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.
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