Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Ethical Human Resources Management

Ethics applied to human resource management is typically thought to boil down to treating subordinates well. Kant’s categorical imperative, treat other rational beings not just as means, but also as ends in themselves, applies to this sense of ethical HR management. Specifically, human beings are not only cogs in a machine; they have lives outside of work that should not be expected to reduce to serving the interests of the employer. Another side of HR management also exists, however, that concerns the handling of unethical employees. Such handling can be ethical or unethical.
Front-line employees who deal with customers whether in person or at a call center are especially subject to customer complaints. The choices that such employees make on how to deal with customer complaints regarding themselves can be ethical or unethical. For instance, an employee who resists a customer’s request to speak to the employee’s supervisor acts unethically by exploiting the conflict of interest. The conflict lies in the employee putting his or her own vocational interest above the interests of the customer and even the company. Gate-keeping refers to an employee’s efforts in getting the customer to say why he or she wants to speak with a manager so if the reason reflects badly on the employee, he or she can lie about a supervisor being available or insist that the customer speak only to the employee about the issue. Such an employee is operating at a primitive level—that of self-preservation—rather than as a duty-bound agent of a principal (e.g., a company).
I contend that a company’s management that does not have adequate safeguards against such an exploitation of a conflict of interest operates unethically with respect to its human resources. Should a customer inform a supervisor of a specific employee who is exploiting the conflict of interest and yet the supervisor does not set negative consequences for the employee and notify middle-management that the company’s safeguards against such exploitation are not sufficient acts unethically too. Safeguards are possible beyond relying on individual customer complaints. The latter strategy is flawed because the complaints that actually reach a supervisor are reduced in conditions in which employees can get away with exploiting the conflict of interest. Put another way, a company is unethical in relying on individual complaints to willow out problematic employees as a safeguard because it is hampered by the exploitation itself. Interestingly, whereas exploitation of employees is a common refrain, an employee’s exploitation of customers is less commonly known.
Stronger safeguards are ethical where their efficacy cannot be compromised by an employee’s exploitation of customers. Concerning phone calls, for example, the greeting could include the following: “At any time while speaking with a representative of the company, you can press 5 should you like to report a problem you are having with the representative.” The call could go to a designated manager who acts as a safeguard. In a store, a designated desk could be identified as the place where customers can go if they have had a problem with an employee. Unlike a typically customer-service desk, the person taking the complaints should hold a rank higher than that of the entry-level employees. Unfortunately, entry-level employees may tend to cover for each other, and thus extend the conflict of interest rather than curtail it.
Internal audit departments could definitely add assessing weak as well as presumably strong safeguards. Calls to respective customer-service departments could be made, and verification could be applied not only to those calls, but also on real complaints. Problems may be difficult to detect. As a case in point, the customer service process used by the regional transit authority in Phoenix, Arizona begins with an employee in Metro Valley’s customer-service department. Complaints on bus drivers are sent to their respective supervisors, yet they are known to cover for their respective drivers rather than provide accountability. Also, drivers circumventing company policies, including those regarding the coronavirus pandemic, has also been a major problem. Bad driving, such as braking too hard, and, relatedly, driving fast to accrue enough time to take smoking breaks, have also been endemic and beyond the reach the process of accountability. Aggravating the matter of accountability, the driver-supervisors work for the sub-contracted bus-operating companies; at least one of which dismissed videos of bad braking in 2018. In short, the customer-service department’s process of handling complaints and feedback is grossly inadequate, given the behavior of enough drivers and their supervisors. An audit would ideally uncover the corruption and come up with a process that takes the problematic drivers and supervisors (i.e., the dysfunctional culture) into account. Accountability is indeed difficult in such organizations in which employees regularly flaunt company policies and the immediate supervisors enable such behavior by refusing to enforce the policies even where unsafe driving and passenger health are concerned.