Your employees shouldn’t accept any gift offered with the intent to improperly influence business decisions — or even one that merely appears to compromise their ability to act in your company’s best interests. Unfortunately, kickbacks are often disguised as gifts or travel, so they can be hard to identify. Here’s how to maintain your business’s high ethical standards. Applying the integrity test Kickbacks return a portion of the money exchanged in a business transaction as compensation for favorable treatment. However, gifts, gratuities or courtesies of modest value associated with ordinary business practices are usually acceptable. The key consideration is the intention of the giver. Yet you must take care to avoid not only an actual impropriety, but also the appearance of impropriety. Defining what’s proper or improper with...
