Ethical Issues in the Business or Corporate World: RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Ethical Issues in the Business or Corporate World: MARKETING continuation:

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

• Resource Management is the method by which companies manage their numerous resources effectively and efficiently. These resources can be intangible and tangible. It includes people and time for intangible resources. And equipment, materials, and finances for tangible resources.

• It involves planning in order for the right resources are allocated to the right tasks. Resource Management involves schedules and budgets for people, projects, equipment, and supplies.

The Ethical Issues in Resource Management:

1. Employment Issues

Human Resource professionals are liable to face maximum ethical problems in the areas of hiring of employees.

The major problems or challenges encountered in this area are:

a. The pressure to employ a friend or relative of a highly placed executive.

b. The faked credentials and certifications used by a job applicant.

c. The discovery that an employee who has been with the company for some time is skilled and made a victorious record, had falsified his academic credentials.

2. Cash and Incentive Plans

Cash and incentive plans comprise problems like basic salaries, annual increments or incentives, executive perquisites, and long-term incentive plans.

• Basic Salaries:

• Human Resource managers have to explain a higher level of basic salaries or a higher level of amount increase than the competitors to maintain some workers. In some situations, where the increase is bigger than ordinary, they have to improve some positions to higher grades.

• Annual increment/incentive Plans:

• This circumstance is true in the case of top management executives. With the anxiety of losing some excellent executives, the Human Resource managers are compelled to provide higher incentives to them than what the people deserve.

• Executive Perquisites:

• In the name of executive perquisites, sometimes excesses are often executed, the ethical responsibility falls on the Human Resource managers. Sometimes the expenses of these perquisites are out of balance to the value-added. For illustration, the Chief Executive Officer of a loss-making company purchases a Mercedes for his private use or expects a swimming pool built at his home.

• Long term incentive Plans:

• Long term incentive plans are to be brought by the Human Resource managers in the meeting with the CEO and an external adviser. Ethical issues occur when the HR manager is put under pressure to favor top executive interests over the interests of the other employees and investors.

3. Employees Discriminations

• A framework of laws and regulations has been developed to prevent the methods of treatment of laborers based on their caste, sex, religion, disability, age, etc. No company can practice any unfair policies, concerning selection, training, development, appraisal, etc.

• A demanding ethical problem happens when there is pressure on the Human Resource manager to insure the firm or an individual at the expense of a person relating to the organization which is being discriminated against.

4. Performance Appraisal

• Ethics must be the basis for evaluating performance. Highly ethical performance appraisal requires that there must be an honest examination of the performance and steps should be taken to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of employees.

• Human Resource managers face the problem of appointing higher rates to workers who are not earning them that are based on some irrelevant aspects like closeness to the top management. But some employees are given low rates, even if their outstanding performance is based on factors like caste, religion, or not being loyal to the appraiser.

5. Privacy Issues

• An employee's private life that is not affecting his professional life should be exempt from invasive and unnecessary actions.

Human Resource managers face three problems in this aspect:

• The first problem pertains to Information Technology. A company’s need for data about workers while on the job may be at odds with the employee’s privacy. Closed-circuit cameras, tapping the phones, reading the computer files of employees, and the likes breach the employees' privacy.

• The second ethical issue connects to AIDS testing. AIDS has evolved as a public health problem. Human Resource managers are confronted with two issues: Whether all the new laborers should be liable for an AIDS test and what medication should be made to an employee who is affected by the disease. It is understood that since AIDS can't be contracted by casual and ordinary workplace contracts, workers with this illness should not be discriminated against and they should be permitted to conduct jobs for which they are equipped.

• The third ethical problem relates to Whistle Blowing. Whistleblowing is a public disclosure by retired or new workers of any illegal, immoral, or unlawful practices about their employers. Employees are not wanted to talk against their employers, because their main loyalty is to the company they work at. But if the problem is some act of the company can result in huge harm to the society, it may become obligatory to blow the Whistle. The Human Resource manager is in the problem of how to unravel this issue between the adversaries and defenders of whistleblowing.

6. Safety and Health

• An industrial job is dangerous to the safety and health of the employees. Legislations have been established making it required for the company and administrators to pay back the victims of occupational hazards. Ethical problems of Human Resource managers occur when justice is rejected to the victims by the company.

7. Restructuring and layoffs

• Restructuring of the companies often arises in layoffs and retrenchments. This is not unethical if it is performed in an environment of fairness and equity and with the interests of the affected workers in mind.

• If the restructuring corporation imposes closing of the factory, the procedure by which the plant is selected, how the news is to be disseminated and the time frame for finalizing the layoffs is ethically important.