The ethics of an engineering company and how it is run is very important, however, this is not always in the managements’ best interest. It is more likely that an employee will notice any issues with the inner workings of the company, for example, the way in which things are managed, rather than the employer. An employee might not feel comfortable coming forward to the management to discuss these issues, thus it would be more beneficial to have an independent body for the employee to raise any issues with. This body would present the findings to the company in a confidential manner therefore, the employee has no risk of being reprimanded by the company for speaking out. This government body would then alert the company about the concern a member of staff has, and the company would then be given a certain amount of time to come up with a solution to the problem that was raised, or to prove that the current situation is indeed ethical. If the company does not manage to come up with a viable solution or justification in the given time, a fine will be imposed on them.
Hi Team 18!
My name is Vas and I am your mentor. Hope you are guys keeping safe!
I read the brief above and the idea sounds very topical, innovative and very impactful! Well done :)
Couple of points/comments below to further develop your proposal:
i) Has any research been undertaken about the worse off groups or the companies for which such ethical issues are most common? In this way, you can narrow down the problem statement and make the proposal more specific?
ii) Who is going to fund this? This is an interesting question and the interests of different parties involved need to be accounted! Companies might want to fund this initiative as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) plan.
iii) What is defined as a 'fine'? Perhaps Diversity & Inclusion training to employees could compensate for this 'fine'?
iv) How progress/improvement will be tracked? What the desirable outcome? This needs to be quantified and by when.
Visualisation of the whole process from reporting to the 'fine' and to the tracking process would help to show clearly how this initiative would work. There might be similar initiatives online, so you could potentially build on those.
Once again, great idea guys - it will definitely help!
For any questions/quick Zoom call, feel free to reach out at vasilistsigkakos@gmail.com
Regards,
Vas
Team members: Josh McCullough and Giulia Blada