The Hiring Process and Managing a Diverse Workforce - Research Paper Example

The hiring Process and Managing a Diverse Work Force College: The hiring Process and Managing a Diverse Work Force In the contemporary work environment, the issues of diversity management has attracted a lot of attention in human resource management as employers seek to consider issue of culture, abilities, race and religion during recruitment exercises. Furthermore, the government has put laws to ensure that the organization consider workforce diversities to give every citizen equal rights within the employment sector. From a personal experience, diversity management in the hiring process is essential in avoiding cases of discrimination as well as conflicts that have adverse effects on the organizational performance and operation. Besides, managing a diverse workforce helps to create harmony among the employees and brings about the right organizational culture essential in bringing the employees on board the management plan. In my work environment, the human resource managers pay attention to issues of diversity right from the employee selection stage to employee appraisal. This explains why the company has experienced less internal conflict and no friction with the legal bodies responsible for regulating organizational behavior. Therefore, organizations that abide by government regulation in their employment practices are more likely to succeed than those that ignore such legal requirements. In our organization, the marketing officer is among those that possess in appointing the right person for the task. Evidently, a number of procedures of recruitment are available for such a position. The first option is internal recruitment, in which the company appoints someone from the organization. In this method, one may avoid discrimination by engaging a transparent mode employee promotion and providing equal opportunity for promotion (Slater, 2004). Alternatively, the human resource managers may advertise the position in the public domain, which will give opportunity to every citizen to apply. Citing the job requirements and subjecting each applicant to the same tests will ensure there are no incidences of discrimination. The last option would be using a recruitment agency to hire a marketing officer on the behalf of the company. This process reduces discrimination by ensuring the process is independent and that internal organization workers cannot introduce biasness into the process. Therefore, the organizational managers do not interfere with the recruitment process by selecting candidates that they have affiliation with such as relatives or even friends (Krieger, 2013). For effective recruitment, the human resource managers must consider issues of discrimination by providing potential candidates for the position with equal opportunities as stated by the equal opportunities act regulations. The effort of human resource management to curb issues of employee bias should start right from the job application process. To begin with, the employer should provide clear information regarding the job requirements in terms of skills, experiences, abilities. Clarity is one way of ensuring the entire process is conducted with high level of transparency (Krieger, 2013). More so, it ensures that only candidates who qualify for the positions apply for the position. In this case, candidates should present their certificates, resumes and other credentials that show their grades, working experience and other achievements they have attained. To ensure there is fairness, the human resource managers should review every application process and note those candidates that attain the necessary requirements for the job. At this stage, it is possible for the employer to eliminate those who do not meet the threshold requirements for the job. Next, the human resource managers may require subjecting the candidates to an oral to measure the social aspect of the employees due to the nature of the marketing officer position. At this stage, one may consider the ability of the candidates to communicate fluently, understand the nature of the job. Since, the organization needs to fill only one gap, the final candidate should be one who satisfies best the requirements for the job (Slater, 2004). Providing a fair chance for all candidates would reduce cases of discrimination within the organization. In the recruitment process, the human resource managers must be aware that there is likelihood that charges of discrimination may arise after the process is completed. Bearing this in mind, they need to find strategies to justify the way they ended up with the right candidate (Paludi, 2012). The first step should be to ensure that they advertise the job within a national paper to ensure that information is available to every person and that the job requirements are stated clearly. This will help to show that the selected candidate matches the job position requirements and was much better than the others. Next, the employer should keep records of the applicants to ensure that they can use such information when a charge is pressed against them. Thirdly, it would be crucial to record the reason behind the failure of each candidate to be able to verify the integrity of the selection committee. From here, the managers should document every recruitment procedure and the activities engaged and the results of every candidate (Krieger, 2013). Lastly, in case of any tests, the test results for each candidate must be recorded and stored to ensure that they can produce them when issues of discrimination arise. Following these procedures will help the human resource to justify their selection process and avoid legal implications. In the contemporary work environment, background checks refers to the activities that human resource managers engage to dig extra information about a candidate, other than one that they provide within their documents. For the position of a marketing officer, it would be vital to make past employment history of the candidates (Krieger, 2013). The employment history of an employee helps to understand why an employee left their job and how this may affect the organization. For instance, an employee who was dismissed for underperformance may not be ideal for the company. Secondly, the company must scrutinize the candidates for their criminal records to ensure that they employ employees with high standards of conduct. Employees with criminal records are likely to tarnish the image of the company, which may affect its optimal performance. Thirdly, the human resource management should make an effort to investigate the candidate’s referees by contacting them and asking about their character. Also, the referees should people who a credible and who can provide reliable information regarding the candidate. This is crucial due to increase in cases when candidates use their friends as referees hence earning unworthy credit from them (Paludi, 2012). From this perspective, background checks will inform the recruitment team and facilitate their decision making process as they seek to obtain the best candidate for the marketing officer vacancy. Besides the background checks, employment tests pay an important role in the selection decision making process. One important check would be a medical test applied to all the potential candidates. A medical test allows the human resource managers to detect any illnesses may affect the performance of the employee in the marketing officer position. For instance, a candidate who becomes ill often may not be suited for such a busy position that requires low rate of absenteeism. Secondly, an intelligence test would be crucial for this position since it would be essential to measure the convincing power of the candidates as they prepare to work in a marketing position (Paludi, 2012). Every marketing officer should be able to convincingly communicate the organizational goals and attract the public to purchase their products. A computer skills test would be crucial to test the IT proficiencies of the candidates. In the internet era, marketing officers need to have a strong online presence where they can engage with the online customers. Therefore, the computer proficiency of the employees has a direct impact on the ability to perform effectively within the position. Employment test are important tools to enhance the selection procedures in human resource management. Another to avoid friction with the employment laws is to adopt a transparent employment as well as appraisal policy. All employees must understand the organizational promotional criteria within the organization as they strive to rise within the corporate hierarchy. In the marketing position, it would be crucial to adopt a gender-sensitive policy by ensuring that a minimum of a third of available positions should be filled with females. This is in tandem with equal employment laws that prohibits female discrimination. Secondly, the organizational remuneration should be equal for all employees holding the same positions. Evidently, gender-wage gap is an important issue in employment behavior that the government has prohibited (Krieger, 2013). For instance, paying females lower salaries than males who occupy the same position is against the law. On promotion, the organization should promote the employees depending on their performance, commitment, and personal achievements (Paludi, 2012). Therefore, the organization needs to design measurement standards to help measures employees’ performance. Also, assessing soft skills such as problem solving, leadership qualities as well as personal traits is crucial in designing the promotion criteria. However, managers should anticipate the problem of fairness while promoting female and male employees. Notably, soft skills such as boldness are gender biased and may result to discrimination against females. On this ground, managers should design different criteria for measuring female soft skills to ensure that they provide equal promotion opportunity for every employee. A transparent and gender-sensitive hiring and promotional policy would uphold ethical behavior within the organization. Disabilities and religious differences are sensitive diversity issues that must considered while recruiting. The disabilities Act requires that all people with disabilities be provided with equal chances of acquiring a job position (Krieger, 2013). Therefore, the management should base its hiring procedure on merit rather than physical abilities. For instance, the organization should set lower expectations for the disabled as one way of accommodating them in the organization. The disabled should be provided with positions that suit them and where their disability will not affect their working. Secondly, equal opportunity laws require that every person be provided with a fair chance for a job irrespective of their religious affiliations. In this note, the hiring process should not use the religion of a person as a selection requirement while recruiting their employees. The organization should seek to accommodate people from all religions within the organization. However, there are legal cases where the management may fail to select such persons. These includes when a person’s disability may affect their performance for a specific job position. For instance is a person who is dumb for a marketing position. While such a person may be provided with a fair chance, their disability will limit their role of business process communication and hence reduce their performance (Slater, 2004). Therefore, it is legal for an organization to deny such a person an opportunity as their weakness may affect the organization negatively. Secondly, when the religious affiliation of a person may affect their performance, it is possible to deny them such as opportunity. For instance, if a Catholic church requires an accountant who will work within the church, it is impossible to select a Muslim for the task. This is because such a person may require accessing the church, while Muslim religion may prohibit such as action (Paludi, 2012). Therefore, there are exceptional instances when the efforts to avoid discrimination may be impossible. Evidently, failure to uphold affirmative action within an organization may attract legal penalties within an organization. A good example Peggy vs. United Parcel Service where the supreme court found the company guilty for failing to uphold female dignity within its organization. When Peggy got pregnancy, she requested that United Parcel Service exempt her from heavy lifting for her own safety or to avoid any complications that may arise due to the nature of the job (Slater, 2004). However, the company boss denied her an alternative job and asked her to take an unpaid leave. Peggy sued the company on the ground that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires that organizations treat pregnant women the same way with other people with temporary disabilities (Burstein, 2011). In this situation, the Supreme court stated that the company was entitle to provide Peggy with a lighter duty the same way they would do for a person with a broken leg before they recover from the temporary situation. Therefore, the company was guilty of being blind to pregnant women while it treated other employees with temporal disabilities preferentially. This case provides a basis for which organization can uphold affirmative action for everyone within an organization in accordance with the provision of the laws. The legal framework also plays considerable attention to instances of work harassment. The law requires that organization prevent issues of work harassment that may result from diversity of any kind (Burstein, 2011). Marine Safety is one of the organizations that have collided with law as a result of ignoring work harassment issues. While in college, Ann Faragher worked under her supervisors Bill Terry and David Silverman in the organization. The two supervisors created a “sexually hostile atmosphere’ by touching inappropriately and sexually harassing them. Besides, they discriminated the female employees during promotion if such women did not sexually cooperate. For instance, Silverman once told Faragher “Date me or clean the toilet for a year.” The implication was that the two supervisors adopted sexual harassment and uncooperative workers did not receive promotion. This amounts to female discrimination in work place. When Faragher tabled the evidence to the court, the organization was found guilty of neglecting work harassment issues and the two officers were reprimanded for their actions. To avoid such instances, the company should have designed a sexual harassment policy and ensure that all the employees read it (Krieger, 2013). There should be serious punishments for offenders to avoid any ethical issues that may arise when such cases are reported in the court. Organizational work-conflicts are inevitable within the contemporary work environment. As organization employ people with different backgrounds, they should anticipate work conflicts and design policies to overcome such issue. One common work conflict is a racial conflict that often arises when people from different races work together. For instance, stereotypical references between black and white races are common and very likely to occur within a diverse work place (Burstein, 2011). Besides, religious conflicts occur due to the different forms of worship that often exist. At times, employees are likely to discriminate against minority religious groups resulting to conflicts within an organization. Lastly, human resource managers should anticipate conflict due to gender differences within the work place. In many cultures, males have always taken the superior position and have an attitude that females are a weaker gender and must submit to them. On the other hand, female activism has given female the right to take the same position as men to uphold gender equality. Therefore, in the wake of gender crisis, it is possible the females and males will crash while working in the same work place. To avoid such instance, the organization needs to consider all possible conflicts and adopt policies to prevent them. To avoid such issues, an organization needs to adopt policies that uphold the dignity of every person, irrespective of their gender, religion, or race. The company should formulate rules to avoid discrimination and these rules should be provided shortly after candidate selection (Slater, 2004). The employee should sign these rules to ensure that they read and accept to comply with the regulations. Strict punishment must be upheld to ensure that violating members are corrected before such an issue is reported in a court of law. In conclusion, the human resource within a diverse work place has many challenges. Human resource managers need to recognize the approaches to selection procedures that will ensure that they get the right work force to implement their management goals. With an increase in discrimination issues within workplace, the government has put in place strict laws to government the employment sector to ensure that every member of public is given a fair chance to employment. The human resource managers must abide by these laws while selecting their workforce to avoid legal obligations that may follow such as process. Ensuring that selection process is transparent and that only the best candidates get the job is crucial to avoid conflict with the law. However, a company should store their information well to ensure that they can argue out in case such complains arise within the course of their operation. Apart from this, the human resource managers need to accommodate people with disabilities and those from minority religious groups to ensure that there is fair chance for the disadvantaged. Additionally, an organization should anticipate conflicts from a diverse workforce, which requires that they have policies to prevent such issues. Avoiding legal implications by adhering to strict organizational policies is crucial to ensure the success of the organization. References Burstein, P. (2011). Legal mobilization as a social movement tactic: the struggle for equal employment opportunity. American Journal of Sociology, 1201-1225. Krieger, L. H. (2013). The content of our categories: A cognitive bias approach to discrimination and equal employment opportunity. Stanford Law Review, 1161-1248. Paludi, M. A. (2012). Managing diversity in todays workplace: Strategies for employees and employers. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO. Slater, J. E. (2004). Public workers: Government employee unions, the law, and the state, 1900-1962. Ithaca, NY [u.a.: ILR Press. Read More