What is better than sending your teenager to a driving class? Also telling her what to do when she gets into a fender bender and gets a ticket. What’s better than that? Role-playing the incident two or three times until she gets it right.
Similarly in the workplace, we should not only teach employees about rules and values, we should also teach them what to do when they observe wrongdoing. Better yet, we should role-play the actual reporting process. It’s easy to say “If you see something, say something.” It’s a lot harder to actually do it, especially if you’ve never done it before.
Most drivers will get into a minor accidents. Most employees will observe wrongdoing. Why not prepare them?
Writing as “The Ethical Leader,” Yan Tougas draws on 15 years of experience as a compliance & ethics officer at a Fortune 500 company, sharing insights, wisdom and lessons learned. This post originally appeared on “The Ethical Leader” and is reprinted here with permission. Views expressed are that of the author. Visit him at YanTougas.com, connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.
Yan Tougas, Global Ethics & Compliance Officer, Raytheon Technologies Corporation
Yan Tougas oversees Raytheon’s global ethics programs, supporting a network of nearly 300 Ethics & Compliance Officers, managing the company’s Ombuds program, and ensuring that best practices are adopted across Raytheon’s business units. Ethical culture and leadership is the focus of all activities under his responsibility.
Yan joined Raytheon in 2000 and held positions of increasing responsibility at several of its business units. He took his current position at the Corporate Office in 2012.
Yan holds a LL.B from the University of Sherbrooke School of Law (Quebec) and a LL.M. from University of Connecticut School of Law. He sits on the Board of the Ethics & Compliance Initiative and on the Advisory Board of the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University. Yan currently lives in Connecticut with his wife and three children.
