When managing human resources (HR) at an organization, HR managers must comply with accurate, legally feasible, and ethical policies. From the moment when an employee is recruited and throughout their career path in the organization, their performance, position changes, responsibilities, promotion, payment, and termination are guided by the HR policies. At the time of change, such as the integration of two organizations’ human capital, it is essential to ensure that the pivotal ethical and legal principles are followed.
Moreover, the decisions to terminate or promote employees should be based on generally applicable policies and legal provisions, as well as the consideration of the particularities of the staff, their records, and the needs of the organization. Therefore, the proposed executive summary addresses the issues for three sessions, including the one on record maintenance, the one on ethical and legal termination, and the one on succession planning. The importance of these topics is validated by their immediate effect on the quality of human capital available to the organization, which is why the clarification of these issues is essential for an organization at the time of change.
Maintaining Accurate Employee Records
In any employer-employee relations, there is a distinctive particularity that requires employees to perform their assigned roles for the benefit of an organization. Therefore, all employees are required to act in accordance with the policies, rules of conduct, and the scope of their responsibilities in a well-managed and controlled environment. Overall, the management of employees is a multifaceted and complex process that requires continuous information processing in order to ensure the accuracy of the conduct and proper performance control. Overall, the maintenance of accurate employee records has multiple advantages for both the organization and employees since it ensures transparency and justice of employee-employer relations.
The first reason why accurate staff records should be maintained and kept within the organization is that they allow for the employer’s control over the performance of every staff member at the workplace. Indeed, under the pressures of large volumes of work of the organization and big employee teams, it might be challenging to assess the quality of performance of every employee and their overall contribution. Keeping records allows for collecting and maintaining information on the professional conduct, educational advancement, and other characteristics of employees that define their value for the organization. Thus, it is imperative to have such information when making decisions about promotion, termination, relocation, or others.
Secondly, another reason for keeping records about employees is to obtain a documented history of the payments, leaves, and other procedures implemented for the employees. Indeed, as stated by Oduh et al. (2018), recorded information, especially electronically processed one, can be f significant convenience for managing human capital. In particular, records might be “used to process applications for leave by employees and the employees can get feedback on their leave application status without the hassle of having to push paper forms” (Oduh et al., 2018, p. 121). Thus, the availability of accurate records provides the parties involved in workplace relations to keep track of the procedures and conducted payments, which ensures legality and transparency of cooperation.
The third advantage of maintaining accurate information recorded about the employees is having access to comprehensive data on the productivity and misconduct of every employee. Such records comprise a set of statistical data that might be essential for the leaders to make decisions about the promotion or termination of individual employees based on their performance quality indicators. Moreover, such information might serve as a collective validation of more generalized structural changes in the organization. Indeed, having productivity indicators available and analyzed, an employer might make informed decisions as per adjusting human capital potential to the goals of the organization.
Finally, the fourth reason validating the necessity to keep records on employees lies in the availability of transparent maintenance of the specifics about ethics and legality of employer-employee relations. Such information is crucially important in cases of litigation that might occur due to employee claims about unfair workplace treatment or unethical conduct. For an organization, it is essential to be equipped with records to ensure that accurate and objective data are available in relation to every employee. In such a manner, the management will have legal grounds for defending itself in courts if litigation should happen.
Thus, the discussed reasons demonstrate that there are multiple advantages of having and continuously updating employee records that would ultimately benefit both staff and management. One of the convenient and accessible ways of maintaining massive records in large or middle-sized organizations is through electronic databases and cloud-based systems (Oduh et al., 2018). The use of electronic systems will allow for automated information processing and ease of data review as necessary.
Ethical and Legal Termination
The sphere of human capital management is inherently conditioned by legal and ethical provisions. Since people are at the center of HR management, their rights are of pivotal importance when making decisions about their termination. In particular, workplace legislation, such as the Equal Pay Act and the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, regulates workplace human resource management (Bonaccio et al., 2020; Vornholt et al., 2018). The legislation specifically regulates that the provisions of the law are maintained for all population groups equally to eliminate discrimination in the workplace. In such a manner, the legal considerations coincide with the ethical implication of the cases when particular HR management decisions should be made in relation to vulnerable populations.
From the ethical perspective, the gaps in access to equal employment should be bridged for the disadvantaged or marginalized groups by applying ethical principles of objectivity, unbiased attitude, and equality of rights. Therefore, when making a decision about termination, employers should leverage ethical, legal, and economic factors to make a decision that would not harm employees. At the same time, such a decision should comply with the goals and objectives of the organization. In particular, the interests of the company in reducing costs for ensuring the longevity of the enterprise should also be an influential decision-making determinant.
In the case of making a decision to terminate one of the four employees, the ultimate reason for the termination should be considered. Indeed, the company initiates the termination of one of the employees in order to conduct a broad-ranging cost-saving initiative. Importantly, all of the candidates for termination share the same level of expertise, position specification, and similar performance indicators, and workplace behavior.
The differences between them lie in the distinction in the level of payment and their belonging to different vulnerable social groups. In other words, the organization seeks to reduce the number of employees occupying the same job positions to maintain the same performance and productivity level at large but with the opportunity to save costs for payments. Thus, since the monetary considerations are pivotal for the organization, the decision should be made based on the least harm caused to either of the candidates with the consideration of ethics and legality.
To begin with, the vulnerable groups should be considered for their eligibility for termination. From the perspective of workplace law, people with disabilities and the elderly should not be exposed to workplace discrimination based on their conditions (Bonaccio et al., 2020; Vornholt et al., 2018). Thus, it might be considered unethical to terminate either the candidate with a disability or the candidate aged over 60. Such a decision is validated by the fact that their payment is similar and, consequently, they do not bear significant cost loss implications for the organization. Since they perform at the same level as the rest of the candidates, they should not be terminated.
As for the candidate planning on taking extended family leaves, it might also be unethical to terminate them since their leave presupposes the presence of an extraordinary and probably challenging family situation. Therefore, although the extended leave might trigger additional costs, they will not be long-term, which is why this candidate should not be terminated. Conclusively, the candidate that is paid more than the rest of the employees should be terminated to suffice the organizational goal of cost reduction.
Succession Planning
Healthcare organizations are particularly dependent on the quality of human capital and the professionalism of employees at all levels. However, it is essential that the leadership positions are occupied by the best talents of the organization. Therefore, the candidates for a leadership position in a healthcare organization should be competent, experienced, professionally prepared, and qualified individuals having both soft and professional skills to manage teams effectively. According to Dillard (2017), “An organization can assess its current staff and determine who has the skills, knowledge, experience, character, and motivation to move into a leadership role” to identify potential candidates (p. 15).
Under the conditions of workforce shortage in the healthcare sector, as well as the growing burnout and the diminished likelihood of young employees to fill the positions in medical facilities, the management of human capital obtains more significance. Importantly, it might be difficult to find a candidate who already possesses all the necessary qualities to become an effective leader. Therefore, a succession plan as a set of steps for preparing a candidate for their leadership role is required.
A succession plan for an employee should be developed on the basis of their current qualification, experience, skills, and knowledge. Therefore, the first step for the HR management of the organization should be the selection of a candidate who possesses the characteristics necessary for leadership positions. Further, the leadership that seeks to transmit the role of a senior manager should ensure that the candidate is potent to learn continuously, as “succession planning should recognize the evolving and ongoing nature of the learning process” (Dillard, 2017, p. 13). Following this step, the candidate’s skills and knowledge should be assessed to identify gaps for future training.
The selected candidate should follow the training process to get acquainted with the position requirements, responsibilities, and competencies. The transference of the leadership positions should be executed upon the candidate’s completion of the training and successful assessment.
References
Bonaccio, S., Connelly, C. E., Gellatly, I. R., Jetha, A., & Ginis, K. A. M. (2020). The participation of people with disabilities in the workplace across the employment cycle: Employer concerns and research evidence. Journal of Business and Psychology, 35(2), 135-158.
Dillard, R. F. (2017). Healthcare executive leadership development and succession planning (Doctoral dissertation, Walden University). Web.
Oduh, I. U., Misra, S., Damaševičius, R., & Maskeliūnas, R. (2018). Cloud based simple employee management information system: A model for African small and medium enterprises. In International Conference on Information Technology & Systems (pp. 115-128). Springer, Cham.
Vornholt, K., Villotti, P., Muschalla, B., Bauer, J., Colella, A., Zijlstra, F., Ruitenbeek, G. V., Uitdewilligen, S., & Corbiere, M. (2018). Disability and employment–overview and highlights. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 27(1), 40-55.