Achieve Fairness in EEO

If you own or operate a business with 15 or more employees, you're likely required to comply with federal EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) laws. These laws make it illegal for you to treat employees differently based on characteristics that are outside their control. To achieve the level of fairness required by the EEO laws, give all employees and prospective employees access to the same work opportunities without regard to their race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age (40 or older), disability, or genetic information. Maintain that fairness by putting systems in place to monitor employees and enforce compliance.

Steps

Selecting New Employees

1. Avoid showing preferences for types of people in job advertisements. When you write advertisements for available positions, include qualifications such as education and experience. However, the advertisement shouldn't list any preferences for applicants of a particular gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, or other such trait. At the same time, don't include anything that indicates certain types of people, such as people over 40 or people with disabilities, would not be considered.
   • For example, if you were looking for a receptionist, you wouldn't want to state that you were looking for a "young woman" to fill the role.
   • If you're advertising for a job that has physical requirements, list those physical requirements specifically, but avoid any language that implies a person with a disability couldn't do the job. For example, you could write that the ideal candidate should be able to lift and move {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} repeatedly, but not that you're looking for someone who is "able-bodied" or "physically fit."
2. Use non-discriminatory outlets to recruit new employees. When you're looking for new employees, post your listings on universal job search platforms that are accessible to everyone, not just people of a particular race or gender. While you are free to use narrower outlets, you shouldn't use them exclusively.
   • For example, if you are an alumni of a fraternity, it would be fine to advertise a paid internship through your fraternity. However, you should also advertise them with sororities or with the university's career services department, so the advertisement is accessible to women and other students as well.
3. Create objective evaluation criteria for potential employees. For each position at your company, list requirements for education, experience, and skills that anyone could objectively measure. This not only allows candidates to determine if they're qualified for a position before they apply but also gives interviewers a set of objective standards by which to compare applicants.
   • When choosing candidates to interview, focus solely on these objective requirements. Ignore any other information in résumés or cover letters that might give you insight into the type of person who's applying for the job.Template:Greenbox:'''Tip:''' Consider using a blind screening process to make a short list of qualified applicants before you look at information, such as the applicant's name, that could signal the applicant's gender, race, or ethnicity.
4. Apply evaluation criteria consistently to all applicants. Once you've established job requirements for a position, you can't change those requirements for different types of employees, or have different requirements for some candidates based on their race, gender, or other traits covered by the EEO laws.
   • For example, suppose one of your requirements is that the employee is able to lift and move {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} repeatedly. Under the EEO laws, you couldn't have a requirement that male applicants must be able to lift and move {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} repeatedly, but female applicants only had to be able to lift and move {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} repeatedly.
   • Avoid showing a preference for particular types of applicants as well. For example, if you have a position that requires a college degree, you would be showing preference if you offered the job to someone who only had a high school diploma because they happened to be the same ethnicity as you.
5. Take notes during interviews with prospective employees. Before the interview, write down the questions you plan to ask the candidate. Take notes about their answers as well as any questions they ask you. Include notes about their qualifications and experience.
   • Generally, ask all candidates the same questions. You may end up talking about different things with specific candidates based on their answers or their questions for you. However, keeping the interviews as uniform as possible helps ensure that your comparison of the candidates is as objective as possible.
   • You might also consider having several different people interview and rank the candidates. Require all interviewers to take notes in the same format you did.Template:Greenbox:'''Tip:''' Keep your notes and all other documents related to the selection process for at least 2 years, even for people you ultimately don't hire.
6. Limit background checks to job-related information. While background checks are important and useful, particularly for some industries, avoid gathering any information related to the applicant's gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, national origin, ethnicity, or age. In the event this type of information comes up, you can't use it to decide whether or not to offer the person a job.
   • Asking the applicant, or their references, any questions about their disability (or perceived disability) is also explicitly prohibited. You can ask the applicant if they are physically able to perform the job functions with or without accommodations.

Maintaining a Fair Workplace

1. Devise clear policies for handling discrimination in the workplace. Identify one or two people in your company who employees can tell if they are experiencing harassment or discrimination in the workplace. Make sure all employees know exactly who takes those reports. Generally, employees should always be able to talk to their direct supervisor.
   • You might also want to designate a higher-ranking person in case an employee's direct supervisor is the subject of their complaint.
   • It's usually a good idea to have both a male and a female employee at the manager level to handle discrimination complaints, in case employees would feel more comfortable talking to someone of their same gender.Template:Greenbox:'''Tip:''' Emphasize to all of your employees that retaliation for a discrimination complaint is illegal and no one will ever get in trouble for filing a discrimination complaint.
2. Distribute an employee handbook to every employee. Your employee handbook describes your company policies and procedures as well as your employees' rights under labor and anti-discrimination laws. Give each employee their own copy of the handbook during onboarding and have them sign a form stating that they've read it.
   • Include a list of all workplace rules that you expect your employees to abide by along with the consequences for breaking those rules.
   • Make updates to your employee handbook as necessary. For example, if state laws regarding paid family leave changed, you would need to update your employee handbook to reflect that. Notify all employees when updates are made.
3. Enforce all company policies consistently. Sometimes a situation will happen that seemed unavoidable and you may be inclined to cut that employee some slack. However, if you enforce your company policies inconsistently, you open yourself up to charges of discrimination.
   • If you run into a situation where you don't feel punishment is deserved, explain to the employee how you feel, but that you have to follow the policy guidelines anyway. For example, if your policy requires you to write up an employee for a no-call/no-show, but the employee had a reasonable explanation of why they failed to call, you might note that explanation on the discipline form.
   • When you enforce all the policies consistently, employees understand what to expect from you. If they face discipline, they won't be concerned that you only did it because of some protected characteristic, such as their race or gender.
4. Establish a mandatory EEO training program for all employees. The Contact the EEOC, which enforces the EEO laws, has free training programs that employers can provide for their employees. These programs discuss EEO requirements and what employees should do if they face discrimination or harassment in the workplace.
   • You can make a basic EEO training course part of your onboarding program for new employees.
   • You might also want to offer refresher courses for other employees every couple of years.
5. Pay employees the same rate for the same work. All employees who are at the same level should start at the same rate of pay. As employees work for you longer, they may be entitled to pay raises. However, their pay rates shouldn't vary based on other differences, such as because of their race or gender.
   • For example, you couldn't pay Hispanic workers less than you pay Caucasian workers because of their national origin. Likewise, you couldn't start women at a lower rate than you start men under the belief that women will not work as hard as men.
   • In addition to pay, give all employees at the same level access to the same benefits, including insurance and retirement programs. If an employee doesn't qualify for benefits, make sure it's for a work-related reason. For example, you might deny an employee insurance because they don't work an average of 30 hours a week. However, you couldn't deny that same employee insurance because they are disabled.
6. Modify your dress code to accommodate religious and ethnic backgrounds. There's nothing unfair about having a dress code for your employees, and most workplaces do. However, if someone cannot follow the dress code because of their religious beliefs or ethnic background, EEO laws require you to allow any exceptions as necessary.
   • For example, if one of your employees is required to wear a head covering because of their religion, you would have to allow them to do so, even if your dress code stated that employees were not allowed to wear anything covering their hair.
7. Provide accommodations for employees with disabilities. If you have any employees with disabilities, EEO laws require you to make reasonable accommodations so they can perform their job functions. This requirement is only excused if the necessary accommodation would cause you significant difficulty or expense.
   • For example, if your cash registers were on a raised platform and you had an employee in a wheelchair, you might need to install a ramp so that employee could get to the cash registers. You could also set up a separate cash register that was not on a raised platform.

Promoting Qualified Employees

1. Create a company-wide promotions policy. Your promotions policy sets forth the specific conditions under which employees will be eligible for a promotion. This might include the length of time at your company, performance reviews, and other qualifications.
   • For example, you might specify that employees are eligible for a promotion after 1 year of employment, provided all of their performance reviews have been above a certain level and they haven't been written up or otherwise disciplined for any violations of company rules or policies.
   • Follow the policy consistently to protect yourself from accusations that someone was promoted unfairly or that you "passed up" an employee for a promotion.
2. Communicate job openings to all eligible employees. When you have an opening that you want to fill from within, publicize the opening as well as letting specific employees know if they are eligible. List the qualifications and requirements for the position as you would if you were advertising to hire someone from outside the company.
   • Leave the position open for at least a couple of weeks (or longer, if possible) to give eligible employees time to decide if they want to apply for the promotion.
   • Evaluate all applications using the same process you would if you were hiring someone from outside. You might want to have multiple interviews to avoid any potential bias or favoritism on the part of the interviewer, especially if you have a small company where everyone knows each other fairly well.Template:Greenbox:'''Tip:''' Reach out to each eligible employee individually and discuss the opportunity with them. Stress that no one has been chosen for the position yet and that you would like for them to apply.
3. Provide constructive feedback to all employees consistently. Set up a standard performance review system and create a form with objective criteria for assessing employee performance. Set aside time to go over the performance reviews with each employee individually.
   • How often you provide performance reviews isn't as important as doing them consistently. If you're going to provide monthly performance reviews, make sure you can set aside time to do them consistently every month. If you don't believe you'll have time every month, do them quarterly instead.
   • Regular performance reviews mean that employees know how they're doing in the eyes of management, not just how they think they're doing. This objective assessment might keep employees from thinking they're eligible for a promotion when they actually aren't.
4. Avoid preferences about the type of employee suited to a position. When you're hiring from within, don't let the characteristics of the person who previously held the job dictate the person you want to take their place. While it's fine to take personality into account, you also don't want to let your personal biases leak into the process.
   • For example, suppose your sales manager has always been a woman. The position has come open, and you want to promote someone from the sales department to the management position. Preferring a woman for the position, or refusing to promote a qualified employee simply because they were a man, would violate EEO laws.

Tips

• Fairness in EEO is as much about appearance as it is about your actual motivations. Even if you're not actually discriminating against someone, you could run into problems if it appears that you are.
• Promote an inclusive workplace environment that encourages your employees to respect each other's differences by valuing diverse points of view.
• Act on complaints of discrimination quickly. Take complaining employees seriously and investigate their complaints thoroughly. Keep records of the entire process.

Warnings

• You may run afoul of EEO laws if your policies have the effect of discriminating against a protected group even if those policies weren't created with the intent of discriminating against that type of people.

References

See also

• Sue the Government for Discrimination
• Claim Age Discrimination for Apprenticeship Programs
• Help Avoid Employee Lawsuits
• Verify Rehab Treatment for an Employee
• Handle Disciplinary Actions
• Claim Weight Discrimination
• Know if You Should Sign a Covenant Not to Sue
• Defend Yourself in a Wrongful Termination Lawsuit
• File Charges With EEOC
• Defend Yourself in an Asbestos Exposure Lawsuit

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