How to Convince Leaders to Do the Right Thing

“Right” and “wrong” can seem frustratingly up for debate in conversations with workplace decision-makers. Not everyone within your sphere of influence may agree on what it means to “do the right thing.”

For example, people may disagree about whether the right thing for shareholders is the right thing to do for customers, and whether the right thing for customers is the right thing for employees, and so on.

Monica Cummings, HR Business Partner at BambooHR, calls this trifecta a “three-legged stool” that the most successful HR pros find a way to balance.

“If we focused solely on our people and ignored the business, imagine if then we made business decisions that compromised our ability to be profitable,” says Monica. “At the same time, if we focused solely on the business and ignored the people, we’d be in a true pickle because people are what makes this all possible and fuels our ability to be successful.”

So what happens when the right thing for one group is clearly the wrong thing for another, but you have a leader pushing for it?

It’s an all-too-common scenario for HR professionals trying to balance this three-legged stool of obligation to people, leaders, and the org. But HR isn’t about confrontation or virtue-policing; it’s about acting with courage, clarity, and strategy when “doing the right thing" isn’t the fastest, easiest, or most popular option.

In this piece, we’ll discuss how you can gain or use your influence as an HR pro within your organization to help decision-makers correct or clarify a course of action you don’t agree with, such as:

• Your CEO is considering layoffs, but the data doesn’t back the decision.
• Leadership wants to quietly exit a problematic manager instead of addressing systemic culture issues that need to change.
• You’re being asked to “soften” a message that employees deserve to hear clearly.

You have the numbers, the employee feedback, and the expertise behind your input, but it feels like no one’s listening. With insights from BambooHR’s own HRBP team, here’s how to make your voice heard and your message convincing.

The HR pro dilemma

The case for HR as a strategic partner in the boardroom has never been stronger, but as a department, HR still faces pushback and stigma.

HR has more access to relevant business data than ever before, such as the compounding business costs of turnover and employee dissatisfaction, but they’re often sidelined by incorrect assumptions about their role or told to “stay in their lane.”

Meanwhile, they’re also expected to do any or all of the following:

• Be the compliance police
• Guide and protect company culture
• Carry out executive decisions (sometimes without any opportunity to give input)

HR is too often underestimated as a strategic partner, especially when they’re given marching orders that are misaligned with company values and likely to produce long-term negative effects.

Misalignment shows up in a number of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. For example:

• Leadership ignoring employee survey data
• Feedback about a toxic manager being dismissed as “personality conflict”
• Culture-building initiatives getting deprioritized during cost-cutting cycles
• Asking HR to present decisions as collaborative when they weren’t

The tension in these situations can feel overwhelming and frustrating. Workplace data continues to paint a story that smart business leaders are paying attention to: How your employees feel about your workplace is directly related to your performance and profitability. Yet more employees than you may realize are having regular negative workplace experiences:

• 53% of people say their boss influenced their decision to leave a company
• 59% fear retaliation when giving feedback
• 36% have had managers play favorites

When HR raises a red flag and leadership pushes forward anyway, the message seems clear: Results first, culture later. But HR knows that a defined and meaningful company culture isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s crucial organizational infrastructure.

Why conviction is hard but necessary

One of BambooHR’s values is Do the Right Thing. We define that as:

• Choosing the harder right over the easier wrong
• Setting aside biases and treating people well no matter what
• Celebrating each other, because people perform better when they feel appreciated
• Making thoughtful, deliberate, and principled decisions

But no organization’s actions, like no individual’s, are totally aligned with their values 100% of the time, and that’s because it’s hard. Upholding values can sometimes cost you time, money, ego, or comfort.

And this is what makes having conviction in HR particularly exhausting because it’s within your job description to stand at the intersection of principle and the pressure to grow, grow, grow.

So where does that leave you when the following is true?

• You report to the same leaders you’re challenging.
• Your role depends on trust and access.
• You don’t want to be labeled “difficult.”
• You may worry about retaliation or career impact.

But silence has a cost, too. When HR doesn’t speak up, toxic behavior shapes the culture of your workplace for the worse.

“Company culture is what you reward and recognize minus the worst behaviors you tolerate,” says Kelsey Tarp, Director of HR Business Partners at BambooHR. “If a leader is willing to tolerate things that are not okay, how do we make sure their whole line of leadership has visibility into that decision?”

Holding everyone across the org chart accountable takes conviction, but conviction isn’t about storming into a boardroom with accusations. It’s about:

• Clarity: Knowing what your organization stands for, and what it doesn’t
• Courage: Raising concerns respectfully and persistently
• Care: Wanting the company to succeed long-term, not just survive the quarter

When HR uses their voice to advocate for ethical action, they risk being labeled as difficult, but good leaders see that it’s not coming from a place of opposition. It’s loyalty to the company’s future––because employee trust, once lost, is painfully expensive to rebuild.

Strategies for influencing leadership

"Relationships are foundational,” says Cynthia Doi, Principal HR Business Partner at BambooHR. “If you don't have a relationship with the business leader you support, you will not get anywhere, especially in the HRBP space. The relationship gives you a seat at the table, and if you don’t have that, that's really what you need to focus on first.”

Influence rarely starts in a crisis or in a high-stakes moment of disagreement.

If you want to convince leaders to do the right thing when it matters most, you need credibility long before that moment arrives.

Here’s how to build it.

1. Translate culture into business language

Executives think in terms of risk, growth, and performance. If culture conversations stay abstract, culture initiatives get deprioritized.

Instead of saying, “Morale is low,” say:

• “Our engagement scores dropped X% in departments with the highest voluntary turnover.”
• “Replacing this team would cost approximately $X in recruiting and onboarding.”
• “High performers in this function are at risk based on exit feedback.”

“Tie things to what matters to your leader,” says Kelsey. “If…something happens that is directly in conflict with [what they care about], those are the situations where you're going to have the fastest insight to action.”

For example, if your leader is very interested in customer satisfaction, but not so concerned with employee engagement, tying engagement to the customer experience will be more effective than focusing on the state of morale. When you connect culture to measurable outcomes in the areas leaders care about, such as productivity, retention, reputation, and employer brand, you shift from emotional appeal to strategic argument.

2. Leverage benchmarking data

If a picture is worth a thousand words, benchmarking data is worth a thousand I-told-you-sos.

Say your turnover rate is above industry norms or your engagement scores trail competitors—that comparison reframes the conversation into one of competitive urgency.

When leaders see that peer organizations are outperforming theirs in key ways, it becomes harder to dismiss internal issues as temporary discomforts that will eventually work themselves out. They’re actually competitive disadvantages that beg immediate strategic intervention.

3. Anticipate business concerns

If leadership proposes layoffs, ask:

• “How will this impact team productivity over the next 6 to 12 months?”
• “Have we considered the cost of re-hiring or rebuilding these roles if business rebounds faster than expected?”
• “What’s the business problem we’re solving with layoffs? Are there other options we haven’t explored yet?”

These questions aren’t meant to be confrontational, and they shouldn’t be delivered as such. They’re simply questions someone should be asking, and HR is in the perfect position to ask it.

As an HR pro, you have the potential to be so much more than a compliance checkpoint, and when you guide leaders to examine the long-term consequences of decisions before they’re made, you’re stress-testing action, not blocking it.

“You’re just making sure leaders have all the facts,” says Vanessa Brulotte, Employee Relations Partner at BambooHR. “I go back to the SBI framework—situation, behavior, impact. What’s the impact of their decisions? ‘Okay, you want to do this thing, but guess what? That's actually a legal risk.’ It’s helping them understand the impact and asking, ‘Do you stand by that?’ Because sometimes, when you shine a light on the impact of what they do, it helps them understand the full picture."

4. Lead with data, not judgment

It’s natural to frame ethical concerns in moral language: “This isn’t right,” or, “This goes against our values.”

But while those statements may be true, they won’t be as compelling as statements that focus on impact and create space for dialogue, such as:

• “Our employee survey shows that trust in leadership declined after the last reorg. If we move forward without clear communication, we risk compounding that.”
• “Exit interviews consistently mention lack of transparency as a reason for leaving.”
• “This approach may create legal exposure under [relevant regulation].”

Remember: Leaders may not see the same signals you do. HR often has access to survey results, exit interviews, complaint trends, and engagement metrics others overlook.

Compliance as your ally

Ethical arguments become stronger when grounded in compliance realities, including the sometimes high-profile fallout and penalties of non-compliance.

You don’t need to recite every statute to be convincing, but understanding key compliance frameworks—such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (enforced by the EEOC), wage and hour laws, and anti-retaliation protections—equips you to speak confidently about risk.

For example:

• Layoff decisions that disproportionately affect protected groups can trigger legal scrutiny.
• Poor documentation or performance reviews that are perceived as “unfair” add credibility to retaliation claims.
• Inconsistent policy enforcement increases vulnerability.

It’s important to wield compliance as another lens to use when stress-testing a decision, not as a threat. When you say, “We need to consider the potential exposure here,” you’re not being dramatic. You’re doing your job. And when tension feels high, returning to legal and ethical frameworks can ground the conversation in shared responsibility.

When influence fails, what now?

Meaningful engagement arrives and thrives for employees when they see the values they signed up for emulated by their leaders. For HR, invoking shared organizational values during do-the-right-thing conversations is only as effective as the sincerity of leaders’ allegiance to said values.

So, “how are you making sure you’re hiring and retaining leaders who are aligned to the company’s values?,” asks Kelsey.

Intentional hiring practices are your first line of defense when creating a workplace culture primed to respect HR’s influence during critical moments. But even the most strategic and influential HR professionals won’t win every argument with decision-makers. Sometimes leadership moves forward despite your objections, cost-cutting outweighs caution, and culture takes a back seat.

This is often where the emotional weight of HR becomes the most real: You may feel frustrated, complicit, disillusioned, powerless.

You don’t have to agree with leadership 100% of the time to do your job, but it’s important to recognize when moving forward compromises your professional integrity and credibility.

For example, the best course of individual action may be to walk away from a situation or organization, or even escalating, if you’re asked to do any of the following:

• Participate in discrimination or retaliation
• Falsify documentation
• Participate in clear and preventable harm to employees

Values-based decision-making applies to leaders and HR, and if you raise ethical concerns that are dismissed without consideration, you may be looking at a critical misalignment. If a situation crosses into illegality or clear harm, external reporting channels, legal counsel, or even reevaluating your role may become necessary.

You can’t always change a leader’s decision or its outcome, but you can protect your integrity.

How to build courage and support

When your positions are backed by data, it’s easier to have the courage of your convictions, so start collecting data as soon as possible. This includes:

• Employee satisfaction scores
• Engagement surveys
• Performance management data
• Peer feedback
• Exit interviews

When you can trace repeating patterns across multiple data sources, the case you’re making will become harder to ignore.

Find your community

Internally, look for cross-functional alignment with like-minded leaders as well as partners in finance and legal who are as interested in evaluating long-term costs and risk as you are.

Externally, connect with mentors, professional associations, or trusted peer networks for new perspectives, gut-checks, validation, and reassurance.

There’s courage in community. You’re not the only one wrestling with these dilemmas, and courage and confidence grows as you connect and learn from others who have faced and survived similar crossroads.

Do the right thing—even when it’s hard

If the path of least resistance always led to the “right thing,” we wouldn’t need HR departments, but that will likely never be the case.

Always choosing the right path is hard, but HR isn’t just about blowing the compliance whistle and enforcing policy whenever anyone steps out of line. As an HR pro, you’re shaping the employee experience and safeguarding the dignity of the organization’s mission. You’re also playing a crucial role in building an institution that will outlast individual leaders.

Prepare for progress to be incremental. You may need to raise the same concern more than once, present data in multiple formats, or adjust your framing, but when you claim the role of strategic partner and continue to advocate for what’s right, you don’t just earn a seat at the table, you redefine what leadership looks like.