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In
England government legislation plays a crucial role in the workplace,
to protect the employer's rights as well as the employees. However
the hospitality trade seems to have been overlooked when it came to
initiating such legislations in the workplace. Discrimination against
age whilst recruiting has now approached a time that is unlawful.
It has now
become essential to understand the correct recruitment procedure, a
job post should not require applicants to state their age as part of
the application. Rather it is necessary to consider the job
specifications and identify the purpose, tasks and responsibilities
of the role. When considering the kind of person you wish to appoint,
you will need to consider whether the standards for experience,
personal qualities, and qualifications that you set will be
discriminatory on grounds of age (whether older or younger). Words
such as 'energetic' or 'mature person' can be taken to be references
to people of a certain age and thus can be indirectly discriminatory.
(this was copied can it be changed around please)
In the case
of Equality Authority v Ryanair, Ryanair's recruitment practices were
scrutinised and found unlawful. It was held that a newspaper
advertisement for 'young and dynamic professional' was
discriminatory, although Ryanair argued that in that context 'young'
was intended to convey enthusiasm, ambition and 'dynamism'. The test
to be applied was not whether there was an intention to discriminate,
but whether the advertisement could be reasonably understood to
indicate an intention to exclude the 'not young'.
It is
acceptable to ask for service qualification and experience, but when
setting these you should be sure that you have good reasons why you
need employees with that level of experience. Even references to
qualifications can be deemed indirectly discriminatory, e.g. a
requirement that candidates must have at least 5 GCSEs will rule out
a large percentage of the working population who left school before
GCSEs were introduced.
Therefore
when advertising vacancies, it is sensible to use a variety of
methods, for example, young people are more likely to use career
services, job centres and newspapers, whilst older people may tend to
rely on community and business networks.
It is clear
that, as with other types of discrimination, customer preference will
not be a defence for an employer. Therefore, it would be unlawful to
advertise for a young person for a position as a presenter of a
children's television programme or an editor of a youth magazine,
because you believe that is what the viewers or readers want.
Once you opt
to use our recruitment services you can be safe in the knowledge that
we have taken the guidelines and enhanced those regarding equal
opportunities policies and a general approach to diversity to ensure
that we operate on behalf of our clients fairly and within the legal
guidelines. You can ask us for an indemnity against any claims of
discrimination, or even to agree to our code of conduct, that will
minimise risks of discrimination.
As employers
you have the right to see file notes from interviews, it is important
to keep a record of questions and responses. Remember that this right
includes handwritten comments scribbled in the margin of CV's.
Whenever possible we use a panel of interviewers, or even for you to
be accompanied at the initial interview. If there is a panel we
encourage influencing equal opportunities. We further use tracking
sheets of applicants that includes their ethnicity and why they are
rejected, so consider adding onto this sheet the different age groups
logging success rates. In addition our application forms can monitor
this by the separate equal opportunities sheet that is (or should be
attached) to the application form.
You can
understand our processes by contacting me directly on abdul.kadir@fuzzmeajob.com.
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