You've Got to Be Kidding!: How to Keep Your Job Without Losing Your Integrity

Establishing and Documenting Company Guidelines

Employee handbooks are the ideal communication tool for conveying specific guidelines relating to vendors. You can document acceptable and unacceptable practices here, and eliminate any mystery as to how employees should conduct themselves. I am seeing increasingly more specificity in these guidelines, such as “only gifts with a nominal value of less than $10 may be accepted” and “when dining with a vendor, our employees must always pay for their own food and beverages.”

The objective is to avoid the mere appearance that preferential treatment is for sale. You don’t want a vendor walking away wondering “if only”—if only, for example, he had crossed his ethical boundaries and offered you a kickback or other inducement, then he could have had your business. You want the vendor thinking about how to better serve your company, not considering whether he should have offered you a larger TV.

Employees actually appreciate this clarity. They don’t worry that their employers suspect they can be bought for the price of a drink; rather, they use the rules (usually with some humor!) to stop the situation from becoming awkward before it starts: “Bob, I don’t want you to pay for dinner—what I want is better service and free shipping!”

Unambiguous guidelines are essential for meeting planners like Jennifer. Any business will benefit, however, because wherever buying and selling occurs—which it does for every business—there are risks for ethical ...