How ethical considerations affect human resource management?

Answer 1

A large area of human relations management is concerned with various ethical issues, both on the part of upper-level management in its business decisions and lower-level management in the treatment of individual employees. Philosophic decisions on the relocation of areas of production or entire plants can have a major impact on the company but also can be devastating to individual employees and the communities in which they live. Management decisions must be made honestly taking all factors into consideration, including social responsibility as well as stockholder concerns. On a lower level, supervisors must treat those they supervise fairly in matters of promotion and compensation.

In human resource management, generally ethics is treated as being relative, i.e. whether an action is moral or immoral, or right or wrong depends on the prevailing view of the particular individual human resource manager. Such view is certainly molded by the culture. A human resource manager may well consider decisions to be ethical if all consequences are considered in the light of business needs balanced with consequences to all concerned, including the employees.

In making decisions the human resource manager should consider alternative solutions to the needs of the business as well as the effects the decisions will have on the lives of the employees. Frequently a human resource manager will be given instructions from higher level management to take action which will be oppressive to the employees and the manager must either present argument to higher management for alternate solutions which will have less impact on the employee morale or determine the best method for implementing the instructions which have been given.

Business ought to conform to the best ethical practices, not just for a religious reason or for principles of human dignity, but also to keep from violating Federal Laws. Though the laws may not be known, they would not be violated if the business were operated by ethical principles. Experience has shown that in the long term business profits will be greater for businesses that practice good ethical behavior than those which do not.

One of the most challenging aspects of human relations management is to maintain objectivity in hiring, promotion, and compensation. For example, a male supervisor must refrain from promoting or increasing the compensation of an attractive woman who pays undue attention to him, but who consistently is late in arriving for her job and whose work is second rate.

It is both reasonable and logical to assume that compensation should track performance and that ethical considerations would not be a factor in performance analysis. Sometimes it is difficult for a supervisor, who rationally accepts this premise, to follow it, and sometimes it is difficult to persuade an employee of its rationality. The supervisor who either recommends or has the authority to adjust compensation may be persuaded by other factors to downplay the performance of an employee's production. Likewise, an employee who will be negatively impacted by measuring employee output may have a hard time understanding why lower production should produce lower income when the hours spent on the job are the same as others with higher production and higher income.

Employee evaluation generally will consist of multiple factors including such items as punctuality, attitude, appropriate apparel, personal grooming (particularly in a position where clients are involved), language, neatness, congeniality, and performance output, among other things. The evaluation process will be considerably different between service and production personnel and between general employees and professional employees. The ethical challenge arises when, after all the factors have been considered, the decision is made on a factor or factors other than those by which all the employees have been evaluated.