Chapter 8: Human Resources and Ethics: The Social Glue Within a Banking Establishment

Ethics and integrity play a large role in establishing the connection between the customers and employees to serve as the guidelines and expectations for interaction. This is especially true within the banking industry where employees are handling the money of the customers. Monetary matters are typically a concern for most individuals and ensuring that financial institutions handle these affairs in the most ethical matter is an important element of trust in the organization and customer relationship.

Employees of each financial institution have access to customer account information. In this regard, handling customer transactions in an ethical manner is paramount. When employees are tempted to access information that is not relevant or needed to know for their positions, there could be risk for the organization. Is it human nature to compare what others have to what you do or don’t have? It only takes a phone call or e-mail from a former spouse or friend to say they think banking employees are looking at their account in an unauthorized fashion. Each time an employee accesses a customer’s account, it can be tracked. There must be a legitimate business reason for looking into a customer’s account. Since banks store personal information of their clients and handle a highly liquid commodity—cash— it is paramount that employees within this industry have a high level of integrity and trustworthiness which makes the role of human resources extremely important (Ingram, 2019).