Business: Hiring, Firing and Discrimination, Essay Example

The process of hiring is a critical process to any company or organization since it involves determining, deciding or choosing from a host of applicant who joins the organization as an employee and who doesn’t. In most cases the selection of who joins the company is guided by laid down procedures and regulations as well as the skills required for specific job titles. In respect to all these, the selection of new employees should be done in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner and further should observe the legal requirements laid down by the state government.

Legal Issues

Discrimination in employment or hiring is a legal offense. Such discrimination may be in forma of age discrimination, sex discrimination or racial discrimination.  The American federal and state governments have enacted several laws and regulations that are meant to ensure that employers do not discriminate against employees or job seeker on any grounds other than qualification or the quality of their work.

According to Find Law (2009) such laws were mainly a product of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. For instance, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964baras employers who have above fifteen workers from discriminating on the basis of national origin , gender, race, or religion. The title recognizes discrimination under the above mentioned instances in form of discipline, fire, denial of promotion, minimized payment, demotion, harassment or refusal to hire as it is in the case Bandu. Julie’s employer should understand that the law protects the minority groups from such discrimination and therefore the criteria he has adopted for hiring of his employees is illegal.

Social Issues

Social acts of discrimination breed social injustices and hatred between various groups of people. As such animosity may exist between the discriminated upon groups and the groups that are favored. Such acts of discrimination are a hindrance to the achievement of social equity in the society and should therefore be shunned (Zadja, 2005). Everybody is entitled to equal employment opportunities and the adoption of discriminatory employment procedures only serves to undermine this entitlement but adds no value to the company in question. In fact, the acts of discrimination may undermine the social perception of the company and consequently encourage boycott of the company’s products in highly liberalized societies to push for adoption of better and non discriminatory procedures.

Proper Hiring Procedure

Julie’s Boss and his company should therefore streamline the hiring procedures and give chance to minority groups by doing away with the discriminatory procedures and embrace new policies that allow for diversity in the company.  The policies should serve to facilitate the company get best employees from the host of applicants who apply for various position in the company. When a position falls vacant the company should advertise the vacant position to attract a broad numbers of applicants.  Once the applicants have submitted in their application letters or forms according to the stipulated deadline, the human resource department or the boss should shortlist the candidates with best qualification to take up the vacant position and then set interview dates to meet the shortlisted applicants in person and to cross-examine them in order to chose the right person for the job.  This way the company will be able to get the best manpower it requires in terms of skills and ability and at the same time avoid brushing shoulders with the law due to discrimination.

References

Find Law. (2009). Employment Discrimination: Overview. Retrieved 26 October2009 from http://employment.findlaw.com/employment/employment-employee-discrimination-harassment/employment-employee-discrimination-harassment-overview.html

Zadja, J. (2005). International handbook on globalisation, education and policy research : global pedagogies and policies. Dordrecht Springer