Ethics in Human Resource Management


Of all the organizational issues or problems, ethical issues are the most difficult ones to handle or deal with. Issues arise in employment, remuneration, and benefits, industrial relations and health and safety.



Cash and Compensation Plans

There are ethical issues pertaining to the salaries, executive perquisites, and the annual incentive plans, etc. The HR manager is often under pressure to raise the band of base salaries. There is increased pressure upon the HR function to pay out more incentives to the top management and the justification for the same is put as the need to retain the latter. Further ethical issues crop in HR when long term compensation and incentive plans are designed in consultation with the CEO or an external consultant. While deciding upon the payout there is pressure on favoring the interests of the top management in comparison to that of other employees and stakeholders.

Race, gender and Disability

In many organizations, until recently the employees were differentiated on the basis of their race, gender, origin, and disability. Not anymore ever since the evolution of laws and a regulatory framework that has standardized employee behaviors towards each other. In good organizations the only differentiating factor is performance! In addition, the power of filing litigation has made put organizations on the back foot. Managers are trained for aligning behavior and avoiding discriminatory practices.

Employment Issues

Human resource practitioners face bigger dilemmas in employee hiring. One dilemma stems from the pressure of hiring someone who has been recommended by a friend, someone from your family or a top executive.

Yet another dilemma arises when you have already hired someone and he/she is later found to have presented fake documents. Two cases may arise and both are critical. In the first case, the person has been trained and the position is critical. In the second case, the person has been highly appreciated for his work during his short stint or he/she has a unique blend of skills with the right kind of attitude. Both the situations are sufficiently dilemmatic to leave even a seasoned HR campaigner in a fix.

Privacy Issues

Any person working with any organization is an individual and has a personal side to his existence which he demands should be respected and not intruded. The employee wants the organization to protect his/her personal life. This personal life may encompass things like his religious, political and social beliefs, etc. However certain situations may arise that mandate snooping behaviors on the part of the employer. For example, mail scanning is one of the activities used to track the activities of an employee who is believed to be engaged in activities that are not in the larger benefit of the organization.

Similarly, there are ethical issues in hr that pertain to health and safety, restructuring and layoffs and employee responsibilities. There is still a debate going on whether such activities are ethically permitted or not. Layoffs, for example, are no more considered as unethical as they were thought of in the past.

Reference:

Prachi Juneja. (n.d) Ethics in Human Resource Management. [Online] Available from: https://www.managementstudyguide.com/ethics-in-sales-marketing.htm. [Accessed 23rd February 2020].

Comments

  1. chamilaFebruary 24, 2020 at 2:09 AM

    As you said Race, gender, reference related issues matter in considering ethical factors of the institution.

    ReplyDelete
  2. NalakaFebruary 24, 2020 at 5:55 AM

    How to deal with ethical issues?

    ReplyDelete
  3. shelton wijesundaraFebruary 24, 2020 at 5:56 AM

    Indeed i agree, Of all the organizational issues or problems, ethical issues are the most difficult ones to handle or deal with because of their social integrity.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nanda TFebruary 24, 2020 at 6:32 AM

    Interesting article to learn more

    ReplyDelete

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