Question
Epley and Kumar (2019) identified four pillars of an ethical culture as explicit values, thoughts during judgment, incentives, and cultural norms. Critically evaluate how ethical is the culture of your organisation based on these four pillars.
What TWO distinct recommendations would you make to your Senior Leadership Team in order to enhance the ethical culture of your organisation?
Solution
As evidenced in Marchington et al. (2020), a primary approach for organisations is to ensure an aligned people practice professionals roles and integrating different people practice components for promoting achievement of increased standards of business ethics. Additionally, considering CIPD HR Professional Map 2020, it develops a benchmark of people practice professionals in regard to ethical practice being their core behaviour. In line with CIPD (2021c) findings, this include developing a holistic trust by active role-modelling of ethical behaviours and using different principles and values for consistency in making decisions. There exist different strategies which can be used by people practice professionals and L&D functions with a direct and significant contribution for achieving immense standards in business ethics area. For explaining this phenomenon, they could be integrated in the Employee Lifecycle Phases including;
Attraction
The relevance of this is informed by the assumption that HR and L&D include the initial level of interaction of employees with their organisation. Therefore, Green and Russell (2021) argued that the HR policies development and corporate government growth in this level entail creation of a good culture for entities to implement their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This similarly entail ethical commitment for being appropriately positioned in answering interviewees challenges. For example, for MNGHA organisation where I am currently placed, they implement employees handbooks which detail ethical issues, questions posed for being posed and potential dilemmas in attraction. Prior transitioning to subsequent recruitment phase, employees are supposed to sign their handbook which highlight on accepting all ethical needs. Failure of following the ethical requirements lead to employees automatic disqualification.
Recruitment
In recruitment, a major strategy which can be adopted is the Green HRM strategy. This is identified in Islam et al. (2020) as inclusive of a process which ensure organisations values, behaviours, expectations are part of the recruitment policy by an organisation. This harness the ethics and standards strategy particularly with L&D teams being involved in developing relevant policies essential for promoting awareness of existing global environment issues and part of resourcing practice. This could harness application of newsletters and briefs noting on the entity practices (Belinda et al., 2018). To achieve a successful performance management, the Institute of Business Ethics (2014) provide a good guidance for promoting a holistic performance management process. This is with people practice professionals required to ensure that they are putting in place appropriate values and expectations in regard to their behaviours and values expected in assessing overall performance.
Onboarding
In onboarding process, embracing ethics ensure performance management employees experiences for improving retention and assisting establishment of an increase in performance and workforce connectivity. Further, this include setting increased predictivity and connectedness of the employees. This is while noting on the level of performance of employees contrary to what they expect. For supporting this, Shafique et al. (2018) report noted that due to people practice professionals failure in successfully embracing ethics in onboarding process, 80% of them cover their different mistakes with 60% taking credit of the rest. For example, in international companies which include Starbucks, Facebook and FIFA lead to a lot of issues being noted in their ethical dilemmas. Therefore, the people practice roles need to make sure they nurture appropriate ethical organisation culture to ensure fairness of an entity practice, embracing integrity and justice. According to Csillag (2019) identify this as a consequence of lowered possibility of emerging ethical conflicts and dealing with them in detail after they emerge.
Development
In the report by Marchington et al. (2020), a major approach by people practice professionals is ethically guiding organisations to pursue their functions holistically. This is in line with CIPD (2021e) identifying existence of codes of professional conduct adopted by employees defined with need to uphold and maintain appropriate standards and behaviours. Further, this offer a guidance of different ethical standards and integrity level, representation of professional-based practice and stewards. This is in line with CIPD (2021f) survey report which noted that majority of professionals do not have the ability of compromising their professional-based principles in job roles. For example, for MNGHA operations, HR function have a mandate for initiating relevant standards aiding successful ethical practice in organisation practice. In the past best practice, the organisation L&D function in the entity and inclusive of an advocate of inclusion of practices promoting credible and organisation value. Based on my personal experience, in different cases, ethical issues are emerging in current and past entities leading to possibility of best and most skilled employees who leave an organisation. This is evident in entities giving their staff with courage of challenging unethical practices. The relevance of people practice professionals take the full blame for unethical practices and decisions making.
Retention For the people practice professionals functions and also L&D, they pursue critical thinking approach. This is supported by Mulvie (2021)…….
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