Adverse Effects

Employment laws require employers not to be discriminative when employing. Various methods have been set up to determine where the law has been violated. The adverse impact can often be determined using the 4/5 rule. This rule seeks to ensure that employers do not employ any two groups in such a way that the minority group gets a proportion that is lower than 4/5 of that which the majority group is able to obtain. It is referred as the rule of thumb since it only seeks to give an idea of where problems exist in the recruitment exercise.

Table A-3 shows the rate at which the different groups are recruited at Chen’s business. The rate of selection is obtained by dividing the number of those recruited with the number of those recruited. The racial group with the highest percentage recruited is the Asians. 11.2% of those who applied got their jobs. Men have a higher rate of selection than women with a rate of 10%. We use these statistics to get the impact ratios

The analysis shows a violation in the 4/5 rule for blacks and Hispanics. This means that there is a considerable difference between the way these groups were recruited and how other groups the Asians were recruited.

Table A-2 shows the statistics of sales associates compared to the relevant population.

The workforce shows underutilization in the case of female sales associates, and white and black sales associates. This implies that males, Asians and Hispanics have been over-employed.

Representation in the different workforces shows a big disparity. While it is not possible to tell the availability of the other profession in the respective populations, we can tell that there exist more male department managers and store managers than female managers. Most females are in the sales associate section. Blacks are mainly store managers, though with a slight difference. There are very small percentages of Asians and Hispanics who are store managers.

Using the above data, it has been noted that there exists a bias in the way jobs are distributed in the workplace. While there was no bias in sex, there existed bias in the selection of employees on grounds of race using the 4/5 rule. Employees who were biased against included blacks and Hispanics. To resolve this issue before getting into trouble, the employers should seek to employ more people from these two groups. The company can also increase efforts to appeal to these two groups so as to ensure that the right employees are available for the company. This way, the company will be able to obtain quality employees from the population easily.

The company can also adopt affirmative action to ensure that all groups are well represented. This would comprise making it easier for minority groups to obtain employment from the company. Affirmative action requires that rules me loosened to allow for the minority groups to obtain employment more easily. Barriers of employment are also removed to ensure that employees do not have a hard point joining the workplace. Adopting affirmative action requires planning and putting up recruitment regulations that make allowances for minority groups to be recruited more easily (“EEO Information and resources for HR Professionals and Students”, 2013).

The second table shows underutilization of the female workforce and black and white employees. To resolve these issues, it would be advisable to recruit only people who belonged to at least two of those groups to help increase their population in the workforce. This implies that only female whites and female whites would be recruited in the meantime. While this may be difficult, it would call for the management to put more effort towards recruiting these groups. Wide consultation would be required and previous applicants would need to be consulted.

Finally, we note a difference in the representation of the different groups in the different workforces. Different jobs seem reserved to different groups. The biggest disparity exists in the employment of employment of male store and department managers. There exists a gap that requires to be filled. With this regard, the company needs to determine which steps are best suited to resolve the issues. Available options include laying off excess workers, stopping employment of personnel who originate from over-represented groups and demoting personnel from over-represented groups (“EEO Information and resources for HR Professionals and Students”, 2013).

In conclusion, discriminative recruitment should be highly discouraged. It prevents certain genders and races from participating in economic activities. It is also likely to cause problems with the authorities. Companies should conduct analyses often to enable them to identify problems in the recruitment before they diversify. This way, they will not have to deal with ethical issues at the end while trying to balance their workforce.

References

EEO Information and resources for HR Professionals and Students. (2013). Retrieved July 26, 2014, from http://www.hr-guide.com/data/G702.htm