Every organization has its specific way of recruiting new employees. One organization might select its employees through the internet while another might conduct face to face interviews. The article measuring adverse impact in employee selection decisions. In Practitioner's Guide to Legal Issues in Organizations by Dunleavy, Morris, & Howard (2015) broadly discusses the relationship between the terms employee recruitment, adverse impact, and disparate treatment. The article argues that adverse impact and disparate treatment are among the biggest problems faced by possible employers when looking for qualified employees. The article also discusses the specific guidelines that are used to recruit workers.
Purpose
The primary purpose of this article is to give out a clear understanding of the terms adverse impact and disparate treatment to the reader. This article also mentions the differences between these two terms (Dunleavy, Morris, & Howard, 2015). Discrimination features prominently in the article. Prospective employees are discriminated against based on their sex, racial background, and through the posts, they make on social media platforms. Employers search for any content that the individual might have posted online that is controversial. They may discriminate against such an employee and deny him a job. These employers may also Google the name of the individual and find that a person with the same name may have been involved in criminal activity in the past and went to jail. They may then deny the individual sharing the name with the criminal the job. Similarly, an employer may deny an individual employment because of his race (Dunleavy, Morris, & Howard, 2015). People from the African American race are more discriminated when applying for jobs because they are considered unqualified for the job. Additionally, some employers might discriminate against them because of the sex of the individual. The majority of companies believe that employing women will be more costly for the organization since they must be given maternity leave.
Summary
The examples of employment-related discrimination mentioned above are all types of adverse impact discrimination. Adverse impact discrimination is illegal, and employers who are found guilty of this crime might face a possible jail time. Most of the employers do not know that their actions have a direct disparate impact on the people who apply for the job. For example, if the application says that applicants who are male are advised to apply for the job, then female candidates might be discouraged in applying for the job vacancy.
The adverse impact can be defined as any decision that may have a negative effect on a selected group of people (Reinsch, Ross, & Hietapelto, 2016). Regarding employment, it refers to the fact that an organization may adopt a different way of recruiting its employees which have a predominantly negative effect on particular groups of people who apply for the job. Adverse impact also affects the promotion process.
This article gives a brief history of how disparate impact came into being. In 1964, the government through the law supported the segregation of African Americans. African Americans were only supposed to apply for manual jobs which paid very little. The rest of the good jobs were left to the white people. Disparate treatment may, therefore, be defined as any method used by the employer to exclude or discriminate against an individual based on his race, religion or country of origin.
The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures are also summarized in the article. The guidelines were created for employers to use a standard procedure for selecting new employees. These guidelines were also created for employers to have a better understanding of what disparate treatment and adverse impact is (Giumetti, Schroeder, & Switzer III, 2015). After having understood these two terms, every employer is advised to avoid engaging in them. These guidelines also have a method in which adverse impact can be calculated. Adverse effect is calculated in four major steps:
The employer should calculate the number of people selected from every group and get the percentage of each selected group from the total number of applicants.
Secondly, the group with the most recruitment should be identified.
Ratios of the other groups and the most recruited group should be calculated
Lastly, the employer should calculate whether any group’s selection rate is less than eighty percent of the total number of individuals from the most selected group.
Recommendations
The article finalizes its argument that adverse impact and disparate treatment is wrong by giving the following recommendations so that this problem is avoided in future.
The employer should not assume the sex of an applicant if it has not been indicated in the application
candidates who apply for a job more than once should only be counted once
Successful applicants for the job should be counted as part of the selected group
The article also mentions the eighty percent method of checking adverse impact as inappropriate. It proposes that more work should be done to check whether the method is useful.
Impact of Adverse impact and disparate treatment
One group of people may remain unemployed and be frustrated
Adverse Impact and Disparate Treatment encourage corruption
Some of the most qualified employees may be left out in the selection process.
Justification of guidelines
Internal and external applicants of jobs should be put together so that fairness is encouraged. This will ensure that employees work hard and are selected on merit and not on the fact that they already work there.
Applicants should be given a specific serial number to prevent them from applying for the job twice. This will ensure that all the candidates who are selected are only counted once.
The geographic locations of the applicants should be considered when selecting employees. Only the most qualified individuals should be selected. This will ensure that there is fairness in the selection process.
In conclusion, I believe that the article gives strong reasons as to why recruitment procedures should be more transparent. If the government were to put in stricter measures on employers, then the process of recruitment would be more genuine only recruiting the most qualified people (Reinsch, Ross, & Hietapelto, 2016).
References
Dunleavy, E., Morris, S., & Howard, E. (2015). Measuring adverse impact in employee selection decisions. In Practitioner's Guide to Legal Issues in Organizations (pp. 1-26). Springer International Publishing.
Giumetti, G. W., Schroeder, A. N., & Switzer III, F. S. (2015). Forced distribution rating systems: When does “rank and yank” lead to adverse impact?. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(1), 180.
Reinsch, R. W., Ross, W. H., & Hietapelto, A. B. (2016). EMPLOYER'S USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN EMPLOYMENT DECISIONS: RISK OF DISCRIMINATION LAWSUITS. Current Topics in Management, 18.
