Recruitment and discrimination legislation

Employment law in the UK is a huge area and covers a wide range of legislation that a company must abide by. This includes what individuals are paid for work, what measures must be taken when employing people as well as how individuals are treated when in the workplace.

Recruitment

When recruiting staff members there are certain things that a business must do. These will not only include the places where jobs are advertised but the manner in which they are as well. New job opportunities must be fair for all candidates and businesses cannot discriminate against a person based on certain protected characteristics as outlined in Equality and Diversity legislation. These characteristics are:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender
• Sexual preference
• Pregnancy
• Race
• Religion

Since the above listed characteristics do not have an impact on a person’s ability to do a job, an individual should not be at any disadvantage when applying for a new position. Equality and Diversity law also extends to discrimination that is not as obvious. This includes advertising positions such as a waitress as this implies that a candidate must be female, or looking for ‘dynamic and hungry’ new job seekers as this can be seen as discriminating against older people.

Discrimination in the workplace

In equality, diversity and inclusion law, discrimination is defined as treating one person less favourably than another who has similar skills and qualifications. Should two employees have the same work background, work ethic and experience their personal backgrounds should not affect their chances of success. Four different types of discrimination are recognised by the law: direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation.

Direct discrimination

Direct discrimination occurs when a person is treated less favourably because of one of the characteristics listed in the law. Equality legislation also explains that a person should not be discriminated against because they associate with someone who has protected characteristics.

This form of discrimination is usually very obvious in the workplace. To share direct discrimination, the person’s treatments must be compared to that of someone else. The Equality Act calls this person a comparator.

Example: a couple who are planning their wedding visit a venue and fill out a form stating that they are Irish Travellers. Within the Equality Act, Irish Travellers are defined as an ethnic group and therefore should not be treated differently because of this fact. The manager of the hotel tells the couple that they are fully booked on the day that they require. On the way out of the hotel the couple overhear the deputy manager offer the same date to another couple who are not Irish Travellers. This is direct discrimination because the couple have been unfairly treated purely because of their ethnicity.

Indirect discrimination

Indirect discrimination is usually unintentional. It occurs when a policy or procedure is in place that affects each person in the same way but this policy has a worse effect on some people than others. The policy must still refer to one of the protected characteristics and will often put each person with this characteristic at the same disadvantage. An employer is only guilty of indirect discrimination if they do not have good enough reason for the policy. Indirect discrimination is usually associated with an entire group that share the same protected characteristic rather than individuals who are discriminated against in one specific scenario.

Example: in your employment contracts there is a clause which states that you must travel the country at short notice. You find this difficult to do as you are a woman and the sole carer for two young children. This is indirect discrimination against women, who are most likely to be primary carers of children, and even against anyone with a family.

Harassment

Harassment takes place when a person behaves in a way that causes others to feel distressed, threatened or humiliated. When this harassment relates to one of the protected characteristics, it is seen as harassment under Equality Law. This could take the form of offensive language, physical violence, humiliation, racist or homophobic comments, spreading rumours or unwelcomed sexual advances. Harassment not only treats two sets of people differently because of a protected characteristic, but actively has a negative effect on certain individuals.

Victimisation

Victimisation occurs when a person is treated differently because they have made a complaint about discrimination. Once a complaint is made referring to either direct discrimination, indirect discrimination or harassment, the person making the complaint should be treated in the same way as everybody else.

Example: a woman makes a complaint about unwanted sexual advances from her line manager. As a result she is denied promotion, which is seen to be a direct result of her making a complaint. This is seen as victimisation and action could be taken against the employer under the Equality Act.