Personal effectiveness and ethics play an important role in building a successful business. Being personally effective means setting clear priorities, staying organised, and staying true to your values. It also involves making choices that are not only legal but also ethically sound. In addition, having strong business acumen helps you understand finances, market trends, and how to develop winning strategies. When you combine personal effectiveness, ethical decision-making, and business know-how, you are better equipped to succeed as an entrepreneur. This CIPD 7CO03 assignment example will look at each of these areas in more detail to show how they work together to support business success.
Table of Contents
Assignment
Learning Outcome 1 Be able to model principles and values that promote inclusivity aimed at maximising the contribution that people make to organisations.
AC 1.3 Self-evaluate personal integrity and professional courage in relation to ethical practice.
Introduction
Personal integrity and professional courage are absolute fundamental in the HR field in ensuring promotion of ethical practices that protect employees and the organization. The CIPD Profession Map defines integrity as acting in line with one’s values and in accordance with ethical consistently, professional courage is the capability of speaking out and act on the complex decisions when it demands to take a firm stance when there is a high risk involved (CIPD, 2024). In this self-evaluation on an ethical issue in the workplace, I was able to show personal integrity and professional courage as an HR professional. I will analyse my actions and critically evaluate them reflecting on how these behaviours were aligned with the CIPD’s core competencies, and assess what I learned from the experience.
Situation
In my previous role of as a HR professional, I encountered a situation where a senior manager unfairly and deliberately bypassed our recruitment protocol. To begin with, they were specifically directly appointing members of their own network instead of advertising for jobs that have been posted and shortlisted and conducted interviews for them. This directly flouted our commitment to transparency, fairness, equal opportunities – all main tenets of the company’s HR practice. Being the HR lead, I understood the seriousness of the situation. This behaviour may be unchecked, causing eroding of trust in the recruitment process, potential legal challenge and creating of culture of favouritism# in the organisation. My task was to solve the problem by making sure that recruitment processes adhered to established policies and were ethical in order.
Task
The ethical challenge was twofold. The first involved issues related to a senior leader, which always has a potential element of power play. The fact that they had challenged a senior figure only made the situation more complex since challenging authority wasn’t always well received. Secondly, the organisation’s status both within and outside of the organisation was at risk in terms of its reputation, and the main ethical principle that is the idea of fairness in employment.
I was to regardless of the seniority of the individual involved. There was the need of balancing the professional relationships with the imperative of behaving ethically and showing professional courage and personal integrity. The approach I was to take had to promote fairness be based on evidence, to ensure confidence on my actions
Action
I started off with reviewing and referring the recruitment policies and relations with the manager. In terms of policies, they were clear regarding advertising roles within, as well as shortlisting candidates on merit. I collected documented evidence, including job posting that was not through the formal approval process and had been hired in the interview process.
I reviewed at the company’s code of conduct and the CIPD Profession Map specifically a concerning ethical practice and valuing people’ behaviours before I addressed the issue with the manager directly (CIPD, 2021). This CIPD map reinforced the need for objectivity, fairness and transparency in all the people practices, in line with the ethical principles needed to be met among us. It allowed me to gather the required evidence but also the language and the sense of how to present my case in an ethical and professional way.
I scheduled and carried out a one on one meeting with the senior manager where I expressed the facts without being accusatory. I leveraged the evidence I had gathered to show the rift between the actions departed from the company has established practices. I approached the conversation not as a confrontation, but as a chance to collaborate with the person to solve the problem and come up with a solution that aligned with company values.
I remained committed to the facts and focused by remaining calm and professional at the meeting, and integrity by keeping away from any personal issues and following the recruitment practices to be fair, transparent and in line with legal obligations. Although at first there was resistance, I explained what the potential risks could be: potential reputational damage and potential discrimination claims should it persist.
At the same time, I consulted with the HR Director regarding what was the next best course of action. I thought this was important as to make sure that this issue was handled at a senior level leadership and across the organisation. I suggested that we set up also other protective measures so that such breaches do not occur in the future, including the establishment of the obligation of HR to validate all recruitment decisions.
