This probably won’t come as a surprise: employees find it hard to reconcile what their employers say they value and how they act on a daily basis. That’s the takeaway from a new Values Gap Report from Resume Now. The 2025 survey of 1,000 U.S. workers reveals that while most companies promote their work values clearly, only a fraction of employees believe those values are upheld by leadership.
In other words, they talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.
The numbers are disturbing; 70% of workers say they’ve seen leaders bend the rules or play favorites—raising questions about fairness, ethics, and safety at work. Bending the rules to accommodate a favored employee is a problem (and 43% of those surveyed have witnessed favoritism in promotions, raises, or recognition.) But when bending rules becomes rampant, it becomes easier to ignore rules that protect workers, customers, and property.
In the survey, 24% percent of workers said that management protects toxic workers, and 22 % said they’ve seen workplace harassment or bullying ignored. Eighteen percent said they’d seen ethics concerns swept under the rug.
When employees don’t believe that their concerns will be taken seriously or believe that they’ll be subject to retaliation (as 11% reported), they stop speaking up, asking questions, or trying to make the right decision under ambiguous conditions. The culture of unethical behavior can spread from one or two toxic employees through the entire workforce; after all, if “everybody does it”, how wrong can it be?
Companies, like people, have a vision of themselves that embraces their highest values. We always take care of our employees – they’re our most valuable asset. We hold each other accountable to do the right thing. We prioritize the care of our patients above profit.
Then there’s the reality, when performance, profitability, or sales start to drop. Business performance is always a numbers game, and when managers or leaders think they’re falling behind in the score, it can be tempting to do what it takes to get the numbers back on track again.
That’s how we get cases like the 2023 fines the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) ordered Bank of America to pay. B of A had to repay more than $100 million to customers for systematically double-dipping on fees imposed on customers with insufficient funds in their account, withholding reward bonuses explicitly promised to credit card customers, and misappropriating sensitive personal information to open accounts without customer knowledge or authorization (a practice that had been going on since at least 2012, according to the investigation).
But I’m sure the numbers looked great on paper.
This is why I believe that the study of philosophy should be a requirement for every high school student and every college major. What is the right thing to do may vary from the legal requirement or what is not technically a violation of ethical standards. James Madison famously said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Spoiler alert: human beings are not angels. We are always tempted to act in our own best interests. But philosophy gives us a framework to think about and discuss big, hard questions. Like what is real, what it means to live a good life, and what it means to be an honest person.
The great Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “You become what you give your attention to. It’s one thing to have a list of values on a poster in the lobby. It’s another to live those values on a daily basis when no one is looking over your shoulder.
What would your employees say about how strongly your leaders uphold and defend the company’s values ?
Your Work, Your Way 