas, and perspectives of all individuals matter and that your business considers every point of view before it makes a decision.

The positive and healthy atmosphere this produces goes a long way toward also building integrity in the workplace.

The Right Software Can Help

As we mentioned earlier, a big part of integrity in the workplace depends on communication. Communication between you and your employees. And communication between each member of the team.

It doesn’t matter if that communication revolves around scheduling, inventory, clocking in and out, ethics, or customer service. The better you communicate with your employees, the more integrity your whole team will exhibit.

For truly seamless communication with your employees, you need the right tools.

We developed the Sling app for just that — to streamline communication and improve the way your team works.

Sling is a suite of integrated tools that makes scheduling, tracking labor, finding substitutes, assigning tasks, and maintaining communication and streamlined activities extremely simple. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

For an all-in-one solution to help you improve your workforce management and implement the ideas mentioned above, incorporate the Sling suite of tools into your workflow.

Features include:

• Powerful and intuitive scheduling
• Comprehensive time-tracking (with geofencing)
• Dynamic reporting
• Time-saving payroll processing
• Customizable communication (e.g., location-specific or team-wide)
• Effective budgeting
• Productive labor-cost optimization
• Helpful overtime control
• And much more…

Add to that Sling’s onboard artificial intelligence, and you’ve got an extremely beneficial and flexible set of tools that will help you manage your team, build morale, and improve integrity in the workplace.

For more free resources to help you manage your business better, organize and schedule your team, and track and calculate labor costs, visit GetSling.com today.

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This content is for informational purposes and is not intended as legal, tax, HR, or any other professional advice. Please contact an attorney or other professional for specific advice.

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