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Institute of Business Ethics, Ethics at Work 2018 Survey of Employees (UK)

UK employees’ perceptions of ethics at work, including whether they feel able to speak up if there has been misconduct

  • Employees in the UK tend to be more accepting of questionable workplace practices than their counterparts across Europe
  • A quarter of UK employees have been aware of conduct by their employer or colleagues that they thought violated either the law or their organisation’s ethical standards in the last 12 months (24%)
  • UK employees are less likely to be aware of legal or ethical violations (24% vs 30%) but those who are aware of legal or ethical misconduct in the last year are more likely to have raised their concerns (67% of UK employees aware of misconduct vs. 54% of European employees in the same position)
  • One in eight UK employees have felt pressure at work to compromise their organisation’s standards of ethical conduct (12%)
  • One in five UK employees (22%) say that their organisation provides incentives to encourage them to meet ethical standards

Date Published: 14/9/18

Categories: Business | Europe | Public and communities | UK

Client: Institute of Business Ethics

Methodology

ComRes interviewed 6,119 working adults across eight European countries between 5th and 25th February 2018. This included 764 in working adults in the UK; 754 in France; 762 in Germany; 784 in Ireland; 768 in Italy; 775 in Portugal; 756 in Spain; and 756 in Switzerland.

Data were weighted to make each country representative of the working population (age 18+) by age, gender and region. ComRes is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

  1. IBE-Ethics-at-Work-UK-2018 0.02 MB.

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