Doing What the Company Wants

The issue which I read from the Ethicist column on the New York Times web site is about a company which requires all the employees to complete a self-directed training course. The person who asks the question mentions that the training is not related with his job. The question is must he ethically obligated to complete the training?

Randy Cohen-the columnist of Ethicist recommends him to deceive his supervisor by telling him that it is not related with his position. Moreover ethicist offers tell to supervisor or CEO that the training is wasting time in his case and it is better to spend that time on a something productive. Columnist mentions that if the CEO or supervisor will think that you are right then, for improving the productivity they will accept your idea and the training would only be mandatory only for employees to whose job the training is related. However Randy Cohen also notes that here would be some important point for company to offer the training course to employees which would be part of company’s future plans.  The columnist brings up that if company CEO things that the training must be mandatory, then all the employees must take the training. He also notice that is not the mistake of company that they did not told anything about training courses when they hired you.

In the comment section people with different thoughts wrote about the issue. Some of them agree with columnist but other does not. One person who does not agree with mandatory training mentioned that the training is meaningless and wasting of time if you know everything what they will cover in that training. On his opinion the training must be optional. Some other person commented that the company must pay extra money to employees in or to the employees to attend the training. He thinks that in such case both sides will be happy, company will train employees and employees will get money for attending training.

I am totally agreed with ethicist. Every company CEO tries to do his best in order to carry his company forward and get more profit. Sometimes we could not agree with the decisions of CEO. However their job is manage and decide the strategies for the company and our job is to obey their orders. In such situations I would also recommend questioner just to tell his opinion to supervisor or CEO and at the same time respect their opinion. Moreover I want to add that there is no any ethically wrong thing to obligate employees to complete the training because it has many advantages for the employees, such as they could learn new skills and now better their coworkers.

Source:

Cohen, Randy. “Doing What the Company Wants”. New York Times. 7 Jan. 2011. 5 Dec. 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/magazine/09FOB-Ethicist-t.html >