RPO: Hiring to Avoid Legal Challenges

When it comes to hiring, there are enough potential legal and regulatory challenges to keep any HR manager awake at night.

Despite this, a recent Nasdaq report says 85 percent of HR managers believe their company has proper measures in place to prevent discrimination.

This doesn’t quite line up with the fact that the same report says 61 percent of US employees have experienced or witnessed some type of workplace discrimination.

The reality is that some hiring teams may not know their recruitment process or company culture is due for an immediate overhaul.

They may not know about unconscious bias, an insidious form of discrimination that can take place even before candidates sit down for an interview. It can infect the hiring process in a way that may destroy the integrity and reputation of your company, and can have catastrophic legal repercussions.

Could your company be breaking the law by screening out quality candidates due to race, gender, age or other characteristics within protected categories?

In 2019, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago conducted a study of 108 of America’s largest companies.

The New York Times reported that in the study, applicants with varied characteristics sent 83,000 fake applications in response to entry level job postings.

Names were chosen to ensure applications arrived in pairs, with one bearing a more traditional white name, like Jake or Molly, and the other with a similar background but a more distinctive Black name, like DeShawn or Imani.

For every 1,000 applications received, researchers found that white candidates got about 250 responses, compared with about 230 for Black candidates.

If you think your company is beyond this type of archaic and harmful recruitment practice, it’s worth noting that most of the companies in the study can be found in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 list.

These are companies with serious in-house HR talent. Entire HR departments.

As with personal shortcomings, it can be difficult to identify weaknesses when we are too close to the problem.

That’s why outsourced talent can be a tremendous help in shining a light on practices that could destroy your reputation and result in devastating legal issues.

Experience can be a double-edge sword: seasoned HR professionals may offer decades of know-how when it comes to onboarding.

But they may not be up to speed on training, trends, and compliance around legal and regulatory issues that have become top of mind in recent years, including data protection and privacy.

RPO can provide the critical expertise needed to navigate these challenges.

A good RPO partner will:

1. Understand General Data Protection Regulation and issues around background checks and storing or disseminating a candidate’s personal information to ensure compliance with current privacy laws.

2. Use policies and procedures designed to prevent discrimination when sourcing candidates, and throughout the entire recruitment and onboarding process.

3. Work with your team to implement policies tailored to your industry and ensure a fair and efficient hiring process.

4. Offer in-house training on discrimination laws, how to implement systems that monitor and report discrimination, and carry out regular audits to ensure compliance.

5. Act as a sounding board for your team, answering questions around best practices, and providing direction where compliance is in question.

You may have questions now. Don’t wait until an outdated policy or team member causes a full-blown legal challenge that damages your reputation, perhaps irreparably.