23 Jun 2023
With the level of legislation in place to prevent discrimination in the workplace, it can be difficult to understand what is expected of you as an employer and very easy to word something that might be interpreted as discriminatory in a job advert. This can happen even when there is no intent at all to be discriminatory, sometimes it is just that not enough care has been taken with the working or the advert.
Hopefully by the time you have read through this article, you will better understand the main do’s and don’ts that are covered by the relevant legislation.
Direct and Indirect Discrimination
All forms of discrimination can be sorted into two different categories, direct and indirect discrimination. Knowing what the difference between both these categories is can help when trying to avoid them.
Direct discrimination in a job advert would be seen as specifying a quality you desire from all your candidates, for example an advert for a ‘salesman’ would be discriminatory against women.
Indirect discrimination in a job advert is a generalised attribute that automatically disadvantages certain people such as asking that candidates have English as their first language - this automatically discriminates against people born overseas that might well be fluent in English but also happen to be bilingual.
Specific Forms of Discrimination
Age discrimination relates to people being treated differently due to their age. If an employer was to include something that could be seen as giving an indication for a preferred age they could find themselves in trouble, even if it was unintentional.
To get around this, simply avoid use of language that might be used to describe someone of a specific age: “youthful” and “mature” being common terms that employers fall for.
If you are actually looking to employ someone who is “experienced”, this would be a better word to choose than “mature” in this circumstance and would likely help you to find the type of employees that you were looking to employ.
Sex discrimination is about someone being mistreated due to their gender. When it comes to putting together a job advert, using terms such as ‘waiter’ or ‘postman’ would lead someone to believe it is only males you are hoping to hire and would be seen as discriminatory. Fortunately, this is very simply rectified.
All you need to do is avoid using job titles with ‘man’ or ‘woman’ in them, and instead use ‘person’ – it should still make perfect sense. There are some exceptions, where it is acceptable to specify a particular gender, e.g. if the job is working within single sex institutions such as care homes or hospitals, but this must be stated as “Genuine Occupational Qualification” in the advert.
Also, for industries such as modelling or acting the nature of someone’s sex can be a relevant part of the job and not seen as discriminatory. This is perfectly understandable in the circumstances due to the nature of the job roles that are performed.
Racial discrimination can be defined as treating someone differently due to their race or ethnicity. Racial discrimination is also one of the more complicated forms of discrimination as the legislation behind it is slightly more complex. The only occasion that it can be acceptable is if race comes into a genuine occupational qualification.
This is, however, a slippery slope and so if you have any doubts as to if a role might qualify, it would be important to double check the legislation. It is important to avoid falling foul of the legislation if at all possible as it can cast a stain on the reputation of the company that can be hard to shake off again, particularly in the era of social media. One common area in which organisations often go wrong is when listing language requirements.
If any role requires someone with the ability to speak a given language – the advert should state that they require someone that speaks fluently and is not in fact native to the country. Fluent English Speaker vs Native English Speaker. This means that people who have learned English as a second, or even third or fourth language can still apply, as long as they are actually fluent in the language.
A good example of this can be shown from job titles such as ‘German speaking telemarketer’ which would be the indiscriminate version of ‘German telemarketer’.
Disability discrimination is seen when someone is mistreated due to physical or mental disability. One way of avoiding disability discrimination in a job advert is to avoid including additional information that might rule out someone with a disability.
Some common areas that employers go wrong with are things such as including that it would be advantageous for an applicant to be able to drive if the job does not require any or little travel whatsoever.
This is something that can be seen as something that unnecessarily disadvantages disabled people and makes it harder for them to get the job, even though driving is not one of the core job skills. Simply adding phrases such as “active” or “energetic” can be also seen as discriminatory to people with various levels of disability as many don’t feel energetic or active but would have no problems performing the job role in a satisfactory manner.
Take Away Points
We hope that the above points give some food for thought next time you are writing a job advert. There are of course many other types of discrimination, which is why you should ensure you are familiar with the provisions of ‘The Equality Act 2010’ – this legislation will tell you everything you need to know to help you remain a law-abiding recruiter.
Other protected characteristics covered by the Equality Act (2010) include sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or lack thereof, marital status and pregnancy or maternity. All of these areas are covered in addition to the categories already mentioned above. It is simple good practice to keep up with the latest legislation covering your area of work and we definitely recommend doing so to keep yourself right.
