If you are an employer in the United States trying to attract, engage, and retain the best employees to meet your organization’s performance goals, it’s easy for unconscious assumptions and beliefs to creep into the decisions to recruit, hire, or off-board. Why does this matter? Forbes reports that US companies cut more jobs in 2024, most in December and most since 2010, other than the cuts made in the first year of COVID. Who gets selected for cuts affects the shared perception of culture and fairness in your organization and your ability to attract and retain the best people.
Here are few mistakes and quick fixes.
Signaling Recruiting and Hiring Intentions
There are different laws protecting different groups of people. For examplle, Title VII prohibits discrimination based on:
Race;
Color;
Religion;
Sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity); and
National origin.
The ADEA protects people 40 and older from discrimination. The ADA protects qualified employees or applicants from discrimination because of a disability. There are so many, that a “best practice” is to have your lawyer review what you post on your website when recruiting, for example, if only for the purpose of avoiding an unintentional message to your next best potential hire.
Here’s an example from a job description posted by a large company “All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.” Can you spot the group that’s been left out?
Is there a fully-inclusive list of all disabilities?
Most employees are “at-will,” which means that the employer can off-board any employee at any time for any reason as long as it is not an illegal reason, yet some terminations can becomes very expensive and even hurt a company’s reputation. First, there is no fully inclusive list of possible disabilities under the ADA. Did you know that stress is included on LA County’s list? Thinking of letting an employee go because you don’t like their personality? Have you even considered which behaviors, tones of voice, or mannerisms may be integral pieces of their personality and also considered a disability? The corollary to “at will” is that anyone can sue anybody for anything (of course that’s no guarantee of success, just expense). The cost might very well outweigh any benefits, especially if an employee’s objectively-measured performance is okay.
What Does Equity and Inclusion Really Mean?
Every process related to employment—recruiting, hiring, promotions, professional development, and employee performance—involves decisions. Where and how to recruit? Whether to invite someone for an interview or hire them? How to onboard and develop them? Whether to promote or bonus them?
One helpful way to assess how equitable and inclusive these decisions are is to consider the criteria used to make these decisions and how those criteria are applied. It’s easy for a criterion to be subjective and susceptible to significant bias and for its application to be equally biased. For example, most people invited to interview for a position are likely to be qualified. So, the decision of who to hire is also a decision of who not to offer employment. To balance the natural bias, develop a strategy that explores the basis for these decisions and ask the following:
Who is involved in making these decision? Is it a single person or a diverse group of people with diverse experiences and perspectives that inform their evaluation decisions?
Which criteria were used? Were they checked for levels of objectivity and subjectivity, especially those related to whether someone is a good “fit” for the position and organization?
How were criteria applied to each person? What guardrails were used to avoid excluding based on subjective reasons (a diverse group of decision-makers and a democratic decision-making process)?
If you are an employer trying to attract, engage, and retain the best employees to meet your organization’s performance goals, counteract unconscious assumptions and beliefs by accepting that they will creep into the decisions to recruit, hire, or off-board and have a written strategy to counteract these mistakes and use it.