Ethical Values are one of Warwick’s 12 Core SkillsLink opens in a new window. They help you prepare for the workplace and find environments that align with your values. Ethical Values involve maintaining high moral standards—integrity, honesty, and compassion—while making complex decisions and taking responsibility for your actions. Being professionally ethical also means considering the principles of your profession and ensuring an organisation’s values align with your own. This awareness can guide career choices, helping you find roles where you're more motivated and successful.
Resources
Moodle courses:
Ethical Values: reflect on your personal and professional values and how you can put these into practice
Self Awareness: includes an exercise on exploring your Personal Worldview
Critical Thinking: includes tools for effective critical Questioning
Our library of Careers Stories, written by alumni and current students, can help provide you with career inspiration and confidence, as well as lots of hints, tips and advice on gaining your first graduate role.
Engaging with employers
When you’re considering working for particular employers, you can explore their position on ideas and issues that matter to you and find out whether their values align with your own. You can find information by looking at organisations’ policies on their website, such as mission statements, codes of conduct and corporate social responsibility (CSR), and research whether an organisation is signed up to any external certifications or international frameworks, such as the UN Global Compact or B Corp Certification.
Here are some topics and questions to help you consider what is important to you:
Do they aim to diversify their workforce?
Do they have any awards or certification?
How does the company promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace?
What are some specific initiatives or employee resource groups in place to support underrepresented communities?
Can you speak to the diversity of leadership here?
What do they say they’re doing about the future of the environment and human society? What are they doing to meet these goals?
Are they transparent about energy use, materials, waste, community relationships, political relationships, or equalities within their organisation and across those wider relationships? What resources do they use, and do they replace those resources?
What is the wider impact of their existence, their practices, and their outcomes
What role does social or environmental responsibility play in your business decisions?
Are employees encouraged to participate in volunteer or community service initiatives?
What are some causes the company actively supports?
How does the company ensure transparency in decision-making at all levels?
How does the organisation typically give and receive feedback?
Does the organisation have a whistleblowing policy? What protections are in place to allow employees to raise concerns or report misconduct in their workplace? (Note details of whistleblowing policies are often contained in codes of conduct).
What are the expectations around after-hours communication or availability?
How does the company support employees in maintaining a healthy work-life balance?
Do people feel comfortable taking their full paid time off?
