ETHICS AND HRM POLICIES

Ethics and HRM Policies

Ethics and HRM Policies

Introduction

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the most multifaceted, vibrant, and complicated matters that corporate leaders face these days. Several global corporations have become so enormous that they have surpassed many countries as entities with the resources and power essential to definitely affect global change. All of this brings us to a central question, why should these giant corporations, or any company, for that matter, whose primary reason for existence is to take advantage of profitability for their stockholders, be related with becoming good global citizens? The response is simply, that besides being the correct way to do, it is moral business.

Aim

The aim of this paper is to discusses strategic issues in preparing HR policies and plans especially in the field of Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Values and Sustainability. For this purpose, three topics have been selected from Human Resource Management, including Recruitment and selection, Training & Development and Employee relations .

Scope

Many organizations, in their efforts to address the national and global challenges of unethical behavior, are relying more and more on their HR department. As a result, HR professionals are finding that they are increasingly involved in, and must be especially sensitive to, ethical issues because of the key role HR professionals play in the development of human resources or people policies and programs. Thus, policies and programs that often make a major difference in the extent to which employees exhibit ethical or unethical behavior and in the ethical climate or culture developed and maintained in their organizations has become an important responsibility for HR departments. (Woodall, 2006)

With increased responsibility in the area of ethics, HR professionals are confronted with a number of issues and challenges. To effectively perform their role as intermediaries between the employee and the organization in the ethics arena, HR professionals must recognize that the ethical challenges they will encounter are often the complex function of the industry (public and private), the regulatory environment, and the cultural environment specific to each organization. A critical assessment of some of the more important ethical issues and challenges (and some of the responses to date) confronting HR in its mission to align specific HR programs with the overall strategic goals of the organization is provided below. (Aragon, 2001)

Being strategic, means to coordinate tasks and HR initiatives with organisational objectives and strategy. The most important task of HR is to contribute to the organisation and its goals by increasing staff productivity. Role assigned to the traditional HR-department includes the pursuit of organisational objectives and operational issues. The strategic role requires that HR is proactive and focused on the future, contributing to the formation of business strategy of the organisation and the creation of plans and programs for workforce development in line with this strategy. (Armstrong, 2009)

Definitions reinforce the notion that HRM practices create valuable resources within the firm that are capable of producing competitive advantage through people. Indeed, more than two decades of research has ...