The vast responsibilities your Human Resources teams have can be overwhelming. Managing onboarding efforts and hiring, employee benefits, and ethics policies is a tall order for any team. But as we close out 2022 and prepare for the new year, there are resources and insights to explore that will help improve your HR efforts and efficiencies. Consider these ethics policy revisions and improvements and strengthen your HR bench exponentially in 2023.

Ethics Leadership Initiatives

A great place to start when evaluating ethics improvements is with leadership. Your HR managers can explore new ethics initiatives catered specifically to help those in positions of authority to maintain ethical management practices. It’s your managers who will demonstrate the example of ethical engagement in the workplace. And when your HR teams develop management-specific training, available resources, and ethics policies, you can affect change companywide. Consider these initiatives:

· Establishing a managerial Code of Ethics

· Reinforcing company vision, mission, and values

· Promoting the universal ownership of ethics

· Defining ethics and violations transparently

Ethics in Daily Performance Accountability

Another step you can take to improve your Human Resources efforts is to make ethics policy enforcement a job for everyone in your organization. Your HR managers shouldn’t be the sole enforcers for your company. Instead, consider developing new ethics policies that assign ethics responsibility to others. Embedding accountability in daily performance metrics is a great starting point. And deputizing all managers and staff will ensure unethical behaviors will be recognized more efficiently.

Boost Ethics Training Efforts and Resources

Improve how your HR engages employees and management staff by boosting your ethics training initiatives in 2023. Provide ongoing training and available resources regarding your company values, policies, and guidelines. Prioritize ethics and compliance by addressing current concerns and discussing emerging concerns. Keep the conversations open and ethics at the top of mind. Your HR teams will find they spend less time introducing concepts to managers and staff when everyone is exposed to more robust ethics training ongoing.

Incorporate an Ethics Hotline

Probably the most effective HR improvement step you can take that will reinforce your ethics policies and help deputize everyone among your ranks to monitor compliance is to incorporate an ethics hotline. With an ethics hotline, your employees will have an anonymous resource at their disposal for reporting violations, like safety issues, sexual harassment, company theft, or discrimination. Since your HR managers can’t be everywhere at once, ethics hotlines reports can help call their attention to areas of improvement. And they can quickly initiate investigations to follow through and enact change, which can help you avoid costly compliance or regulatory fines and potential legal recourse.

Lighten the load on your HR teams with these ethics policy improvements. Make ethics a company value that everyone in your organization can support and help enforce. And get the ethics hotline set up, so there is a channel for reporting for anyone, anytime, anywhere. Contact Ethical Advocate to discuss developing an ethics hotline for your company and improve your Human Resources in 2023!