One of the best ways to secure your company’s future is to promote fairness and diversity in your workplace. In fact; it can be very costly if your hiring practices aren’t up to standard – there are a slew of laws that are intended to penalize businesses with discriminatory hiring practices.
For example, if you don’t have the prescribed employee benefits packages available, you could be hit with costly litigation and bad press. Because employee benefits is a complicated aspect of income security law, it’s best to have an attorney on hand – if only for consultation purposes on properly structuring what you’ll offer your employees.
Be Wary Of Unintentional Discrimination
How does this happen? Let’s take a case example: you have a special needs employee that has worked with your company for a number of years (or less; it doesn’t really matter). As part of a slate of new initiatives, one of your departments implements a new HR process that unwittingly results in the firing of that employee with special needs.
Although it might have happened based on other criteria, your company could be found liable for discrimination, since it could be argued that your new process failed to account for the special needs of that employee. Even if it gets established there were rightful grounds for that employee dismissal, the public opinion and bad press could be more devastating than the favorable court ruling.
Be Very Clear About Necessary Qualifications
This creates transparency, as well as staves off the prospect of future litigation. By making the reasons for disqualification very clear, you automatically get a leg up on all those companies that fail to let prospective candidates understand why they didn’t get the job. You want the process of hiring your employees to be EEOC-compliant, after all. Listing the reasons eliminates the possibility of your business being accused of not hiring someone on grounds of ethnicity, gender, disability, age, etc.
Promote Merit And Diversity
Sometimes these two attributes are treated as though they are at odds with each other; nothing could be further from the truth. You can find qualified people from all backgrounds for the positions you need filled, as long as your interview process is open and considerate. Make sure human resources or other department factors out race, gender, and age limitations from the hiring process. Emphasize that the desired goal is to find the best qualifying candidate; after all, merit, not skin color, is what got your business to where it is today and will determine where it’ll be tomorrow.
Can They Meet Workplace Expectations?
This requirement is really just an extension of the above. To answer it, you need a values-based approach to your hiring practices; make sure that “buzzwords” such as integrity and fair-mindedness have actual, measurable results in the office.
Make sure you also state your expectations from an employee. Make sure he or she understands the task that will be required, make sure he or she is okay with work hour monitoring you’ll do via Clockspot, for instance, and lastly, make sure he or she is willing to work overtime whenever there’s a need for it.
Look into all relevant aspects of proper employee treatment in order to avoid any potential workplace issues; this way, you’ll keep your employees satisfied and, thus, more productive and you’ll maintain your great reputation. As you continue to improve on all aspects of your business, keep in mind those above too. Your hiring practices must not be exclusionary.
