Any organization is only a reflection of the people who work there. While workshop participants have argued that you can’t train people for integrity, you can support persons already demonstrating integrity and give them roles that allow that quality to shine through the organization’s work.
In the specific case of the UN and global organizations, integrity means not only serving universal values such as justice and environmental sustainability over narrower national and personal interests, but ‘walking the talk’ in all behaviours, relationships, processes and policies.
Some ways suggested to achieve this are:
- Explicitly include service to humanity and universal values in the job description
- Hire persons demonstrating these attitudes and approaches over a period of time e.g. through corroborated records of previous activities
- Support persons showing outstanding integrity e.g. in their performance appraisals
- Support networks of persons showing outstanding integrity and encourage their contributions and participation in decision-making
How do you think you can you promote integrity among staff?