No. Not all of them. There are people who are willing to sacrifice their professionalism at the altar of ego, anger, and superficial competition. People go to work, most of them want to perform, earn money and plan for happy retirement. But in this entire grind, work ethics play decisive role in a person’s success. Work ethics is a collection of qualities that defines a person and professional.  Broadly speaking, it encompasses the attitude, the team spirit, and the will to give respect to the work done by others in the organization. Three pillars of work ethics usually defined by human resource experts are honesty, integrity and accountability. Taking ownership of a project, being honest in the efforts to achieve are key performance indicators that are a looked upon when HR is evaluating the employee for raise or while relieving them of their duties.

Mid-sized to large companies have set rules and work ethics definitions. But small businesses usually don’t follow any such policies. They hire people on trust and ability to deliver the results while filling up the vacancy. They don’t have mechanisms to evaluate individuals on performance on wide performance parameters. Regardless of company size, what happens when a person deem to have highest of work ethics walks away with vital information about the company? Many companies file lawsuits to get their confidential documents back, many don’t; but everyone talks about it. Nobody forgets the breach of trust. Now the question is why a person who spoke about highest level of work ethics stooped to a level of a thief and took away vital documents? How does that person convince the next employers of honesty and integrity?

These professionals who don’t stand up to the standards they once set are clever enough to convince others of their work ethics. They lack work ethics but know how to sell themselves as best product available in the market.

There are many organizations in the country that define and outline business ethics, but what is needed is a serious thought to work out a policy on knowledge theft, especially for small businesses. In our country we have people coming from various backgrounds and working together and therefore situation becomes even more complicated. An organization working with the businesses and individuals in the community can be set up to monitor and straighten the work ethic tangle for employee and employer. This is especially needed for those sectors which don’t have any external or government monitoring group.

Experts dealing with human behavior say its matter of personal choice and also of how an individual wants to live life. Most of these individuals live in their own fantasy world that no one will be able to pierce through their smokescreen and see real manipulative person behind it, and most of the time they are successful. But truth always catches on, sooner or later and lack of work ethics can tarnish professional credibility forever. Many term it as professional suicide or call it as just not being able to walk the talk.