Week 13 Ethics

Human Resource Management
Lecture Week 13
Chapter 14
Building Positive
Employee
Relations
Learning Objectives (1 of 2)
14-1. Ethical Work practices and related issues
14-2. Managing Employee Relations
Ethical Choices
• People face ethical choices every day.
– Is it wrong to use a company credit card for personal purchases?
– Is a $50 gift to a client unacceptable?
– Managers who promise raises but don’t deliver
– Salespeople who say the order’s coming when it’s not.
– Pfizer Inc. influenced Pfizer to suppress unfavorable studies

about one of its drugs.
Ethical Dilemmas and HR
• For example, your team shouldn’t start work on the new machine until all the
safety measures are checked, but your boss is pressing you to get started:
What should you do?
• You dismissed an employee in an angry moment, and now she has applied
for unemployment insurance, saying you never warned her. Should you
create and place in her file a note of warning, to protect your employer from
paying higher unemployment taxes?
Serious Ethical Work Issues
• Most serious ethical issues related to HR involve:
– Workplace safety,
– Employee records security,
– Employee theft,
– Affirmative action, and
– Employee privacy rights
What is Employee Relations?
• Employee Relations – is the activity that involves
establishing and maintaining the positive employee-
employer relationships that contribute to
• satisfactory productivity,
• motivation, morale, and discipline, and
• to maintaining a positive, productive, and cohesive
work environment.
Employee Relations Programs For Building and
Maintaining Positive Employee Relations
Fair Treatment
• Procedural Justice (refers to the fairness and
justice of the decision’s result for instance, did I
get an equitable pay raise?)
• Distributive Justice (refers to the fairness of the

process (for instance, is the process my company
uses to allocate merit raises fair?).
What Shapes Ethical Behavior at Work?
• Three factors combine to determine the ethical
choices we make
– The person (bad apples)
– Situations (bad cases)
– Company Environment (bad barrels)
 Organizational Culture
• For example: Companies that promote an everyone for himself
atmosphere are more likely to suffer unethical decisions.
• A strong ethical culture that clearly communicates the range of
acceptable and unacceptable behavior [such as through leader role
models] is associated with fewer unethical decisions in the
workplace.
What Shapes Ethical Behavior at
Work?
• Who are the bad apples ?... Individual Characteristics
• Most principled people apply ethical principles.
• Most base their judgement about what is right on the expectations of

their colleagues people with whom they interact.
• Lowest level ethical choices made on obeying what they are told and
on avoiding punishment.
• Traits: Age
What Shapes Ethical Behavior at Work?
• Company Pressure:
– Meeting schedule pressures
– Meeting overly aggressive financial or business
objectives
• Supervisor Pressure: How supervisors knowingly (or

unknowingly) lead subordinates astray ethically include:
– Tell staffers to do whatever is necessary to achieve results.
– Overload top performers to ensure that work gets done.
– Take credit for others work or shift blame.
– Be dishonest
Ethics Code and Policies
• No IBM employee, or any member of his or her immediate family,
can accept gratuities or gifts of money from a supplier, customer,
or anyone in a business relationship. Nor can they accept a gift
or consideration that could be perceived as having been offered
because of the business relationship. Perceived simply means
this: If you read about it in the local newspaper, would you
wonder whether the gift just might have had something to do with
a business relationship? No IBM employee can give money or a
gift of significant value to a customer, supplier, or anyone if it
could reasonably be viewed as being done to gain a business
advantage.
• Johnson & Johnson ethics code says, We believe our first
responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers
and fathers and all others who use our products and services.
How Managers Can Create More
Ethical Environments
• Cultivating the right norms, leadership, reward
system and culture.
• “Walk The Talk”

• They can’t expect to say, don’t fudge the financials and then do so
themselves.
• Moral Compasses
How Human Resource Managers Can
Create More Ethical Environments
• Hire Right  (The simplest way to tune up an organization,

ethically speaking, is to hire more ethical people); Honesty
checks; background checks etc.
• Use Ethics Training (Ethics training involves showing

employees how to recognize ethical dilemmas, how to use
codes of conduct to resolve problems, and how to use
personnel activities like disciplinary practices in ethical ways)
How Human Resource Managers Can Create
More Ethical Environments
• Use Rewards and Discipline
• Performance Appraisal (To send the signal that fairness is

paramount, performance standards should be clear)
• Institute Ethical Polices and Codes

Monitoring Acknowledgment
Figure 14-3 Sample E-Mail Monitoring Acknowledgment
Statement
Improving Employee Relations
Through Communication Programs
• Organizational Climate Surveys
Using Employee Involvement Teams
• Suggestion Teams
• Problem-Solving Teams
• Quality Circle
• Suggestion Systems
Managing Employee Discipline
Bullying and Victimization
1. Imbalance of Power
2. Intent to Cause Harm
3. Repetition
• Verbal
• Social
• Physical
• Cyberbullying
• Employers must have systems in place that the company

can identify unfair treatment and deal with it expeditiously.
The Three Pillars of Fair Discipline System
1. Rules & Regulations
2. Progressive Penalties
3. Appeal Process
Discipline Without Punishment
• Issue an oral reminder.
• Issue a formal written reminder and place in the
personnel file.
• Give “decision-making leave”.
• Dismissal if behavior repeats.
Managing Dismissals
• Dismissal or termination is the most drastic disciplinary step the
employer can take.
• There should be sufficient cause for the dismissal, and (as a rule)
you should only dismiss someone after taking reasonable steps to
rehabilitate the employee.
• The best way to handle a dismissal is to avoid it in the first place.
• Many dismissals start with bad hiring decisions

Grounds for Dismissal
• There are four main grounds for dismissal.
• Unsatisfactory performance means persistent failure to perform

assigned duties or to meet prescribed job standards.
– Specific grounds include excessive absenteeism, tardiness, a
persistent failure to meet normal job requirements, or an
adverse attitude toward the company, supervisor, or fellow
employees.
• Misconduct is deliberate and willful violation of the employer’s

rules and may include stealing, rowdy behavior, and
insubordination
Grounds for Dismissal
• Lack of qualifications for the job is an employee’s inability to do
the assigned work although he or she is diligent.
• Changed requirements of the job refers to an employee s

inability to do the job after the employer changed the nature of the
job.
Fairness in Dismissal
• Dismissals are never pleasant.
• There are three things to do to make them fair.
– First, individuals who said that they were given full
explanations of why and how termination decisions were
made were more likely to perceive their layoff as fair . . . and
indicate that they did not wish to take the past employer to
court.
– Second, institute a formal multistep procedure (including
warning) and a neutral appeal process.
– Third, who actually does the dismissing is important.
Employees in one study whose managers informed them of
an impending layoff viewed the dismissal procedure as much
fairer than did those told by, say, a human resource manager.
Security Measures for Dismissal
• A checklist to ensure employee return all keys and other related
stuff.
– Disable internet –related passwords
– Company laptops and other issued equipment.
Exit Interviews

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Human Resource Management

– Is it wrong to use a company credit card for personal purchases?

– Is a $50 gift to a client unacceptable?

– Managers who promise raises but don’t deliver

– Salespeople who say the order’s coming when it’s not.

– Pfizer Inc. influenced Pfizer to suppress unfavorable studies

• Distributive Justice (refers to the fairness of the

• Most principled people apply ethical principles.

• Most base their judgement about what is right on the expectations of

• Supervisor Pressure: How supervisors knowingly (or

• “Walk The Talk”

• Hire Right  (The simplest way to tune up an organization,

• Use Ethics Training (Ethics training involves showing

• Use Rewards and Discipline

• Performance Appraisal (To send the signal that fairness is

• Institute Ethical Polices and Codes

• Employers must have systems in place that the company

• The best way to handle a dismissal is to avoid it in the first place.

• Many dismissals start with bad hiring decisions

• Unsatisfactory performance means persistent failure to perform

• Misconduct is deliberate and willful violation of the employer’s

• Changed requirements of the job refers to an employee s

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