Major Challenges HR Professionals Face, Essay Example

Abstract

The current paper is designed to discuss the major challenges HR professionals face in their profession through the SHRM Code of Ethics. The paper discusses benefits, leadership integrity, and strategic partnership as the three most challenging tasks in HR. The paper suggests that the Code of Ethics cannot resolve all ethical dilemmas in HR, but it can lay the foundation for the detailed analysis and successful resolution for the most problematic ethical issues in HRM.

Introduction

That HR professionals are bound to face a whole set of challenges in their daily practice no one can deny. Numerous codes and statutes were designed to address these issues and dilemmas, but still, HR departments operate in a highly ambiguous environment, well-known for its dilemmas and controversies. The Code of Ethics designed and proposed by Society of Human Resource Management reveals the hidden implications of these challenges in daily practice. Beyond the fact that HR professionals are expected to advocate for professional responsibility in their actions, to meet the highest standards of competence, and to exhibit individual leadership (SHRM, 2007), they should also strive to advocate for employee benefits, to guarantee corporate leadership integrity, as well as to help companies meet the needs and goals of becoming a strategic partner.

The discussed Code of Ethics as proposed by SHRM (2007) not only provides clear guidelines, which HR professionals should and must use in their practice, but also confirms the general complexity of conditions and environment, in which HR specialists are bound to operate. The Code is designed in a way that states the intent of each ethical principle, to which HR specialists must keep, and the guidelines they must follow to make this intent real and realizable. However, it is obviously not enough to be ethical and “act ethically in every professional interaction” (SHRM, 2007). As professionals in HRM, these people should serve the reliable basis for building strategic partnerships which, when created successfully, can “result in opportunities to work with business leaders, influencing strategies and directions for a business unit or the entire enterprise” (Robinson, 2005). That means that beyond the need for HR professionals to promote ethical leadership fairness, and justice, they should also realize the scope of their obligations, when it comes to building client partnerships, developing credibility and trust between employees, identifying strategic HR opportunities, and influencing the major business strategies and directions in a way, which takes into account productivity, workload, and staffing in each particular organization. Obviously, productivity and workloads produce significant impacts on the quality of organizational performance and either strengthen or weaken the opportunities and organization has for becoming a strategic partner. Very often, to make such partnerships effective, HR departments should attempt to reorganize the organizational structure or architecture, which, in its turn, may negatively impact individual employees and their chances to stay with the company (Robinson, 2005). This is, probably, one of the major ethical issues, which HR professionals face, and which, given the specificity of their job, is difficult to resolve. Because the Code of Ethics requires that HR professionals ensure that everyone has an opportunity to develop their skills and competencies (SHRM, 2007), the whole vision of strategic partnership becomes even more complicated and blurred. That is why one of the major challenges in HR is in balancing individual interests of employees with those of the organization, for which they work. Fairness and justice remain the two core principles of ethics in HR. All HR initiatives must work to support strategic business goals and strategies, which is impossible without maintaining this reasonable balance between corporate and personal. This is also possible through advocating for employee benefits as one of the core ethical principles in HR.

The general ethical intent of HR is to advocate for employee benefits and to ensure their integrity, fairness, and necessity. HR are “individuals responsible for the design, pricing, selling and administration of employee benefits, and they carry a broad range of responsibilities, and the role of the benefits professional has changed rapidly and radically in the past twenty-five years” (Rosenbloom, 2001). These twenty-five years were marked with the dramatic increase in the number and scope of employee benefits which, consequentially, have created a more complex atmosphere of HR performance in organizations. The SHRM Code of Ethics requires that HR professionals are able to use and disseminate information in a way that fosters maximization of information exchange and promotes fair and truthful decision-making (SHRM, 2007), and when it comes to benefits, HR specialists should advocate for benefits as a matter of attracting and retaining the most prospective employees. Obviously, throughout the history of organizational development in America, HR function has undergone a profound shift from the need for employees to fight for a employment to the need for employers to fight for the most talented and skillful employees. Unfortunately, not always are employers able to fit their benefit plans in the current criteria of productivity and workload. In other words, not always can current productivity and workload interests justify the HR striving to expand the scope of benefits available to employees. Nevertheless, employee benefits remain “a cost-effective and administratively efficient channel of distribution” (Rosenbloom, 2001), when it comes to rewards and recognition. And these achievements can be further used by HR function to promote leadership integrity in organizations.

It appears that corporate leadership integrity is one of the major challenges on the way of HR function to excellence. While the Code of Ethics establishes clear guidelines for HR specialists to follow, and while these intents and guidelines can serve a good basis for maintaining leadership integrity in business, in reality, “in a corporate culture that acknowledges that more complex integrity dilemmas are inevitable, an organization’s expectations on the reporting of policy violations will reflect that it may not always have the answers to all integrity issues” (Kennedy-Glans & Schulz, 2005). In the same way, the basic ethical guidelines may not always have answers to all ethical dilemmas that arise in the process of daily performance and interactions. One of the major ethical challenges, which HR specialists face while trying to maintain leadership integrity, is in how employees report probable policy violations, and in what manner HR professionals should react (Kennedy-Glans & Schulz, 2005). These challenges are not easy to resolve, and they require a great deal of knowledge and ethical expertise. At the same time, a HR professional is expected to possess some degree of professional intuition, which will help him (her) address the major ethical challenges in business.

Conclusion

The SHRM Code of Ethics lays the foundation for the development and implementation of more comprehensive guidelines for HR professionals. It creates a general picture of how HR specialists are expected to perform in complex organizational environments. Unfortunately, not always are HR professionals able to balance the code requirements with specific workload and productivity criteria. Moreover, the Code does not resolve all ethical dilemmas HR professionals may face in practice. Benefits, leadership integrity, and strategic partnerships remain the three most challenging tasks for HR, and fulfilling them successfully is impossible without looking deeper into the role and importance of ethical standards in HR profession.

References

Kennedy-Glans, D. & Schulz, R. (2005). Corporate integrity: A toolkit for managing beyond compliance. John Wiley & Sons.

Robinson, J.C. (2005). Strategic business partner: Aligning people strategies with business goals. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Rosenbloom, J.S. (2001). The handbook of employee benefits: Design, funding, and administration. McGraw-Hill Professional.

SHRM. (2007). Code of Ethics. Society for Human Resource Management. Retrieved October 21, 2009 from http://www.shrm.org/about/Pages/code-of-ethics.aspx