Published: June 16, 2008
A New Survey of HR Professionals
The Society of Human Resources Management and the Ethics Resource Center unveiled their latest survey of HR professionals last week – the third since the surveys began a decade ago.
The canvass of 513 HR practitioners nationwide found that fewer than half say their organization includes ethical conduct as part of their employees’ performance appraisals. Fifty-seven percent say ethics is not part of employees’ periodic reviews.
Research by ERC shows that ethics programs and an ethical culture are key to creating an ethical workplace.
According to the survey, human resource professionals say they are their organizations’ primary resource for ethics-related issues, and they help create ethics policies. But most don’t feel that they are truly part of the ethics infrastructure. Instead, they are asked to “clean up” the situations caused by ethics violations.
“Human resource professionals are integral to the process of creating and maintaining ethical organizations—from helping to write ethics and compliance programs and procedures, to disciplining ethical breaches,” said Susan R. Meisinger, president and CEO of SHRM, the world’s largest human resource organization. “Organizations can benefit by bringing HR professionals into the early conversations when planning ethics-related programs.”
Results of the SHRM/ERC study, titled The Ethics Landscape in American Business, were compared, or benchmarked, to ERC’s National Workplace Ethics Survey, a broader study fielded in 2007 that surveyed 3,452 employees.
According to the SHRM/ERC study, only 23 percent of HR professionals say their organizations have a comprehensive ethics and compliance program in place, and 7 percent indicate that their employer has no program at all. The ERC defines a comprehensive ethics and compliance program as one that includes six components:
- Written standards of ethical workplace conduct
- Means for an employee to anonymously report violations of ethics standards
- Orientation or training on ethical workplace conduct
- A specific office, telephone line, e-mail address or Web site where employees can get advice about ethics-related issues
- Evaluation of ethical conduct as part of regular performance appraisals
- Discipline for employees who commit ethics violations
“Establishing a comprehensive ethics program is the foundation for building a strong ethical culture in an organization,” said Dr. Patricia Harned, president of the ERC. “As partners with ethics and compliance officers in building and maintaining a culture of integrity, it is disappointing that less than one-quarter of HR professionals indicate that their organizations have established a full program.
“Perhaps more disturbing was that 18 percent of HR professionals said they observed ethical misconduct but didn’t report it. On average across the U.S., 39 percent of employees observe misconduct, but we would expect that more HR professionals would be willing to make a report if they observed wrongdoing.
“HR professionals didn’t think they could remain anonymous, nor did they think that the people involved would be disciplined. Having a comprehensive ethics program addresses those concerns.”
A decade ago, in the first SHRM/ERC survey, 21 percent of HR professionals said they reported misconduct they had observed. In 2003 – after 9/11 and the fall of Enron – the percentage rose to 27 percent. The latest findings – 18 percent – mean the percentage has fallen further than a decade ago.
Key findings in the survey:
- Ethical misconduct most commonly identified by HR professionals included abusive or intimidating behavior toward fellow employees, plus abuse of e-mail or Internet privileges. Employees cited instances of colleagues calling in “sick” inappropriately, and people taking credit for someone else’s work.
- Compared with supervisors (86 percent) and non-management employees (91 percent), HR professionals (77 percent) were less likely to think that top management would be held accountable if caught violating their organization’s ethics standards.
- A small proportion of HR professionals (19 percent) and employees (U.S. average: 11 percent) reported feeling pressure by others (within their organization or externally) to compromise their organization’s ethics standards, company policy, or the law.
A complete copy of The Ethics Landscape in American Business is available at www.shrm.org/surveys. The ERC’s National Workplace Ethics Survey can be found at www.ethics.org.