EP 244: Ethics and Culture in the Warehouse

Kevin Lawton

On this episode, I was joined by Emily Miner of LRN. Emily is a Senior Advisor on Ethics and Culture for LRN which is a company focused on helping other companies have better cultural and ethical environments. We discussed their recent Benchmark of Ethical Culture report, how the findings impact warehouse employees and how to help your operation have better ethical culture.

Key Takeaways

• The Benchmark of Ethical Culture report was recently put out about LRN and includes their findings from talking to over 8,000 employees about the current state of ethics and culture in organizations. As Emily explains, they realized that these questions had not really been asked in the last few years, and with all of the changes that have happened for society in recent years they believed it was the right time to put this report together. The report is very comprehensive and details not only employee thoughts on ethics and culture but also details them based on the level that the surveyed individual is at. This is very important so that you can understand what level in your organization should you put your initial energy into.
• One of the biggest findings in my opinion is the difference between the perception of culture and ethics in a company by the different levels of employees. It seems that culture is more visible or apparent the higher you go within the company but where it is the lowest is at the floor level employees such as warehouse staff. I think this is very telling of something that needs to be seriously addressed as warehouse employees do not always get to be as involved in company culture as office workers. It should be equal across the board especially as the importance of warehouse employees has been highlighted over the pandemic due to the importance of goods being delivered to people who are quarantined.
• The big question, of course, is how do companies improve upon this and I think the start is to get buy-in from all levels of the company. The messaging needs to be consistent and reliable for the employees to feel that there is true culture and that everyone is acting ethically. Emily and I discuss how having different messaging from different leaders can create a lot of confusion and a lack of buy-in from employees. When one leader says to do it one way and then another says it’s okay to cut a corner here or there you end up with a big mess that will need to be cleaned up at some point.

Listen to the episode below and leave your thoughts in the comments.