Unscrupulous companies laugh at staunch ethical practice and the role of people professionals in implementation and oversight. I know you’ve a tempting itch to hop on the gravy train, but please don’t.
Ethical HRM practice is built on fairness, transparency, and respect for an individual’s freedom. It’s founded on compliance with laws, conventions, and strict regulations. Upholding these business ethics eventually pays off, as we’ll witness in this article.
Handle Every Stakeholder Ethically
Every organization connects three stakeholders to realize a profit, namely; clients, employees, and business partners / colleagues.
Ethical practice dictates that colleagues, customers, and vendors earn equal respect. A company, for example, may choose to exclusively work with suppliers who source materials responsibly as an ethical threshold. Let’s look at each of them separately.
Clients Are at The Heart of Every Business
Always foster an ethical client relationship. These people are the reason businesses exist, remember?
Start with offering exceptional customer service. You can also deal in approved products or services only, and you’ll sure make the clients feel honored and appreciated.
Most competitors talk about fairness, trust, and transparency in public but shortchange the customer. In order to rise above the rest, people professionals should invest in ethical conduct over profits. With these principal principles, a client will come back for more.
- Charge a fee that’s commensurate with the quality of your product and the existing market rate.
- Maintain client confidentiality and trust. Adhere to data protection and relevant privacy laws.
- Always provide transparent and honest advice and let clients make an informed decision, even if it’ll cost you a sale.
Treat Employees As Valuable Assets
Ethical treatment extended to employees is a self-reward to the business.
For one, it’s the duty of professional HR managers to ensure an inclusive, tolerant, and safe workplace environment.
Many governments and regulatory authorities have set minimum wage limits. HR managers must see to it everyone draws a fair wage for their labor. Adding bonuses, benefits, and welfare schemes is a welcome relief.
In this era of remote and hybrid work schedules, allowing flexible working hours gives the team much-needed work-life balance.
Support your employees with professional development opportunities and urge them to grow in their careers.
How Should You Relate With Business Colleagues and Partners?
Use the 3 ground rules I’ve given below. It’ll ease how you relate with vendors and other business partners, making them naturally align with your ethical standards.
Rule #1: Always give your partners fair collaboration and a respectful partnership.
Rule #2: Timely, clear, and transparent communication puts businesses out of ethical glitches.
Rule #3: Always uphold ethical sourcing and sales practices.
You’ll not only earn respect from your colleagues, but also contribute to a sustainable professional ecosystem as a role model.
Integrating Ethical Practice in Professional Roles
Ethical procedures are any business’ daily nourishment. Personnel managers who keep to the menu below successfully set the tone for their peer leaders and other employees.
Building Trust and Credibility in Relationships
Lead by example. Set a good model as an organizational ethic steward through:
- Establishing and maintaining a consistent culture of ethics and accountability.
- Giving meaningful feedback and timely, concise communication on ethical topics.
- Regular assessments and celebrating ethical behavior.
- Addressing bias and combating workplace discrimination.
- Empowering the workforce and your colleagues for an inclusive, ethical, decision-making process.
- Fostering authentic leadership styles in all professional roles.
Great HRMs Establish an Ethical Culture in Their Environments
If a business is to create a culture of ethics, they must equip all stakeholders with the necessary tools. These gadgets include supervision, adequate and appropriate training, role-modeling, and consultation.
Continuous Training for Ethical Professionalism
The focus here is on skill building and improving problem-solving potential.
Organizations can do this by offering easy-to-read reference resources, workshops, andpeer / mentor consultations.
Modeling Desired Behavior
According to Al Bandura (et al), workers model their behavior after their leaders. Every move should start with the organization’s leadership. If the business aspires to the highest standards of ethics, high-profile executives must demonstrate it to everyone else.
Clarity of Expectations for Professional Behavior
Your company has both spoken and implied guidelines on how its employees act. They touch on attire, behavior toward colleagues, attitudes in front of customers, or how you act in public.
Setting clear behavioral expectations for everyone in the organization is a step towards an ethical organizational culture.
Celebrating Ethical Practices
Be intentional about the behaviors you want to reinforce. A leaderboard is mostly enough, but a seasonal certificate awarded to an exemplary employee is even better.
I encourage leaders to share life experiences and narrate instances of keynote ethical decisions to inspire employees.
The Role of People Professionals in Sustainable Ethical Standards
People professionals are the custodians of ethics in any institution. They maintain company conventions by:
- Providing a model leadership and issuing ethical judgment.
- Ensuring institutional mannerisms are in compliance with professional codes of conduct and national law.
- Continuously training and attending skill development forums whose themes are ethical practices.
- Incorporating ethical standards in performance assessments and appraisals.
- Addressing (and also learning from) ethical lapses in the company.
- Utilizing technology ethically and in the most professional settings.
Current Trends in Ethical Professional Practices
The present-day personnel executive faces an easier time compared to their 1990s pre-AI counterparts. They must, however, remain vigilant to mitigate the ethical implications of technological dependency.
Make sure you pin this on the office wall as a constant reminder. It’s the 5 cardinal rules of ethical practice.
Privacy and Security in Professional Consultations
Create a safe port of call where employees can ask intimate questions, seek confidential guidance, and share (anonymously) ethical concerns in the company. Establish a violation reporting channel, more so for lower-ranking employees.
An example is keeping a dedicated and anonymous hotline, a drop-box, or appointing a designated ethics officer.
Addressing Bias in Professional Decision-Making
If you provide workers with ethical decision-making frameworks and tools, they’ll most likely consider the outcomes of unethical behavior.
Engage in critical reflection and be objective while making career decisions. Weigh alternative courses of action, and always seek a deeper understanding of circumstances before coming to a conclusive decision.
Transparency in Professional Advice and Recommendations
For starters, align HR practices such as recruitment, performance appraisals, and disciplinary decisions with moral principles. Be seen to create consistency and actively reinforce the company’s commitment to ethics.
Ethical Use of Technology
Technology has no emotion, and the only ethics it feeds on are what it’s fed by humans. We’re starting to see what technological dependency and its ethical implications can do to a business, and it isn’t all glamor.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Today more than ever, CSR is more of an ethical requirement than the charity it used to be. Businesses are hanging posters declaring their transparency and shouting any eco-sustainability effort. Top dollar changes hands for ads glorifying Company XYZ for community engagement and DEI achievement.
People professionals play a central role in ensuring companies don’t miss on any CSR trends.
Important Takeaway
Placing priority in ethics yields enhanced company reputation, successful engagements, and long-term business impacts. People professionals benefit from the positive ripple effect, contributing to the overall success of their careers.
Ethical practice is a responsibility that shapes interactions, relationships, and the broader professional landscape. Integrating these principles not only fosters individual success but also fosters a culture that values ethical behavior.