Why did board-level HR executives not query the excessive salaries of top bankers, and will they now have the courage to start? asks Gerald Flynn

A LOT of chickens have come home to roost with a vengeance in the financial institutions over the past few weeks. But where were the "responsible" and "ethical" senior managers in Ireland who might have queried the "greed is good" dogma which has seen top bank and building society chiefs take millions of euro in salaries and bonuses in recent years?

Traditionally, the senior management with the corporate social responsibility remit have been in HR, even though they usually only get to sup at second-tier troughs in banking, investment houses and hedge funds.

These senior HR managers have been left clutching the "moral compass" while their institutions come tumbling down. Why, apparently, did no executive board-level HR people query salaries which were soaring from 10 to 50 times what the ordinary bank employee was earning?

There is every likelihood that those charged with corporate governance, regulation and ethical standards will suffer in public perceptions rather than the "fat cats" who will move on to their yachts and non-executive boardroom appointments with their friends.

Even Ibec and Ictu, in the new proposed pay deal, have jointly suggested a clause so that employer bodies "as a matter of policy" would ask members to observe pay moderation at the top although, of course, it cannot be enforced.

I was once chatting with the HR director of a bank and for some personal amusement asked him whether his bank had a large post room. He politely responded it was fairly large and queried why I wanted to know.

I said that I had attended many shareholder annual meetings and at each one the chairman ritually justified the soaring salaries of the CEO and CFO on the basis that there was a global war for talent and so the remuneration committee had to base salaries and incentives on international trends.

So I wondered how many job offers came in for the top layer of management each week from Hong Kong, Frankfurt, London, Tokyo or New York. The HR director laughed as he said: "Who'd have them?"

That person moved on shortly afterwards, but his successors may face questions as to why they lacked the professional courage to question excessive salaries and bonuses based on short-term shareholder value which was much more a factor of low interest rates, globally-driven trade growth and regional property speculative bubbles, rather than the skills of overpaid top management.

Far from a global market for top talent, if you look at most of the chiefs of Irish institutions, they are "company lifers" with little international experience. The HR chiefs can hide behind remuneration committees which mostly exclude executive directors. Recently, a retired HR director, Nicholas Blake noted that "the silence to date by senior HR practitioners in this awkward issue is deafening - their opinions would certainly be interesting to hear".

The reputations of senior bankers and finance chiefs are in tatters. The HR people can join them, or show they are men and women of moral substance. The next few weeks will be telling.

Gerald Flynn is an employment specialist with Align Management Solutions in Dublin. gflynn@alignmanagement.net.