3CO03 Core Behaviours for People Professionals teaches the key skills and behaviours HR professionals need. You’ll learn about working ethically, speaking up with confidence, and treating everyone fairly and inclusively. It also shows you how to support people well in any organisation, giving you a strong start for your HR career.
Assessment Questions
AC 1.1 Ethical working is very important to Nuvascare. Tell us what you understand by the terms ‘ethical principles’ and ‘professional values’ and give us an example of how one of your values has informed your behaviour at work. Make sure you give us the full context of your example (what type of work, what value, how it informed your behaviour).
1.1 Understanding Ethical Principles
Ethical principles are the fundamental moral standards and beliefs that guide how individuals and organisations distinguish between right and wrong conduct in professional settings. Within the people profession, ethical principles establish the moral boundaries within which practitioners operate, ensuring that decisions affecting employees, organisations, and wider communities are made with integrity, fairness, and accountability. The CIPD (2023a) defines ethical practice as a commitment to acting in a principled way that balances the interests of multiple stakeholders, including employees, employers, and the public. Key ethical principles relevant to people practice include honesty, which requires transparent and truthful communication in all professional dealings; fairness, which demands impartial treatment and equitable decision-making regardless of personal bias; respect for human dignity, which recognises the inherent worth of every individual in the workplace; and responsibility, which obliges practitioners to accept accountability for the consequences of their actions and recommendations (Chartered Management Institute, 2022).
Winstanley and Woodall (2022) argue that ethical principles in HR are not merely abstract ideals but practical imperatives that shape every aspect of people management, from recruitment and selection to disciplinary processes, reward allocation, and organisational restructuring. When ethical principles are compromised, the consequences can be severe, encompassing legal liability, reputational damage, erosion of employee trust, and diminished organisational performance. For a care provider such as Nuvascare, ethical practice carries even greater significance because the people profession directly influences the quality of care delivered to vulnerable service users. Decisions about staffing levels, employee training, and performance management have a direct impact on care outcomes, making ethical rigour an organisational imperative rather than a discretionary aspiration.
1.2 Understanding Professional Values
Professional values are the deeply held beliefs and standards of conduct that define what a profession collectively considers important and that shape the expected behaviour of its members. While ethical principles provide the overarching moral framework, professional values translate those principles into the specific behavioural expectations of a particular professional discipline. For people professionals, the CIPD’s Profession Map (2023b) identifies core professional values including being principles-led and evidence-based, working inclusively, having a passion for learning, and valuing people as individuals. These values establish the professional identity of HR and people practitioners and differentiate competent, trustworthy professionals from those who merely execute administrative processes without regard for the wider human and organisational impact.
Professional values also serve as an internal compass that guides decision-making in complex, ambiguous situations where clear-cut rules or policies may not exist. Fisher (2023) contends that professional values are particularly important in moments of ethical tension, for instance when organisational demands conflict with employee wellbeing, or when commercial pressures challenge fair treatment. In such situations, professionals who have internalised strong values are better equipped to navigate competing demands, advocate for ethical outcomes, and resist pressure to act in ways that compromise professional integrity.
1.3 Personal Example: The Value of Fairness Informing Workplace Behaviour
One professional value that has consistently informed my behaviour is fairness, understood as the commitment to ensuring that all individuals are treated equitably and that decisions are made on the basis of objective, transparent criteria rather than personal preferences or biases.
Context: In my previous role supporting an HR advisory team within a medium-sized healthcare organisation, I was involved in coordinating a restructuring process that required several positions to be made redundant. The selection criteria had been drafted by senior management and, upon review, I identified that the proposed scoring matrix disproportionately weighted length of service in a way that indirectly disadvantaged newer employees, many of whom were from minority ethnic backgrounds and had been recruited through a recent diversity initiative.
How fairness informed my behaviour: My commitment to fairness compelled me to raise this concern, despite the sensitivity of challenging a senior management decision. I prepared a briefing paper that presented the demographic data alongside an analysis of how the proposed criteria would impact different employee groups. I referenced the Equality Act 2010’s provisions on indirect discrimination and proposed alternative criteria that balanced organisational needs with equitable treatment. Following discussion, the selection matrix was revised to incorporate a more balanced range of factors including skills, qualifications, performance ratings, and adaptability. This ensured that the redundancy process was both legally compliant and genuinely fair, and it reinforced the organisation’s stated commitment to diversity and inclusion.