Is there an ethical role for Human Resource practitioners, today when undertaking recruitment and selection?
With an array of economic pressures and increased competition, many people are trying to achieve more by reducing resources and reducing funds. Usually a firm deal with stakeholders who are customers, suppliers, employee, employer. Due to deal the different stakeholder, business ethics is gradually becoming a concerned issue, even in human resource management. The fundamental ethical
responsibility in the field of human resources focuses on two principal obligations: the responsibilities of employees to employers and organizations, and the responsibilities of employers to employees (MA Razafiarivony, 2003). As a result, it is essential to recognize that the HR profession can play a crucial role in pressures for and against change in organizations. CIPD (2017) shows that human resources as a profession have unique advantages that can incorporate principled decisions into day-to-day business practices. It means human resources may face challenge assumptions, individual values and priorities, and exploring universal goals to bring the organizations’ values to life from each part of daily work. In considering whether or not human resource practitioners have an ethical role in the contemporary business environment, this essay is based on practical recruitment reflection to illustrate that human resource practitioners have an ethical role from the perspective of undertaking recruitment and selection. The argument is presented in three-part with the recommendation. The first part will state the human resource practitioners’ ethical role of ensuring information consistency in recruitment and selection. The second part will illustrate the equality of making interview question in recruitment and selection. The last part will focus on the importance of ethical role when human resource panel group are making the decision.
Ethics have a vital role in the recruiting process and affect employee turnover. Although there are laws to protect certain people during the hiring process and help to maintain professional ethical standards when hiring employees, HR professionals still face difficulties beyond these principles, which is information consistency in recruitment. The ethical role of Human resource practitioner ensures information consistency in job description will have an enormous impact on employee turnover. An honest job description will build a trust bridge between employer and employee in the first stage of recruitment. Evidence from SHRM (2012) shows that it is crucial for HR professionals to consistent all information throughout the recruiting process. Placing incorrect Job ads for positions will cause dissatisfaction. In considering practical recruitment, a job description contains a significant amount of information, including skill requirements, job offer, working conditions, location and the primary purpose of the job. Faced with such important information, information asymmetry could mislead candidates and cause dissatisfaction in future. Herzberg’s (1966) two-factor theory suggests that work itself lead to satisfaction. That shows the healthy relationship between real work itself and job satisfaction. A job description is the first step for potential employees to understand job information, if employees are recruited due to inaccurate information, they will be disappointed and result in the turnover. Although some arguments claim that inconsistent management rather than inconsistent information causes the major of employee turnover. Laser (1980) argues that many operations are lacking written job descriptions, have inadequately defined work roles and standard, but the lower supervision plays a significant part in turnover. Poor supervisors may be inconsistent in their behavior and lead to turnover retention. However, inconsistent management is essentially information asymmetry. A job description is both a method of information presented to candidates and a reflection of whether HR practitioners deeply know internal understanding of the company without limitation. If HR practitioners are delivered incorrect information, it will cause information error, resulting in an inaccurate job description. Marchington et al. (2016) reveal that manager behaves inconsistently when implementing HR policies, also have little respect for HR work, and they view HR professionals with disdain, which result from adverse communication and information asymmetry. That means the inconsistency communication will make human resource practitioners miss department changes, lead to information inconsistency in recruitment and selection. Therefore, in order to avoid information inconsistency result turnover, it is crucial to building corporate communication between human resource practitioners and managers. The following
recommendation probably applies to solving the ethical issue. Using procedures to enhance consistency. According to Schreiner (2017) claims that working to establish a workplace in which policies, procedures, and practices are consistent can increase employee understanding. Make sure to communicate both the “why” and “how” for creating standards and providing templates to use in day-to-day activities to eliminate confusion. In conclusion, human resource practitioners have an ethical responsibility to make sure information consistency, it is necessary to build standard procedure to enhance consistency, or it will have a direct impact on employee turnover in the future. So far this paragraph has focused on information consistency. The following section will discuss the human resource practitioners' ethical role on the equality of making interview question.
Equality is a crucial issue that affects all workplaces, no matter their size, location or occupation. Human resource practitioners have a responsibility to design interview question equally for everyone at a broad view scale. In order to be able to compare candidates after the interview process, a consistent approach should be used for each interview. All candidates should have the same opportunity to be asked identical questions. These questions should be based on job descriptions and the skills, qualities, and experiences required for the role. Evidence from Kursmark (2017) claims that the fair hiring law is designed to provide adequate protection to each candidate during the interview and selection process, all candidates should be carefully planned and interviewed to ensure equal treatment for all applicants. In considering the process of making question list in practical recruitment, even if faced with candidates from different backgrounds, it should be asked the same question related to the position, rather than arbitrarily change to ask what human resource practitioner want to know. While some voices show that whether the interview question is same or not, it will not have a strong impact on organization management, especially in Asia. Partrick (2016) points out that the concept of face (miànzi) defines all business relations in China, Chinese HR likes to use different questions to interview a person's emotional quotient during an interview to evaluate whether the candidate has "mianzi" to deal with relationship (“guanxi”) in the workplace. However, due to the changing nature of work under globalization, the economy is also continually merging, multinational Enterprise is gradually growing, the strategic integration of culture and development at the international level that involves the consistent identification, development and strategic deployment of high-performing and high-potential diplomatic employees on a global scale. The interview is an opportunity for candidates to get their first impression of the business. Therefore, faced with cultural differences, establishing a fair and unified recruitment benchmark is very necessary for potential candidates regardless of the country. As mentioned in the text, the interview questions in some countries are flexible, while the modern global society needs to recruit talents at an international equality scale. The following recommendation probably applies to solving the issue. Enhance HR understanding of recruitment laws and cultural differences in different countries. According to Schaffer Associates (2015) shows it is illegal for employers to raise issues related to the protected class in the fair employment law, such as race, gender, nationality, religion, military status, age or relationship. Therefore, it is necessary to train cultural and hiring policy courses before creating interview questions in each recruitment. In conclusion, on the environment of globalization, to pursue the long-term development of the company, human resource practitioners have an ethical responsibility to design interview question equally for everyone on an international scale. Having defined the ethical role of human resource practitioners on interview question making, now move on to discuss non- discrimination during human resource panel group decision making.
Despite the fact that equal employment opportunity legislation gradually regulates diversity management in the workplace, Ethical issues in employee selection have not been widely studied. Human resource practitioners play a crucial ethic role in anti-discrimination when deciding for selection. Lowry (2006) claims that HR practitioners play a more significate role in the selection of talent based on the company and have more responsibilities and autonomy in decision-making. Evidence from Nhung T. Nguyen (2013) points out that employee selection is an interesting area to consider when making suitable employment, and in this area, you can view the role of ethics in decision-making. It is vital importance that candidates are to be selected based on merits, applicants are to be hired based purely on qualities such as knowledge, skill, and ability in accordance to need of the organization. In considering the process of panel group decision making, one of the candidates come from different country, age. Hiring decision making relies only on relevant and job-related Information. Human resource practitioners should stand in a fair and objective perspective to make talent selection with non-discrimination on religious, culture, race, gender, sexual orientation or age. While some arguments claim that employees who share common religious beliefs or of the same nationality at work can contribute to the improvement of work efficiency. Meyer (2012) argue that in an ideal work environment, employees and employers with the same religious belief do not conflict with each other. Gerdeman (2017) points out that employer favor men not because they are prejudiced against women, but because men perform better on average at specific tasks. However, as the society progresses and pluralistic, the qualities of the talent are continually improving, employers may hire employees from different countries and religious backgrounds. Therefore, the negative impact of cultural conflicts will become lower and lower. Moreover, data from Easton (2015) shows that the number of Chinese women accounts for 51% take the high position in senior exclusive management, About 21% ladies in the approximately 550 listed companies hold important positions on the board of directors. Therefore, outstanding female talents are continually strengthening under social progress. Talents should be selected by work-related ability rather than objective biases. To address the problem of discrimination in the talent selection on the workplace, the Human resource department should design HR practices can into formal HR policy, HR-related decision-making, and the enactment of HR policies and decisions with discrimination. According to Stamarski et al., (2015) suggest that discrimination in organizations can be seen in HR practices that affect employee hiring, training, compensation, and promotion. Therefore, implementing the discrimination HR policy in the recruitment process can gradually solve this problem from the beginning. In summary, recruitment or hiring process is the vital step in selecting human resource into an organization. Human resource practitioners have an ethical role in selecting talents equally when making the decision, it will highly impact on the successful performance of the organization and avoid discrimination from the early stage. In general, due to the economic globalization, ethical has become a significant concern in the company. Ethical culture is essential to help companies shift their focus from short-term profits to long-term sustainable development, ensuring the organization can benefit from shareholders. Human resource practitioners take an essential role in dealing with ethical issues. This essay starts with three different views of recruitment and selection to evaluate there is a noble role for human resource practitioners. In the first part, human resource practitioners have an ethical responsibility to ensure information consistency, it is necessary to build standard procedure to enhance consistency, or it will have a direct impact on employee turnover in the future. So far this paragraph has focused on information consistency. In the second part, human resource practitioners have an ethical responsibility to design interview questions equally for everyone on an international scale. Having defined the ethical role of human resource practitioners on interview question making, now move on to discuss non- discrimination during human resource panel group decision making. In the third part, human resource practitioners have an ethical role in selecting talents equally when making a decision;; it will advance the performance of the organization and avoid discrimination from the early stage. These three views demonstrate dialectically that human resources should have ethical responsibilities when undertaking recruitment and selection. If human resource practitioners implement ethical role in each stage of recruitment effectively, then it will affect the exceptional performance of the organization in the long-term development.
Reference List:
CIPD (2017). Business ethics and the role of HR. London, The CIPD.
Easton, N (2015). Why are so many women in china rich?. Fortune. Last updated: 15 January 2015. Available at: http://fortune.com/2015/01/15/the-number-of-chinese-women-in-top-corporate-jobs-is-exploding/ [Accessed 21 March 2018].
Gerdeman, D (2017). Why Employers Favor Men? Harvard Business School. Last updated: 11 September 2017. Available at: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-employers-favor-men [Accessed 21 March 2018].
Herzberg, F. I. (1966). Work and the nature of man. Oxford, England: World.
Kursmark, L (2017). Keep the Interview Legal. [Online]. Hiring Monster. Available at:https://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring advice/interviewing-candidates/legal-job-interview-questions.aspx [Accessed 21 March 2018].
Lowry, D. (2006). HR managers as ethical decision-‐makers: Mapping the terrain. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 44(2), 171-183.
Laser, S. A. (1980). Dealing with the problem of employee turnover. Human resource management, 19(4), 17-21. Meyer E, B (2012). Religion at Work: The Perils of Requiring “Christian Only” Hires.
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Nguyen, T. N. (2013). Ethics in Employee Selection: What You Want to Know but are Afraid to Ask. Journal of Business & Financial Affairs. [Online]. Available at: https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/ethics-in-employee-selection-what-you-want-to-know-but-are-afraid-to-ask-2167-0234.1000e124.pdf [Accessed 21 March 2018].
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SHRM (2012). Recruiting: Ethics: What are some common ethical dilemmas that HR professionals face during the recruiting process? How should we handle them? [Online]. Society for Human Resource Management. Available at: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/ethicaldilemmashrprofessionalsface.aspx [Accessed 21 March 2018].
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Appendix:
Stage of the
recruitment process
you undertook
for the practical
Ethical considerations
OCB Theory link
Job Description
Information consistency: The
job role, vacancy
and job offer
should be based
upon the recruitment
policy, ensure the
consistency of information
and reality.
Lecture
4 –RTM strategies
(on the part
of define requirments in
recruitment and selection)
Interview Question
Equality: Interview
questions must be
the same for
all
candidates.
Interview questions
should be allocated
equally for each
panel member.
Lecture
9 on week
ten (Ethics and
OCB) e.g. Bias
within interview
Panel Group
Decision
Making
Fairness:
When making
an employment decision,
it should be
based on relevant
job-related information and
must not discriminate race,
religious or political
opinions, gender, age,
or sexual orientation.
Lecture
5 - Managing
RTM
Lecture 9
on week 10
(Ethics and OCB) - HR and
Business
Context
(Protected characteristics )
Marking Criteria
Objective:
The scoring
criteria should be
combined with the
issues and competence,
be objective and
fair without bias.
Lecture 9
on week 10
(Ethics and OCB)
– .e.g. Bias
within interview (
Primacy bias, Affinity
bias, Stereotyping,
Halo/Horns bias,
Contrast bias, Quota
bias)
SOWT and
STEEPLE
Analysis
Owing to
the globalization and
the changing nature
of work, the external change
has a great
affect on organization business
strategies.
Lecture 3
: OCB in
Context and OCB) - HR and
Business Lecture 9
on week 10
(Ethics
Context
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