Won’t detractors claim those are merely words, in response to the crisis?
Those words are important – but they are not sufficient.
What else is needed to back up the rhetoric?
You have to train hiring managers on how to look for high-character employees. For example, you can ask a job candidate, «Tell me about a time when you had to tell someone at work an uncomfortable truth, and something good happened.»
«Good conduct translates into company bottom lines»
This can reveal the applicant’s commitment to two crucial qualities of high-character employees: honesty and courage. There is often a direct line from high-character conduct to financial benefit for companies.
In Credit Suisse’s case, a top executive and not a rank and file employee was found lacking in his ethics.
Senior leadership has to walk the talk. If employees believe they don’t, you will have a high turnover, low morale, and high levels of misery.
The new CEO, Thomas Gottstein, was quoted saying he doesn’t think Credit Suisse has a culture problem.
Where did this scandal come from then? Perhaps Credit Suisse doesn’t have a company-wide scandal, but at the highest level of leadership, there certainly is a culture problem.
What’s the remedy?
Urs Rohner can begin by saying Credit Suisse is firmly committed to doing the right thing, every time, everywhere, with everyone who works for us – that its values will be front and center of everything the bank does.
