The Legal Requirements - Essay Example

?Running Head: essay Critically discuss the importance of understanding the legal requirements relating to the employment of people, and how these apply to the recruitment and selection of employees [Name of the Writer] [Name of the Institution] [Name of the Professor] [Course] Before the advent of human resources management in organizations, personnel management regarded the relationship between employer and employee with a legal outlook. It was a give-and-take relationship; a contractual binding where employer pays the employee for his efforts and services. As such, the relationship was put in black and white and established on hard core legalities. There were rules and regulations laid down clearly for each of structure (rules and procedures), substance (job aspects, rewards, career, machinery, agreements, etc.), operations (process and style) and parties to contract (managers, employees, representatives, etc.) in the employer-employee relationship (Armstrong 2009:262). Though times have changed and organizations getting less hierarchical, yet importance of understanding legal requirements in employment relationship remain intact. The only difference is while earlier, they were transactional in nature, now they have turned more relational today. However, laws still guide the managers through their way to recruitment, selection, labor and procedural justice, compensation and other human resource functions. Legislation in employment does not follow at the time of recruitment and selection alone; they pave the way for successful and hassle-free work bargain and also extend after the human resource selection in maintaining the informal relationship according to the formal regulations. These legislations span across aspects such as providing equal opportunity rights, diversity management, accounting for health and safety of employees, relations at workplace, wage and child-related laws and illegitimate discrimination (Nankervis et al. 2009:153). Gilliland (1993:696) assert that inclusion of laws into recruitment and selection process imparts fairness and objectivity to the entire function. Serving as a means to establish tenets of equity, laws put in place provide for substantial distributive and procedural justice in the organization which helps develop the attitude of employees and also infuse motivation in them. Evidence of fulfillment of labor and compensation laws discards the feeling of inequity between inputs and outputs and establishes symbiotic relationship between employers and employees. Elaborating further on the positive perception, implementation of procedural justice gains more grounds if legal requirements are duly complied within an organization. In the presence of proper regulations, employees tend to believe that they have a voice and an equal opportunity in affecting the decision making process and use of procedures to arrive at conclusions or verdicts. In exercising the procedural justice, if laws are in place, it obligates employers to account or justify for any of the repercussions. Legal provision of creating a two-way communication channel and justification lowers down the negative effect associated with the negative consequence. As such, laws also help develop interpersonal relations between employers, employees and related parties as they tend to involve the components of procedures, decision making and communication in recruitment and selection. Realizing the importance of legal requirements in work place settings, HR managers are now making increased use of psychometric tests in selecting apt candidates from applicants’ pool. Wolf & Jenkins (2006:201) opine that this exercise is guided more on a defensive note than a pre-requisite staffing practice. Use of different tests do provide equal opportunity rights to applicants of varied intellect, education and capabilities, but more importantly, these tests serve as evidence that organization had been fair and justified in its recruitment process when there were no clear job descriptions or specifications. External environment and globalization also force employers to place less emphasis on qualifications and more on psychometric abilities of candidates. This also obviates the need of increased use of tests in recruitment and selection drive by organizations. Kim & O’Connor (2009) highlight the widespread and popular use of e-recruitment tools nowadays. Defined as conducting recruitment process online via web using company’s web portal or intranet, this newly hyped system of recruitment garners the advantages of cost effective staffing, creating a developed image of the firm, advanced and automated systems and use of better and decision making supported tools to carry out the operations. This system, however, is also not devoid of challenges and shortcomings, most of them legal in nature. Primary amongst them are data security and privacy concerns of employees. Denial to equal opportunity rights also comes into picture because e-recruitment depends upon the access and usage of internet which varies according to education, income, minorities and disabled people. Extending the discussion on globalization, Sparrow (2007:852) conducted a research on complexities and concerns involved in managing global HR issues. When organizations cross boundaries, they are presented with a plethora of issues ranging from workforce migration, labor laws, compatibility with government and political structure and aligning the organizational culture with that of local culture of the host country. In all these areas, it is law which serves as guideline to properly understand the ramifications and underlying principles. Citing the example of British National Health Service (NHS), the author explains how NHS relies on international recruiting practices to cope up with shortage of qualified nurses. In this realm, it has to tackle challenges of work permits, immigrants, outsourcing and compliance with the established code of conduct and healthcare practices. Advertising and communication was developed separately for separate nations targeted for recruitment, but attention had to be given to the selection of language, vocational bodies in different nations and most importantly, clearing occupational health background checks like any criminal record, permits and references, immigration certificate, etc. Detailing on the issue of background reference checking practice adopted by employers, William & Woska (2007) state that it is one of the critical aspects to be fulfilled before any candidate can be approved for final selection. Background checks not only serve as a safeguard against negligent hiring by employers, but also enable employers in exercising their legal obligations towards employees, clients and organization as a whole. Providing the example of Sandra Baldwin- President of United States Olympic Committee, who later had to resign because she untruthfully presented her credentials; support the argument that failure to do proper background checks result in hefty prices paid by employers. Apart from wastage of time, money and efforts, such inability also results in considerable loss of prestige and reputation of and confidence in the organization and its recruitment practices. However, if fruitful to employers, background checks are becoming a matter of privacy invasion for candidates. Current employers ask for basic information and performance results of candidates from their former employers but with successive levels of selection, this invasion in getting information about the candidate increases. This places unnecessary binding on the candidate to provide some of the personal details which is counted as anti to employee’s right to privacy. To handle this situation, candidates are now supplied with an opportunity to sign a waiver and limit the amount and type of information that can be provided in case of reference checking. Discrimination is yet another malpractice in recruitment and selection process deployed within organizations which need legal remedies. Muffler et al. (2010) define disparate treatment and disparate impact as means to treat employees in an impartial way. Encouraged by gender, caste, minority, race, origin and religion, employers tend to give special privileges to a certain class of employees which result into discriminatory employment practices. A newly emerged discrimination criterion is family based where employees are engaged in care giving responsibilities to children or elderly people while employers are fast treading the route of globalization and increased competition. Not giving due credit to such obligations of employees reflects in employers’ inability to devise appropriate scheduling, policies, leave plans, benefits and care assistance. The situation is graver with women who have to take leave for either pregnancy or family related issues, but do not get adequate promotion and appraisal opportunities compared to men. As a result, family responsibilities discrimination (FRD) is gaining popularity as one of the noted categories under discrimination in work settings (Kaplan 2008). Consequences are damaging work relations, conflicts between employer ad employees, increased law suits and overall wastage of company’s resources. More intense is the loss of qualified workforce, trust and organizational reputation. Analyzing the pros and cons of involved legalities in employment relationship, it is pretty much obvious that even though human resources management has evolved from personnel management and became more informal, boundaryless and strategic, yet cornerstone to its smooth and effective functioning remains due attention and adherence to the basic tenets of law. Prevalence of informality in employment relationship is guarded and anchored firmly by trust and confidence which is fostered by complete understanding and implementation of rules and regulations. Immediate benefits of such adherence are increased productivity, retention of human capital and better employer-employee relations. However, in the absence of rules and regulations and their simultaneous appraisal, the trust factor start rusting and repercussions are reflected in terms of selection of incompetent candidates, arm’s length relationships and frequent incidents of conflicts and lawsuits, damaging the essence of employment relationship and human resource management function in its entirety. References Armstrong, M. (2009). Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. 11th Ed. London: Kogan Page. Gilliland, S.W. (1993). “The perceived fairness of selection systems: an organizational justice perspective.” Academy of Management Review, 18(4), 694-734. Kaplan, R.S. (2008). “Family Responsibilities Discrimination: Examining the issues, understanding the legal risks and exploring positive solutions.” Employee Relations Law Journal, 34(1). Kim & O’Connor. (2009). “Assessing electronic recruitment implementation in state governments: Issues and challenges.” Public Personnel Management, 38(1). Muffler, S.C, Cavico, F.J & Mujtaba, B.G. (2010). “Diversity, disparate impact and ethics in business: Implications of the New Haven Firefighters’ case and the Supreme Court’s Ricci v. DeStefano decision.” SAM Advanced Management Journal, Summer. Nankervis, A, Compton, R & Morrissey, B. (2009). Effective recruitment and selection practices. 5th Ed. Australia: CCH Limited. Sparrow, P.R. (2007). “Globalization of HR at function level: four UK-based case studies of the international recruitment and selection process.” International Journal of Human Resource Management, 18(5), 845-867. William, J & Woska, J.D. (2007). “Legal issues for HR professionals: Reference checking/background investigations.” Public Personnel Management, 36(1). Wolf, A & Jenkins, A. (2006). “Explaining greater test use for selection: the role of HR professionals in a world of expanding regulation.” Human Resource Management Journal, 16(2), 193-213. Read More