Something has shifted in how boards talk about ethics. Public scrutiny on businesses is intensifying, and societal expectations are putting pressure on leaders to demonstrate that purpose runs deeper than profit. Until recently, purpose was largely considered HR’s territory, important for culture and useful for recruitment, but rarely treated as a genuine driver of business performance.
That’s changing – and faster than most leaders anticipated.
New research from MHR has found that 73% of UK business leaders now want formal, ethical commitments within their organisations. Not communicated values, but accountable ones. That distinction matters, because organisations that treat those two things as equivalent are already falling behind.
The harder question isn’t whether leaders believe in ethical leadership. Most will say they do. It’s whether they’ve built the conditions for it to function.
Tech leaders are leading the conversation
Technology leaders are now among the loudest voices calling for measurable ethical commitments, with the same research finding that 82% see the need for formal ethical and social accountability. When you’re responsible for building the systems that make decisions about people’s careers, performance, or access to opportunities, you quickly understand what happens when values aren’t embedded into the infrastructure from the start.
And when they aren’t, the consequences don’t get contained. Treating ethics as a compliance function leaves organisations exposed both reputationally and operationally. Misalignment between HR, finance and technology creates inefficiency, but more seriously, it weakens the trust that holds an organisation together with its employees and customers.
The talent equation has changed
In a market where skills shortages are acute and competition for experienced people is intense, purpose cannot be a nice-to-have. Three quarters of leaders (75%) said a strong company purpose will be a primary driver of talent attraction and retention going forward. That should give pause to anyone who still treats purpose as a communications exercise.
Employees notice when values don’t match the lived reality. AI adoption, workforce transformation and rising public scrutiny are forcing employees to ask harder questions: how are decisions being made? Whose interests does this technology serve? What does accountability look like in practice? Those aren’t questions HR can answer alone. They’re leadership questions, and they require the right structure to back up the answers.
From statements to systems
Here’s where most organisations fall short. They have a purpose, but they don’t have a mechanism to deliver it. Values are articulated but not operationalised and measured. And without measurement, there’s no accountability.
What’s required is genuine cross-functional ownership. Finance needs to understand the people implications of cost decisions before they’re made. HR needs a real voice in how technology is selected, deployed and governed. Technology teams need to build systems that reflect the organisation’s stated values, not just its short-term efficiency targets.
None of these are radical ideas, but they do require leaders to be intentional in a way that many organisations currently aren’t. Employees increasingly expect to feel genuine ownership in the work they contribute to, and that won’t come from a policy document. It requires leaders willing to share not just the vision, but the accountability that goes with it.
The window to act is now
Organisations that embed ethical values into how they function will be better placed to attract talent and hold the trust of their people through significant change. Those that don’t will find the gap between what they say and what they do becoming a liability.
The practical question every leader should be asking is: where do your organisation’s ethical commitments live? If the honest answer is primarily in a document, the work is to move them into systems, your decision-making processes, and your leadership behaviours.
Start by mapping where HR, finance and technology interact. Those are the fault lines where misalignment compounds and where shared accountability will have the greatest impact. Identify one commitment that currently exists only on paper and define what measuring it would look like in practice.
Purpose-led leadership doesn’t begin in a values statement, but in the decision to make it real.
Jeanette joined MHR in 1996 and now leads the HR team. Shortlisted twice as HR Director of the Year in two separate national business category awards, Jeanette has overall responsibility for MHR’s employees and training strategy. Passionate about employee engagement, resilience and wellbeing in the modern workplace, in addition to encouraging employees to embrace new opportunities and challenges, Jeanette is skilled and highly motivated in supporting all MHR colleagues.
- Jeanette Wheeler
