Workplace Ethics and Professional Conduct

Employers can teach you most job skills. What they cannot easily teach is integrity: being honest when nobody is watching, keeping private information private, treating people with respect and speaking up when something is wrong. Many young employees lose jobs, and sometimes face criminal charges, not because they could not do the work, but because of a "small" dishonest act, a careless social media post or a gift they should not have accepted. This course explains what workplace ethics means and gives you a simple test for difficult decisions, covers honesty in everyday work, confidentiality and the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), conflicts of interest, gifts and bribery, social media and your professional image, respect and harassment, and how to report wrongdoing safely, including the protection that the Protected Disclosures Act gives whistleblowers. The course is fully online and self-paced. Each lesson has a short activity in your workbook. You finish with a practical task in which you work through real-looking ethical dilemmas, and a final assessment, and you receive a MetaCo Certificate of Completion that you can add to your CV.