Managers profit from illegal use of insider stock information and even college students seem to have become caught up in the wave where studies show significant increases in cheating on tests. Concern over this perceived decline in ethical standards is being addressed by organizations, and companies are relying on Human Resource (HR) to build an ethical culture. Human Resource departments are creating codes of ethics, introducing ethics training programs and hiring ethics officers. Why is ethics important to Human Resources? When employees in organizations make decisions to act unethically, they affect not only the company itself, but also its shareholders, employees and customers. Employees make a myriad of choices every day in businesses -- if unethical, they can damage a company's productivity, profits and reputation.

Unethical decisions can come in many forms: the employee who conducts per

Human Resources also plays a role in briefing new hires about the ethics program and works with the ethics department and other company officials to refine policies and procedures. Some may believe HR plays a tangential role in the ethics debate, but that simply isn't true. Human Resources can help design programs, advise on strategy and consult on investigations, as well as play an ongoing role in educating and training workers about ethics. The basic values of the company must be visible. Human Resources insures they are visible and communicated during the selection process, employee interview, orientation sessions and performance reviews to create a culture that emphasizes ethics. Therefore, whether an organization relies solely on HR for an ethics program or has a separate ethics office, the HR department is depended heavily upon to provide support for the underlying structure. Approximately 37% of all ethics inquiries involve HR issues, and that means ethics officers must consult with HR and use their expertise to interpret regulations, resolve disputes and consult on ways to reduce future problems. In some cases, HR is able to resolve specific ethics problems on the spot avoiding the time and expense of a full-scale inquiry.

Human Resources and ethics are linked and must be integrated. In today's high-pressured environment, HR must spell out for employees that ethics come before deadlines or bottom lines. It's a message that can easily be overlooked in the work rush especially if employees feel pressured to violate company policies in order to achieve business objectives. In an April 1997 study by the American Society of Chartered Life Underwriters and Chartered Financial Consultants and the Ethics Officers Association, found that 56% of all workers feel some pressure to act unethically or illegally. The study also revealed that 48% of workers admitted they had engaged in one or more unethical and/or illegal actions during the last year. Among the most common violations: cutting corners on quality, covering up incidents, lying to supervisors, deceiving customers, and taking credit for a colleague's ideas. It's good to dispel even the slightest impression among employees that management encourages unethical behavior in obtaining business objectives. In the empowered workplace where decisions are being forced down to the very lowest level, the employee must understand the importance of making that decision right the first time.

Ethics are free -- the HR department has to put forth the effort to communicate, educate, and train its employees on the importance of their decisions. An effective program costs very little, but the absence of ethics can be extremely costly. A company that finds a way to change the system so people can be influenced to act ethically and responsibly is far more likely t

Some common words found in the essay are:
Human Resources, Officers Association, It's HR, Texas Instruments, , Human Resource, ethics program, human resources, code ethics, Resource HR, ethics training, hr department, texas instruments, ethics office, teach ethics, ethics officers, human resource, effective ethics program, employees ethics program, illegal insider stock, ethics office hr, human resource departments,
Approximate Word count = 1903
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)