OH&S Canada

Ethics outsourced?
By PETER KENTER
October/November 2006

While health and safety consultants must deal with ethical decisions within the scope of their contracts, when the act of hiring a consultant has ethical implications for the company that retains such a professional, says David Nitkin, president and founder of Toronto-based EthicScan Canada, the country’s oldest ethical audit firm. Nitkin’s firm rates companies and organizations, based on a series of ethical performance guidelines.

“In terms of consulting dilemmas, the major themes we come in contact with as ethics professionals are the implications for companies and organizations of ‘outsourcing’ of such work and the tangible effect that it has on morale, on loyalty, and on ethical assurance,” says Nitkin.

While consultants provide services that a comp nay may desperately need, the use of a consultant may send a message — even an inaccurate one — that the company doesn’t trust its existing staff to handle a particular task. Even if the expertise provided by the consultant is accepted as valuable, contracts ultimately end and the consultant moves on to the next position, along with the skill set.

“Employees may perceive that the company doesn’t have the ability to retain its expertise,” Nitkin says.

Nitkin also notes that retaining a health and safety consultant as a “hired conscience” to deal with a troublesome issue may have an undesirable side effect. “If company personnel see the consultant as personally responsible for bringing a sense of ethics to an issue within the company, then ethics may be seen as the person’s responsibility — and not others,” he says.” Ethics must ultimately involve all employees throughout the organization to enhance the morale, loyalty and commitment of employees who want their employer to be fair, progressive and supportive.”

It may be that the ethics of hiring health and safety consultants is as much about what they bring to the table as about what they leave behind.