Link between the Equal Employment Opportunity & Diversity in the workplace and manage them for make a better work environment

 

What is  Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity ?

What is Equal Employment opportunity (EEO)?

According to the Equal Employee Opportunity, everyone should be treated fairly when making employee decision, when making decisions to hire employee, give promotions and also the compensation. It should be prohibited to consider the characteristics like race, gender, age, religion, and disability, ensuring that all individuals have an equal chance for employment (NIKOLETTA BIKA ,2012).

As per the legal sense of Equal Employee Opportunity definition, same chances or equal opportunity means employers when hiring people, cannot use certain characteristics as reasons to hire or reject candidates or make decisions. As the protected characteristics in many countries' includes,

• Race / color

• National origin / ethnicity

• Religion

• Age

• Sex / gender / sexual orientation

• Physical or mental disability

In the EEO concept that does not guarantee that people who are in underrepresented groups will get hired. Purpose of the Equal Employee Opportunity is to make sure people will not face rejection or difficulties as they are in a protected group.

As an example, under the laws of EEO, HR or relevant manager cannot reject a candidate because they are Hindu or Muslim, Black American or white skin foreigner, or if women if they are pregnant. And also, according to the EEO law, cannot advertise job vacancies by asking the candidates of a certain age. When it comes to promotions, managers cannot promote men over a women. In the promotion it is necessarily need to consider the proven capabilities, performance and other objective criteria, rather than biases against protected groups.

If the company is unable to equal with the employment opportunity regulations, HR team will need to face the complaints, lawsuits, and fines. And also, there are will be the intangible costs associated with having a uniform instead of diverse workforce. Benefits of different perspectives and approach to the work will miss out.

Keeping the track of EEO related complaints in the organizations, as per the U.S Regulation it is require to file the EEO-1 report by some of employees. According to the U.S law, if the company have more than 100 employees or a federal contractor with more than 50 employees and with a contract worth more than $50,000, company need to file EEO-1 report.

Bona fide occupational qualification

There are some exceptions in protected characteristics in Equal Employment opportunity. In the EEO definition these exceptions are bona fide qualifications (or “genuine occupational qualifications” in the UK) for a relevant job. According to the nature of the certain jobs it may allow to make an employment decision based on one of the protected characteristics (NIKOLETTA BIKA ,2012)

Example:

In the film industry, if director is hiring an actor to play a teenager role, he needs to hire the person more closely to the age of the movie character. If he hired a person with huge gap of age it will not work. 

And also, if company make cloths for men, they need to get male models for advertising.

Another example is, when IT company is hiring a person for Software development, they need to hire people with knowledge on Software developments. If they hire people without the knowledge, it will impact to the company deliveries.

Affirmative action

When considering the specific protected characteristics, there is another special case we can see. This actually comes with the affirmative action. According to that, proactive pursuit of gender balance and diversity in an organization by supporting protected groups who are traditionally discriminated against.

Example: 

If the Software Development team contains all the white males, we can lawfully partner with associations of female. According to Europe and Asia, in order to find the great candidates through Africans or Asian engineers and they are able to assemble a team that is more represented of the society where they will be working. Always should not make final decision in hiring because of the protected characteristic of the person. For broaden the talent pool, can only attract diverse candidates.

This logic helps to extend the fully formed programs which provide support affirmative action through education. For reduce the unconscious discriminations, it is a best and effective way to introduce the training programs to prevent hidden biases of hiring teams.

Equal opportunity legislation protects the right to equal opportunities for all the employees at the company. It is aimed to prevent the discriminations and sexual harassments, promoting gender equality etc. Discrimination is that treat or propose to treat someone differently to disadvantage employees due to a personal characteristic protected by the law. Both direct and indirect discriminations are covering under Anti-discrimination legislation. Direct discrimination is when employee treated unfairly at the work place due to a protected characteristic. However, Indirect discrimination is treat the employee same as everyone else, but due to their personal attributes it puts them at an unfair disadvantage.

Al the employees at work lace has rights and responsibilities under the law of equal opportunity and anti-discrimination to prevent discrimination, harassment, vilification or victimization. 

At a National level the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has the power to enforce federal EEO and anti-discrimination legislation. If person feels that they have been discriminated against in a manner which is prohibited by the law, this people can make a complaint with the AHRC.(Adam Wyatt ,2015)

As per the Federal legislation, equal opportunities and discrimination in employment includes:

• Commonwealth laws and the state or territory laws generally overlap and prohibit the same type of discrimination, however both apply, and an exception under one may not be an exception under the other.

Below acts we can see around the world related to this and State or territory legislation and bodies that seek to enforce EEO and prevent discrimination are:

• Australian Capital Territory – Discrimination Act 1991
• Northern Territory – Anti-Discrimination Act 1996
• South Australia – Equal Opportunity Act 1984
• Tasmania – Anti-Discrimination Act 1998
• Western Australia – Equal Opportunity Act 1984.

New South Wales – Anti-Discrimination Act 1977

In New South Wales, the legislation that governs EEO is the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW). 

Under this legislation it prohibited, gender identity and sexual orientation, race of on the ground, work status, and discrimination. And also, this helps to prohibited the sexual harassments at work place as well.

Queensland – Anti-Discrimination Act 1991

EEO in the workplace and for work related matters in Queensland is protected by the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 (Qld). 

This Act also prohibits discrimination relating to paid or unpaid work on grounds of qualifications, and industrial, trade, professional or business organization membership.

Victoria – Equal Opportunity Act 201

At work, The Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic) covers discrimination in employment, sexual harassment and victimization. To protect the employees, Employers of the company need to take an obligation to get the reasonable measures like job applicants and contractors as well as people who are associated with them, such as cares, friends/ relatives from discrimination, (sexual) harassment, bullying or victimization.

Equal Employment Opportunity should be extended beyond the law

For unfairly discriminate against the people, using arbitrary and non job related criteria is the best way. As an example, considering the candidate is suitable for the job based on their degree certificate of the relevant one university. It is not illegal to hire the candidates only from the relevant university, but it certainly narrows the talent pool and reduces the chances to find the best candidates out there. Hiring teams need to make sure always consider and use the most objective criteria possible.

What is diversity?

Diversity is race, gender, age, experience, talents, skills, options like wise differences among people. That means having employees with the varied backgrounds and and perspectives, ensure the broader range of ideas and fostering creativity and innovation. (CHRISTINA PAVLOU,2012)

Diversity in the work place.

When discussing on this, we need to consider the  all the different characteristics that employees could have. Secondly we have all the below differences base on the employees,

Initially we have the protected characteristics, like race, sexual orientation, race gender and age. Secondly, we have 

• Experiences
• Talents
• Skills
• Opinions
• Personalities

Diversity and discrimination

These two words are closely tied up. That means, Diversity in the work place tied up with discrimination. Exclude people with specific characteristics by the bias and discriminatory employment practices. It makes difficulties to the organizations to achieve and maintain diversity. Many companies are taking actions due to this situation. We can see more examples in diversity in work place,

• Hiring women in the tech space
• Bringing gender diversity in sales
• Fighting gender inequality in leadership roles
• Dealing with age and gender discrimination
• Fostering an age inclusive workplace

Diversity and inclusion

In the space of recruitment and HR, above two terms are distinct. To achieve both diversity and inclusion companies could keep dedicated teams, designing anti-discrimination policies across the organization. It will ensure, all the employees will get the equal opportunities.

What is the importance of diversity in the workplace

Meaning of building a diverse company is that we don’t discriminate against protected characteristics and we are equal opportunity employers. This will help to build up the employer brand and keep employees productive with satisfy. 

When try to be unbiased when hiring and managing employees, it is not mandatory to actively aim to build diverse team. However, we can see there are some business benefits associated with diversity in the company.

Diverse companies are facing below benefits,

• Reflect societies and demographics more accurately
• Speak to a broader market
• Get more creative and profitable

Managing diversity and equality in the workplace is critical and because there remains a widespread public commitment to equality and diversity which have been judged by different attitude surveys (Colgan, Creegan, McKearney, & Wright, Citation2007; Liff, Citation1999; Liff & Cameron, Citation1997).

These both concepts are equality importance as it impacts all the members working in an organization and if it can be properly managed an organization could have the potential to improve productivity, opportunity, and competitiveness (Moore, Citation1999).

As an example, Gilbert and Ivancevich (Citation2000) describe how a multicultural organization’s focused and planned approach to managing diversity and equality and how does help increase the competitiveness compared to the pluralist organization in firms, where diversity was regarded as a public relations tool and not a core element that created competitive advantage.

Kossek, Lautsch, and Eaton (Citation2005) found that diversity in the workplace is various as per the age, social status, gender,  disability, marital status, sexual orientation, religion, personality, ethnicity, and culture like wise.And also, this will vary from on country to another.

Shen, Chanda, D’Netto and Monga (Citation2009) argue that Western countries including EU nations, multiculturalism has always been a vital element of divercity. In these countries,  racial equality appears to be the predominant issue in USA and South Africa.

As per the Shen et al. (Citation2009) suggestion, there is no comprehensive model for manage the diversity and equality in the workplace. As per the below image it draws on four aspects through which diversity and equality can be managed which are performance appraisal (Greenhaus, Parasuraman, & Wormley, Citation1990), sociocultural issues (Sandercock, Citation2000; Syed & Pio, Citation2010; Thorne & Saunders, Citation2002), organizational capabilities (Bassett-Jones, Citation2005; Sen, Citation1980), and affirmative approach (Ahmed, Citation2007; Shen et al., Citation2009). 

A framework for managing diversity and equality in the workplace.

According to the research below benefits we can see through managing the EEO and Diversity concepts,

• Improve the performance and increased productivity from employees
• Help to increase the higher employee job satisfaction and reduce the employment turn over.
• Creative and innovative thinking in the company staff.
• Improvements of staff health and wellbeing
• Reduce and lower the discrimination and harassment in the workplace.

We can use the below method to promote the EEO and Diversity at the work place,

• When recruiting new staff, use multiple avenues to get attracted the applicants from different types of applicants.
• Develop policies for work place and through a training programs implementation can promote the inclusion and cross-cultural awareness.
• To encourage open communication and promote understanding, set up metering arrangements to matching employees from different backgrounds.
• Implement compliance handling process and grievance investigation procedures to manage any issues, which will cause to the workplace bullying. 

Conclusion

Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity is a most important facts that need to be managed in the company. HR team and the management of the company should give their attention to this matter as this will impact to the goodwill of the company along with the employee satisfaction. Taking decisions without bias in recruiting candidates, promoting employees, it will reduce  the employee turn over. Work place HR teams and management need to take active steps to facilitate equal opportunity in the  workplace. If HR team is planning to hire someone with disability, they  may need to make changes to the workplace to ensure it’s accessible. According to that by managing EEO and Diversity in the work place, it is able to obtain lots of benefits and improve the job satisfactions at the company.

References:

1. Colgan, F., Creegan, C., McKearney, A., & Wright, T. (2007). Equality and diversity policies and practices at work: Lesbian, gay and bisexual workers. Equal Opportunities International, 26, 590–609.
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10. Sen, A. (1980). Equality of what? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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