The word ethics comes from the Greek word “ethikos”, which relating to one’s character. “Ethikos” itself is derived from another Greek word “Ethos” which means “character disposition”. Ethics is the branch of philosophy that examines right and wrong moral behaviour, moral concepts like justice, virtue and duty and moral language. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, ethics is the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation (merriam-webster.com, 2018).
Ethics in HRM
Human capital being the most important asset of the company, has to be taken well care of. Ethics in Human Resource Management is simply treating the workforce in a right manner. If the employees are treated with decency, it helps to keep them aligned with the overall goals of the organization. Ethics in HRM deals with supporting and righteous behaviour of the employers towards their employees to maintain equality and equity justice.
HR professionals have a special responsibility for guarding and promoting core values in the organization on how people should be managed and treated. They need to take action to achieve fair dealing. (Armstrong, 2014)
Ethical Guidelines for HRM
The guidelines relate to how employees are treated generally in terms of Human Resource activities of organizational development, performance appraisals, reward management, recruitment and selection and employee relations. These guidelines also describes the practices concerning workplace environment, health and safety requirements, equal opportunities, securities and redundancy.
Organizational Development
Organizational development is a planned effort for a work group and/or the organization managed by leadership and supported by employees, to increase organization effectiveness through planned change in process and systems. Any organization should make explicit any values or assumptions used in such OD programmes. Likewise, maximum involvement of all the concerned individuals would ensure that they understand the process and the likely benefit to them as a result of such programmes (Armstrong, 2014).
Recruitment and Selection
Recruiting the right candidates is essential for an organization as they aid in achieving the goals of the organization. Along with that, the process of recruitment and selection requires lots of monetary and humanitarian resources. But this doesn’t give the recruiters freedom to mistreat any of the candidates. They should be treated regardless of their gender, colour, religion, origin and ethnicity. All the jobseekers should be treated equally.
Additionally, jobseekers should be given the opportunity to clear out their queries, present their case and be informed on decisions relating their applications (Armstrong, 2014).
For example, in banks of Nepal, there is a provision of tracking the application status. Similarly, there are organizations that flow the information to the job applicants regardless of their selection in contrast to those organizations that provide no information on the selection/rejection.
Learning and Development
Learning is a continuous process. One should continuously update themselves to keep in track in this ever growing industry. An organization should recognize any such need and provide their employees with relevant training and development workshops and courses. Provision of such opportunities not only increases skills required to perform well in the jobs but also develop their potential. However, individuals should have the liberty to choose what they want to learn for programmes beyond their basic learning. An organization should also keep in mind that the objective of training is to develop the individual professionally and is not merely a means to impose the organizational values.
However, most organizations in Nepal do not have defined training and development policies. Further, training is the first victim of budget cuts. It is rather treated as a cost than an investment. In average, only a menial 0.5% of total budget is used as training budgets (Maharjan, 2013).
Contrary to that, organizations like Teach for Nepal, organizes training programmes every 3 months for professional and intellectual development of their employees.
Performance Management
In employee opinion surveys, tolerance for underperformance frequently emerges as a major source of dissatisfaction among employees. However, in order to be able to identify under-performance, organisations need to clarify for both managers and staff what constitutes an acceptable level of performance. In addition, performance reviews should focus far more on performance planning and improvement than on retrospective appraisal (O’riordan, 2017).
The decisions regarding performance management should be transparent to the employees. People affected by such decisions should have the opportunity to scrutinize the basis upon which decisions were made (Armstrong, 2014).
Reward Management
It is undeniable that reward system is necessary to keep the employees motivated and enthusiastic towards the target achievement. However, reward system should not be ethical and should not be a reason for undesirable behaviour. The reward system should be fair and transparent to everybody. It should be distributed according to their contribution (Armstrong, 2014). Co-operatives in Nepal have a provision of allocating some portion of the profit for their employees.
Ethical Dilemmas
A good way to think about ethics in HR is to consider some contemporary real-life dilemmas faced by HR specialists. HR specialists face dilemmas all the time. (Carter, 2015)
Some of the questions that HR professionals should ask themselves in such dilemmas would be:
Are there any ethical problems here?
What is the full range of possible solutions available?
Which solution would be chosen and why?
Would one behave differently if you knew for certain no one would ever find out?
References
Armstrong, M. (2014). Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. New York: Kogan Page Limited.
Carter, A. (2015). Ethical Dilemmas in HR practices. 4-6.
Maharjan, M. P. (2013). Human Resource Management Practices in Nepal: An Empirical Study on Foreign and Nepali Firms , 17.
O’riordan, J. (2017). The Practice of Human Resource Management. 18.
Definition of Ethics
The word ethics comes from the Greek word “ethikos”, which relating to one’s character. “Ethikos” itself is derived from another Greek word “Ethos” which means “character disposition”. Ethics is the branch of philosophy that examines right and wrong moral behaviour, moral concepts like justice, virtue and duty and moral language. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, ethics is the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation (merriam-webster.com, 2018).
Ethics in HRM
Human capital being the most important asset of the company, has to be taken well care of. Ethics in Human Resource Management is simply treating the workforce in a right manner. If the employees are treated with decency, it helps to keep them aligned with the overall goals of the organization. Ethics in HRM deals with supporting and righteous behaviour of the employers towards their employees to maintain equality and equity justice.
HR professionals have a special responsibility for guarding and promoting core values in the organization on how people should be managed and treated. They need to take action to achieve fair dealing. (Armstrong, 2014)
Ethical Guidelines for HRM
The guidelines relate to how employees are treated generally in terms of Human Resource activities of organizational development, performance appraisals, reward management, recruitment and selection and employee relations. These guidelines also describes the practices concerning workplace environment, health and safety requirements, equal opportunities, securities and redundancy.
Organizational Development
Organizational development is a planned effort for a work group and/or the organization managed by leadership and supported by employees, to increase organization effectiveness through planned change in process and systems. Any organization should make explicit any values or assumptions used in such OD programmes. Likewise, maximum involvement of all the concerned individuals would ensure that they understand the process and the likely benefit to them as a result of such programmes (Armstrong, 2014).
Recruitment and Selection
Recruiting the right candidates is essential for an organization as they aid in achieving the goals of the organization. Along with that, the process of recruitment and selection requires lots of monetary and humanitarian resources. But this doesn’t give the recruiters freedom to mistreat any of the candidates. They should be treated regardless of their gender, colour, religion, origin and ethnicity. All the jobseekers should be treated equally.
Additionally, jobseekers should be given the opportunity to clear out their queries, present their case and be informed on decisions relating their applications (Armstrong, 2014).
For example, in banks of Nepal, there is a provision of tracking the application status. Similarly, there are organizations that flow the information to the job applicants regardless of their selection in contrast to those organizations that provide no information on the selection/rejection.
Learning and Development
Learning is a continuous process. One should continuously update themselves to keep in track in this ever growing industry. An organization should recognize any such need and provide their employees with relevant training and development workshops and courses. Provision of such opportunities not only increases skills required to perform well in the jobs but also develop their potential. However, individuals should have the liberty to choose what they want to learn for programmes beyond their basic learning. An organization should also keep in mind that the objective of training is to develop the individual professionally and is not merely a means to impose the organizational values.
However, most organizations in Nepal do not have defined training and development policies. Further, training is the first victim of budget cuts. It is rather treated as a cost than an investment. In average, only a menial 0.5% of total budget is used as training budgets (Maharjan, 2013).
Contrary to that, organizations like Teach for Nepal, organizes training programmes every 3 months for professional and intellectual development of their employees.
Performance Management
In employee opinion surveys, tolerance for underperformance frequently emerges as a major source of dissatisfaction among employees. However, in order to be able to identify under-performance, organisations need to clarify for both managers and staff what constitutes an acceptable level of performance. In addition, performance reviews should focus far more on performance planning and improvement than on retrospective appraisal (O’riordan, 2017).
The decisions regarding performance management should be transparent to the employees. People affected by such decisions should have the opportunity to scrutinize the basis upon which decisions were made (Armstrong, 2014).
Reward Management
It is undeniable that reward system is necessary to keep the employees motivated and enthusiastic towards the target achievement. However, reward system should not be ethical and should not be a reason for undesirable behaviour. The reward system should be fair and transparent to everybody. It should be distributed according to their contribution (Armstrong, 2014). Co-operatives in Nepal have a provision of allocating some portion of the profit for their employees.
Ethical Dilemmas
A good way to think about ethics in HR is to consider some contemporary real-life dilemmas faced by HR specialists. HR specialists face dilemmas all the time. (Carter, 2015)
Some of the questions that HR professionals should ask themselves in such dilemmas would be:
References
Armstrong, M. (2014). Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. New York: Kogan Page Limited.
Carter, A. (2015). Ethical Dilemmas in HR practices. 4-6.
Maharjan, M. P. (2013). Human Resource Management Practices in Nepal: An Empirical Study on Foreign and Nepali Firms , 17.
O’riordan, J. (2017). The Practice of Human Resource Management. 18.
merriam-webster.com . (2018). Retrieved from merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ethic