Question

• Suggest two (2) actions that HR should take in order to ensure an organization’s compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley. Explain the manner in which HR policies and practices are instrumental in implementing, and ensuring compliance, with legal mandates.
• Examine the key individual and organizational factors that influence an ethical decision-making framework in resolving ethical dilemmas. Outline a guide that HR can use to implement principles and core values in ethical decision making in an organization. Provide a rationale for your response.

Answer 1

A simple example of monitoring for SOX compliance is reviewing the current status of employees and continuously document additional degrees, certifications and training, and also periodically monitor whether an employee continues to be qualified for his job.

An HR information system (HRIS) can provide automatic notifications that qualification reviews are necessary, or even produce an exception report to identify people whose backgrounds do not meet the documented requirements.

Enacted in 2002 in response to one of the most widespread corporate accounting scandals, the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) act was to ensure that stockholders of public companies receive accurate information of a corporation’s financial condition by requiring disclosure of all material financial information. To ensure an organization is compliant within this act, HR should implement a risk management plan and require executive level managers to take risk assessments. The risk assessments assist management with understanding where the risks are and support them in financially planning for the organization’s future.

Key individual and organizational factors that influence an ethical decision-making framework include friends, family, life, religion, education, and views. Values of individuals can be derived from moral philosophies to apply to daily decisions. However, values are subjective and vary a great deal across different cultures. For example, individual-1 may promise to perform a service for individual-2, indivual-1 carries out his promise because he feels morally obligated to keep his promise.

Every company should have core values that drive the mission and vision of the organization. There should also be hands on training and development on ethical behavior annually. I don’t think it’s enough to require employees to take a class on the computer and that’s it. I think this is a cheap ploy to hold an employee accountable if necessary.

Taking this training online is doing just enough to say all employees have taken the training and should know better. I think that if employers were more hands on with ethics training, ensuring all employees have a live training course, it would better reinforce the company’s message and the training would stay with the employee because now it’s something that employees are learning together in a group setting. This training should be required of all new employees, and seasoned employees should attend at least once a year.

References

Ferrell, O. C., Fraedrich, J., & John, L. (2015). Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making & Cases (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Sherman, E. (2005, May 1). HR Technology.

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