Peter Done, Managing Director of Peninsula Business Services look at how to stay on the right side of the law when job advertising.
There is an old truism that when you are in a swamp and the alligator is about to bite your head off it is difficult to remember that your intention was to drain the swamp!
So many laws support interrelate (or even contradict one another) that it is extremely difficult to understand and hang onto the basic principles in recruiting and managing people. We have decided therefore to publish six articles covering the basic principles of Job Advertising, Employment Interviewing, Induction and Training, Employee Grievances, Dismissals and Exit Interviews, as a basic foundation that clients can relate to when trying to fight their way out of the swamp!
So far has employment law developed today that people in Britain have at least five rights which they could pursue to the Employment Tribunal before they are an employee, or even before have been interviewed! Those five are to be joined by others in the not too distant future. The existing five are concerned with discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, disability, trade union and (Northern Ireland only at present), religion/political opinion or persuasion. Therefore adverts should not contain any element, referring to these areas, which is directly or indirectly discriminatory.
But more of the law later. Why are you advertising? Recruitment advertising is usually for one of two purposes, to replace leavers or to increase numbers (presumably to cope with growth/increased production). It should only be done at the end of the thought process chain, it should not be that leavers are automatically replaced, like with like. Questions need to be asked first starting with, perhaps, why are they leaving and could something be done to persuade them to stay? This will be the subject of an article in its own right under “Exit Interviewing”.
