Question

Describe a contemporary ethical issue which is related to human resource management and describe why it is an ethical issue.
- what are the competing interests with regard to this issue? (employee, employer, customer, shareholder, other stakeholders)
- what is the moral and ethical thing to do with respect to this issue? Why?

Answer 1

Solution:

One of the significant ethical issues that have risen lately relates to the health record data of the employees that are stored with the human resource management professionals. The security of this data is often the concern and it was found that many companies used such data to their advantage by selling this health data of the employees to other stakeholders who have interest in this data. This is an ethical issue because the privacy of the data is a responsibility of the human resource professionals and leaking such data may not be the choice of many employees who may not wish to reveal their medical details.

Hence, ever since the electronic storage of healthcare data has been rolled out this is the rising ethical issue that has been seen by organizations around the world. The privacy of anyone's healthcare or medical data is crucial because employees would not want to discuss their medical history with everyone else because of certain limitations and personal reasons and thus this makes it an issue of breach of privacy of employees. Hence, making it an ethical issue as well with regard to human resource professionals.

The competing interests are of the companies who are purchasing the data and the organization itself who is selling this data to make extra unaccounted revenue which is akin to black money or corruption. Hence, the competing interests are from the traders of this data, mostly the human resource professional who is responsible for the security and anonymity of this data and other external stakeholders who may benefit from this data.

To avoid such unethical practices we must have a strict security and governance measure that ensures the protection of data of the employees and have appropriate security measures in place to ensure no such leakage of data os possible. Access to such data can be restricted and only a few stakeholders can access such data to avoid risks associated with trading such data. Having appropriate IT infrastructure and security systems in place will help to curb these unethical practices.