An ethical dilemma related to HR that a friend faced with their employer was difficult to resolve because there were no trained HR professionals at the site, and this led to a lack of understanding of problems and issues. It was a small organization without an HR department. The situation was ethically challenging because one of the managers favored interns, because she had been an intern herself, and felt interns were treated unfairly. Thus, interns were allowed privileges that sometimes were greater than the long-term full-time employees had. For example, if an intern and a full-time employee requested the same day off, often the intern would get the day and the full-time employee would not. My friend became frustrated with the situation and attempted to talk to the director of the company, but the director and the manager were friends, and socialized during off hours, and the director would not respond to my friend's concerns. It was here that my friend felt the ethical dilemma came into play. There was no HR professional to mediate the problem, and the director could not separate the work and personal friendship she shared with the manager. The full-time employees became more and more dissatisfied, and one by one, they all left the company.
             Thus, the dilemma was not really solved, and the company lost all of its long-term human capital. This ethical problem illustrates the necessity for a human resources department or human resources training even in small organizations. If there had been an impartial HR representative the staff could have contacted with their grievance, the situation might have been mediated and at least some of the staff retained. In addition, the director might also have been counseled on how to manage professional standards of behavior, of those standards might have been set to keep a situation such as this from occurring. The situation could have been resolved in a more ethical manner and with be...