I am going to be talking about the impacts of the legal and regulatory framework and recruitment and selection activities.
Organisations are required by law to make every effort to ensure that they do discriminate against individual candidates, including on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, disability, age or sexual orientation. Equal opportunities legislation is designed to ensure that people are employed purely on the basis of their skills and abilities not for the purpose of what they look like, if they are male or female. Treating all candidates equally and fairly throughout the process of which applying for the job, can have it benefits on the organisation, if the organisation have a good reputation they are more likely to attract a wider field of applicants, increasing the chances of finding the best person for the job.
Sex Discrimination Act: 1975/1995/1997.
This act means that all men and women are treated equally. The people must not be discriminated against because of their marital status, sex, or even if they had their gender reassigned. Indirect and direction discrimination are both unlawful in the Sex Discrimination Acts. This act applies to direct and indirect discriminations. For this act, direct discrimination means a less qualified man could be given a job over a more qualified woman. Indirect discrimination means when a job has requirements that one sex is unable to perform like the person must be six feet tall. Sometimes jobs do not have to comply with this act if they are performed by a particular sex like a youth worker specialising in helping young women may have to be a female. If a group is underrepresented, positive steps can be made to encourage that particular group such as offering free management courses to women in particular organisation because there were not enough women.
The sex discrimination act could affect the recruitment and selection process as everyone has an equal opportunity to apply for the job. They also have to take into consideration that they can’t tell some that they haven’t got the job because of their sex even though they have got all the requirements for the job. They have to be careful about what they say to the applicant; otherwise they are liable for prosecution
Disability Discrimination Act 1995/2005.
These acts make it unlawful for any disabled people to be treated less favorably because they are disabled unless they are good reasons. Reasonable adjustment must be premises so that the disabled applicants or workers are not put at any substantial disadvantages. Making reasonable adjustments may be adding ramps for wheelchair access or a hearing loop for a person who finds it hard to hear anything.
This act could affect the recruitment and selection process in a number of ways because, if there is a job going, and the applicant they interview is disabled, and they are unable to get in the building for the interview, as the building does not have disabled access then the applicant is not getting a fair chance of getting the job, as from the start they are unable to get in the building.
Data Protection Act 1998
This act aims to protect any individual’s right in privacy in relation to their personal data. Personal data does not mean just personal information. It also includes like medical information. It means any data relation to a living person. This means that it includes information about current employees and anyone who applies for a job such as their addresses, pay, bank details, and date of birth, training record or references.
All these information can only be stored if a person has consented to it being stored or if it is necessary for the performance of the person’s job. The Data Protection Act seeks to provide a balance between the interests or an organisation that holds the data and the individual. So the individual has rights under the Act to access