Recently, we conducted a poll on LinkedIn, to understand views of professionals on what helps build an organization’s brand value. Ethics, ranked #1 followed by Career upliftment, Customer prioritization and Creating a social impact respectively.
Results provided a clear picture on the importance of work ethics among professionals and benefits it adds to brand enhancement. Considering Ethics receiving the highest ranking, we would like to share IGS’s perspective on essence of work ethics.

Let’s analyze the perspectives of the participants and understand the importance and benefits of work ethics:

With work ethics being a necessity as it decides the business values, it becomes imperative for business organizations to follow the essential set of business practices, which can lead them towards achieving their business goals. Practicing work ethics may not show results instantly, but there are certainly long-term benefits. Business ethics are essential not only inside the organization but also in social, cultural and business aspects.
Work ethics can be defined as a set of rules, regulations, and advisories, followed by organizations. Maintaining general work ethics can have numerous advantages, which include- improving brand image and customer acquisition ratio, which leads to customer loyalty and brand recognition.

In view of solidifying an organization’s brand image, we were able to recognize the below characteristics that would help :

The Right way of doing business

Unbiased decision-making is another major component of standardized enterprise-grade work ethics. One must assure that all constituents receive equal service and practice behaviours that is consistent with the standards and principles of the professional association.
While handling any sort of client project, it becomes essential to follow the set of principles. When set of principles are being practiced it becomes easier to manage project deliverables, which results in client satisfaction and ultimately lead to higher client conversion rate.
The basic principle of work ethic, when handling a client project is – Do not promise what you cannot be delivered. When you promise something to the client, it must be handled with utmost care and dedication, any sort of delay/failure of promise can hamper the business reputation. Hence, all organization’s policies and standards should be clearly articulated and broadly disseminated.

Unbiased Behaviour

Principle forms the base of work ethics. It makes organizations unbiased and liable for their actions and introduces a transparent behaviour that aids in establishing a reputation of a loyal brand that is trustworthy to work with.
It helps organizations take the fair decision over taking up client projects, hiring candidates, organizational decision making and most importantly develops a sense of equity in each and every person involved in the process.

Equitable Access

Work ethics are no longer a secondary thing that can be overshadowed in any aspect, instead, it has become a primary etiquette that represents the face of the organization before society.
Equitable access is one of the most crucial components of work ethics. It not only results in employees, and clients feeling valuable towards business but also creates a sense of integrity throughout the process.
It ensures the organization is making fair decisions, that are evolved irrespective of any kind of influence. It eradicates any sense of discrimination based on races, genders, ethnicities, sexual orientations, faiths, national origins, impairments, age, economic status, or veteran status and creates equal access to services and opportunities for people.

Compliance with Law of Land

The other major constituent of organizational work ethics is being complied with all the standardized laws. As the business has to deal with clients/customers, there involves the risk of maintaining data privacy, any breach of user data can result in penalties, lawsuits, project loss and can damage the business reputation.
When the business complies with standard rules, regulations and policies, any client body feels secure and considers continuing the contract in a long term. It also improves brand reputation, which is essential to draw prospects.

Confidentiality and Non-Disclosures

In the age of digital India, it is crucial to confirm end-to-end security and confidentiality of clients’/customers’ data. The same goes for employees, job applicants, and service partners.
All personal information regarding their services, programs, background, and resources, must be kept private. If any organization has failed to support this primary cause, the business growth may face challenges.
Hence, we are concluding that starting from maintaining a healthy work environment to leading a proper organizational structure, work ethics represent the authenticity of the brand, which eventually results in brand building and client conversions.
We at IGS believe without work ethics it is difficult to function, it is our workforce and critical work ethics, that make us one of the leading premium global quality engineering teams. Our brand objectives are integrity, innovation, building high-performance teams, leadership, and inclusion, which are backed by our strong work ethics.

Author – Shanthi Rajesh – BFSI Practice Leader

How risk-free is your financial environment?

The latent occurring of risk and its impact is reduced by Risk Management. Risk Management circumscribes the process of identification, analyzing, controlling & reviewing risks to the business. It is imperative for any business to respond to the risks and usually the response takes one of the embodiments such as Acceptance, Avoidance and Mitigation. Organizations that do not have a well-thought out Risk Management Strategy are exposed to financial & reputational losses.

Key pillars of Risk Management:

Assessment: The risks should be proactively assessed by leveraging techniques & controls like threat modeling.

Acceptance: Based on the risk-appetite of an organization informed decisions have to be made with regard to tolerance for risk exposure.

Strategy: A comprehensive strategy should be crafted for prevention & mitigation of risks.

Action: A set of suitable actions have to be performed as per the strategy.

Mitigation: Plans for responding to security breaches have to be established a priori.

The Banking sector and financial institutions are most conducive for various risks and threats. Typically, risks are from Cyber Criminals and vulnerable breaches.

A look at the magnitude of exposure in this sector: On an average, there is an attempted ransomware attack once every 11 seconds! Some of these attacks are resulting in millions of dollars of losses to the banks across the globe, every month.

Magnitude of the risk

Banks carry 91% of the Cyber risks while insurance companies carry 7%. Drilling deeper, among banks, retail banking carries 39% of the total risks and credit cards account for 25%. The associated data breaches could impose huge penalties on the institutions. For example, GDPR perpetrators could charge penalty of up to 4% of the worldwide enterprise revenue.

An Example:

One of the Big Banks in the Asia pacific wanted to reduce the overall cyber risks by having appropriate controls as part of the risk management strategy. Security experts at IGS crafted and implemented a world-class security solution encompassing threat modelling, SCA, SAST, DAST, VAPT, DevSecOps and so on. Also, they automated loan processing system end-to-end with effective security controls. This resulted in reduction of security risks by over 60% along with reduction of loan application processing time by about 75%.

Click here to learn more about IGS security services