JULY 24, 2024

5 Employment Discrimination Examples & Unfair Hiring Practices to Know

 

Work is a major part of everyone’s lives. Compliance training platform provider EasyLlama.com estimates that the average person spends 90,000 hours of their lives at work. This makes it important that a person’s workplace be somewhere that they feel safe and comfortable, and to achieve this, employers like you and your business should be aware of, and avoid, employment discrimination. In this blog, we’ll look at the forms this kind of unfair workplace treatment takes, how to prevent it, and how a third-party HR service provider like Payroll Vault can help you keep your business a place of fair and equal opportunity employment.  

Defining Discrimination

 

Let’s make sure we’re clear about what is meant by employment discrimination. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission defines discrimination as treating someone differently or less favorably for some reason. Some known personal characteristics employees or job applicants may face discrimination over include race, religion, gender/sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy, nationality, disability, age, political affiliation, or genetic information. It’s important to note, however, that discrimination isn’t always hostile or negative to the recipient; favoritism is another form of discrimination, showing favor or special treatment to people for non-job-related personal characteristics.  

 

Employment discrimination can be both direct and indirect. A job applicant getting turned down or hired solely for their race, sexuality, etc. is an example of direct discrimination, while an example of indirect discrimination would be a work policy requiring people to work on certain holidays or days of observance in their religion. Employers and HR managers should be aware of both forms of discrimination and work to avoid them from occurring or addressing such instances when they’re discovered.  

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Employment discrimination can take several different forms, such as:  

 

  1. Unfair/special treatment – employees may be overburdened or given lighter workloads despite having the same position as others, have unreasonable or lax expectations put on them, have their input ignored or favored, or get overlooked for choice assignments or have exclusive access to choice assignments.  
  2. Harassment – employees may be treated with disrespect and/or hostility by their coworkers, managers, or others over their personal characteristics.  
  3. Denial of reasonable workplace change/pandering to unreasonable requests – Employees may be refused fair requests to address their needs, such as to accommodate a disability or religious practices, or made to accommodate unnecessary demands, such as changing personal aspects that don’t affect their productivity or affect their co-workers.  
  4. Inappropriate questions or disclosure of personal information – Employees may have private information distributed openly that they wanted kept confidential, and job applicants may be asked about personal qualities that have no bearing on their suitability for a position.  
  5. Retaliation – Employees who make a complaint about discrimination may face 

 

It’s important for employers and HR managers to be on the lookout for instances of discrimination like these. Even before these kinds of issues come up, there are preventative measures you can take to avoid this kind of unfair employee and applicant treatment.  

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Preventing Discrimination

 

Responsible employers and HR managers like you want to avoid employment discrimination; it can destroy employee morale, push staff to quit, affect productivity, and cost you talented job applicants. Fortunately, there are a variety of best practices you and your leadership team can implement at your business to avoid the problems that employment discrimination can cause. Here are some recommendations:  

 

  • Familiarize yourself with equal employment opportunity laws. The more you know about what is required of you by law as an employer, the better equipped you’ll be to prevent discrimination before it happens. Also, make sure whoever oversees your hiring process is familiar with these laws as well, so suitable applicants aren’t unfairly turned away.  
  • Use inclusive job descriptions that don’t exclude, or favor, applicants based on gender, race, religion, etc.  
  • Make sure your interview process for job applicants focuses on job-related questions.  
  • Provide hiring managers training sessions on avoiding bias in interviews.  
  • Develop written policies to define procedures and rules for equal, fair workplace treatment.  
  • Provide your staff with anti-discrimination training so they’ll be aware what sort of workplace behavior is expected of them.  
  • Create multiple communication channels for filing complaints, emails, direct messages, phone calls, written reports, etc. Having multiple channels that allow staff to make discreet reports of behavior they consider inappropriate will encourage honesty and candor about potential discrimination.  
  • Create an anti-retaliation program to inform staff how to avoid responding to a complaint in a way that’s considered retaliation.  
  • Conduct team-building activities to promote equality and mutual respect among your staff.  
  • Hold focus groups to encourage open, respectful discussion on topics of importance, with equal time given to everyone who wishes to speak.  
  • Train managers and supervisors in soft skills to resolve disputes between co-workers.  
  • Avoid making snap decisions regarding employee hiring and business policies; consider all applicants carefully and the ways policies may affect different types of employees.  
  • Rotate duties among employees where possible so no one is overworked or ignored.  
  • Acknowledge mistakes when they occur.  
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Third-Party Solution Providers

 

Preventing discrimination in your hiring and your employee management is a tough job. You need to be knowledgeable about what constitutes discrimination, what the law requires, what kind of practices will work best for your business. You may feel you need a helping hand to cover all your bases and ensure you comply with all the regulations and laws. That’s where a third-party HR solutions provider like Payroll Vault comes in.  

 

An HR solutions provider like Payroll Vault has a great deal of experience with helping businesses like yours with staff and hiring management. We create a customized HR solutions service to address your specific needs. A third-party provider like us allows you access to an HR expert without the expense of hiring a full-time HR consultant. You’ll also get the option to have professional HR support either virtually or on-site. We provide you with a secure online portal with resources to help make sure your hiring practices are fair and unbiased, such as sample job descriptions, interview questions, and discipline templates. Additional services we provide include a policy library, an HR self-audit, training on-demand, a weekly HR snapshot for your business, HR law alerts, and an online Q&A stream.  

 

Workplace discrimination is a problem you’re wise to avoid, but you don’t have to tackle the challenge alone. We at Payroll Vault can lend a hand with the resources and expert advice you’re looking for to maintain your business’s integrity and employment equality.  

Find Your HR Solutions at Payroll Vault

 

We welcome the opportunity to provide HR services for your small business. Our experts are ready and waiting to discuss your business’s unique HR needs. Contact Payroll Vault Santa Barbara at (805) 500-8347 or find your nearest Payroll Vault location to learn more about what we can do for your business.