The Secret HR Director: Is it your duty to be your company's Moral Compass?

A very talented HR professional I know once described the HR Director as being the “moral compass” of the company.  At the time, it didn’t particularly describe my experience in my new HR career – after all, a moral compass is used in reference to a person's ability to judge what is right and wrong and act accordingly.

When there is no moral compass in an organisation, things go wrong, sooner or later. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which any of us working for US companies will be familiar with, and similar regulations were supposed to prevent any repetition of the failure of organisational control systems evident in the collapses of Enron, WorldCom and Tyco.

But in a world of short-term targets, is being the conscience of a business still a reasonable expectation of HR or is it time for other staff to take responsibility for their own choices? With the discussions about earning a place at the top table, would having Mother Teresa sitting there necessarily help with credibility as a business partner?

Recent research from University of Reading’s Henley Business School titled, ‘What CEOs want from HR’,  shed some light onto the over-arching motivations of CEOs – and integrity was up there at the top. 

Although it’s very sexy to be the HR Director who might be “a business thinker, not an HR Director”, when it does go horribly wrong and HR has been exposed as colluding with corruption, malpractice or just plain bad behaviour, it can send a chill through the organisation. There is something deeply shocking for people when HR lose their integrity.

That’s not to say that other people shouldn’t be their own moral compasses, such as CFOs. But I’d argue that the precedent the HRD can set, by walking the talk and leading by example, can have tremendous influence on everyone in the organisation. One new HRD quickly lost credibility with their team by very publically and vocally legging-it off to some incredibly luxurious yet dubious jolly whilst the HR staff were clearing up a mess of redundancies. 

So I’m not taking off my 'What Would Jesus Do' bracelet just yet...