Recruitment: Legal Framework and Issues

• Course Title: Recruitment and Selection
• Second Semester, School Year 2023-2024

Legal Framework of Recruitment

• Recruitment laws ensure fair job access, not to limit employer choice.
• New EU legislation protects minority groups, addressing previously unpunished discrimination.
• The Transsexual Directive in Europe outlaws discrimination against transsexuals during any stage of gender reassignment within EU member countries.
• The EC Framework Directive impacts national law by prohibiting discrimination based on religion, belief, sexual orientation, and age.

Potential Issues in Recruitment

• The most common problem during recruitment is applicant discrimination.
• Discrimination can occur deliberately or unintentionally.
• Direct discrimination: treating individuals or groups less favorably due to characteristics like race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.
• Indirect discrimination: setting requirements or conditions that disproportionately disadvantage a particular group.
• Indirect discrimination must not be justifiable based on merit, ability, or other objective criteria.

Importance of Good Practices

• Laws establish parameters and protect against unfairness.
• Businesses adopt equal opportunity practices to pursue commercial interests alongside diversity.
• Good practices enhance creativity and problem-solving by valuing diverse ideas.
• Morale and motivation increases when employees perceive recruitment based on merit.
• Recruitment focused on merit reduces employee turnover and recruitment costs.
• Customer service improves as a greater empathy develops.
• Good reputation is enhanced as the customer base grows.
• Good practices reduce prosecution risks under equal opportunities laws, avoiding fines, costs, and negative publicity.

Ensuring Equal Opportunities

• Compliance: Ensure the organization's policy complies with current legislation and best practices.
• Involvement: Be personally involved in the recruitment and selection process at every stage.
• Consistency: Maintain consistency throughout the process.
• Training: Ensure everyone understands their roles and is trained in key skills, especially interviewing.
• Access: Widen access to jobs by collaborating with local community groups and schools.
• Flexibility: Offer flexible working arrangements.
• Support: Review local childcare options to attract diverse candidates.
• Recruitment: Consider alternate recruitment methods that are not CVs and interviews.
• Positive Action: Encourage applications from underrepresented groups, focusing on merit.
• Discrimination: Only discriminate based on merit, capability, and performance.

Essential Policy Elements

• Include a purpose/statement of intent/commitment
• Define objectives.
• Define discrimination or victimization.
• Explain the policy's importance to the organization, people, and community.
• Designate responsibility for the policy to a senior level.
• Define the scope of the policy.
• Scope includes vacancy advertising, recruitment and selection, promotion, and training.

Equal Opportunities in Recruitment: Ageism

• A report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) indicates ageism is evident in recruitment.
• The Government's Code of Practice on Age Diversity in Employment from 1999 aimed to reduce age discrimination.
• 1 in 8 workers report discouragement from applying due to age-related ad content.
• Recruitment advertisements may contain an upper age range or imply a need for younger applicants.

Alternatives to External Recruitment: Exit Interviews

• Alternatives to external recruitment can be seen through exit interviews
• Questions to ask during an exit interview:
• Do day-to-day work activities align with the job description?
• Do internal or external pressures cause concentration on unimportant tasks?
• How could work tasks be better organized?
• Could job elements be done differently, such as with technology?
• Were there difficulties with the team?

Downsizing

• Downsizing eliminates large numbers of staff to enhance organizational competitiveness.
• Downsizing's main goal is to promote future competitiveness, meeting four objectives:
• Cutting costs by reducing labor expenses
• Replacing labor with technology, such as automating outdated factories to reduce workload.
• Mergers and acquisitions consolidate, eliminating redundant bureaucratic overhead and staff like managers.
• Relocating activities to more economical locations.
• Moving from the US Northeast and Midwest to the South and West, or international moves to countries with lower wages, like Mexico, India, and China.

Alternatives to Downsizing

• Reducing hours due to downsizing limitations.
• This is more equitable during a demand slump.
• Reducing work hours is cheaper than layoffs because it avoids severance pay.
• Restoring hours is easier, rather than hiring after downsizing.
• Early-retirement programs can reduce labor surplus.
• Many baby boomers, particularly women, do not intend on retiring.
• Shift from early- to phased-retirement programs.
• Phased-retirement: benefit from older workers' experience.
• Phased-retirement: allows older employees economic and psychological benefits.
• Hiring temporary/contract workers is the most widespread method to eliminate a labor shortage.
• Employers pay an agency that then pays the temporary worker.
• Employers directly contract with specific professionals to get a necessary service.

Profiling the Role

• The right people in place contribute fully to department and business objectives.
• There is a need for teamwork with creativity and flair.
• Desirable people would bring new skills and enthusiasm.
• Recruiting the right team requires knowing exactly what the job and person need.
• Review methods to analyzing a job
• Identifying purpose of a job description and person specification
• Explore what is meant by recruiting on competence

Job Analysis

• A job analysis is a method for determining what is required to perform a job efficiently and effectively.
• External pressures force organizations to adapt.
• People's roles may become irrelevant to changing demands.
• Recruiting without job analysis impacts skills.
• A job analysis assesses future requirements, rather than relying on outdated information.
• The information obtained can be used to amend the job description and person specification.
• It ensures recruitment is based on current data.
• it makes it easier to identify skills and abilities

Job Analysis: Software Developer Example

• Highlight programming languages and software development as key requirements.
• Key skills include methodologies and specific technologies.
• Targets recruit process that possess prerequiste technical skills.
• Involve yourself at the very least and the jobholder.
• Involve people who may be affected by the job - business, customers, suppliers etc.
• Their views help improve the service.

Involve Expertise

• Include those within similar activities if the job is technical/complex.
• If a human resource function available, it should be involved.
• It takes lead as staff are trained techniques.
• Job analysis is about what the role is all about and how it helps the organization.
• Therefore analysis identifies - the purpose of the role, tasks and responsibilities needed, skills, knowledge and abilities needed for performance, targets to measure performance.

Job Analysis Methodology

• Ensure that the analysis conducted is not influenced by opinions of the jobholder.
• Information based on the work of Pearn and Kandola (1993).
• Observation - which is the easiest technique, involving recording tasks by the jobholder and highlighting difficulty.
• Diaries and logs - involves the jobholder recording what they do (helpful in management) but subjectivity is a factor.
• Critical incident technique - collection about critical incidents (success and failure).
• Repertory grid - allows identification of manager and supervisor on good/poor performance using cards.
• Checklist/inventories - a list of tasks that the jobholder will perform/rank.

Job Descriptions and Person Specifications

• At the core of the recruitment and selection: the job description and person specification.
• Job Description - states the purpose and conditions of job.
• Employee Specification - outlines the best abilities and qualities to fit the job.
• A job description provides an exact specification of recruitment.
• It specifies exactly what the job involves after thorugh role analysis.
• Used as the basis of advertising and sent to candidates requiring info.
• If accurate, it presents a clear job picture.

Why a Person Specification Is Iimortant

• Provides evidence that the selection process is fair.
• Good for marketing, shortlisting and will make selection easier.
• Makes the process objective by being clear of the sought qualities/abilities.
• A good job description is writing will contain
  • Job Title
  • Location/Areas of Business
  • The job grade -The overall purpose of job -The title of the person to whom the job is reported
  • The title of employees who report to job -Percentage weighting -Other info -Date of issue

Checklist for Job Description

• Checklist includes:
• Do not overstate the role importance.
• Make sure bias is inexistent in terms of gender/age/discrimination.
• Avoid "Sexiest Language".
• Ensure language is cleared and easily understood.
• DO NOT include jargon, acronyms or abbreviations.
• Avoid age range.
• Make sure audience can easily understand it.

Writing a Person specification

• The person specification is derived from the job description.
• Consider putting together criteria against you judge candidates' suitability.
• Overly specific criteria can deter better candidates.
• Developed with early models in mind, with adjustments to equal opportunities practice.
• The most common specifications:
  • Skills need (teamwork etc.) -Knowledge (work with computers and handle reports) -Experience (previous jobs, qualification etc.,) -Special Requirements (Shift work/valid license)
  • Bear in mind your experience from work.

Checklist for putting together person specification

• Directly related to the job description. -Ability-based in line with requirements of the role -Realistic in term of how factors contribute. -Clearly defined -Everyone must be involved in process -Justifiable based on how the criteria are defined.