Mentoring to Develop Ethical Employees

Running head: Mentoring To Develop Ethical Employees

Mentoring To Develop Ethical Employees

Darlene Putrick

Kaplan University

MT203: Human Resources Management

Professor Denise Rodgers

November 28, 2011

Mentoring To Develop Ethical Employees

Introduction

Would one want the CFO of Enron or Tyco International as their mentor? One had a Ponzi scheme while the latter had improper accounting methods. The people at the top of these organizations were not acting in an ethical manner. So, what does it take for a senior manager to mentor employees in behaving ethically? As an employee does it help to have a CFO with high priority on ethical behavior as a mentor? Human Resource departments need to develop financial executives to be ethical leaders and mentors. They could do this by using traditional training programs that foster ethical behavior.

Review/Analysis of the Case

First and foremost when it comes to learning ethics, executive management has a responsibility to lead by example. In order for an executive to mentor a junior employee in ethics that manager must have integrity, meaning they are uprightness, truthfulness, authenticity, and have reliable consistency with word and actions (Shacklock, A. H. & Lewis, M. J., 2006). Actions speak louder than words, so the actions of the senior executive mentor would mean more than what they are saying. Once the employee completed company provided ethics training the mentor could reinforce and build upon that training with hands on experience. According to fundamentals of Human Resource Management (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2009) a mentor is an experienced senior employee that develops inexperienced employees which are considered a protégé. These types of relationships often come about due to sharing the same interest and values and the protégés need for power and achievement often displaying emotional stability and adapting quickly to situations. They receive not only...