Unconscious bias can easily unseat an otherwise diligent and politically aware owner/manager in the selection process. Defending discrimination in an Employment Tribunal is a costly and fraught process with the potential of being hugely expensive. Claims can come from job applicants, not just employees.
To help managers stay on the right side of equality law, Deloittes now use a blind cv process. Dates of birth have long been removed from application forms by experienced HR practitioners. Deloittes are going further and hiding details of a candidate’s school and university from the selection process. In practical terms, this may be difficult, and perhaps unnecessary for a small enterprise. But names can be revealing too. The infamous case of Mr Patel submitting two cv’s, one in his own name and one in the name of Mr Smith, caught out some big names. (You can guess, of course, which name got an interview). So removing (or redacting!) a candidate’s name is relatively easy to do.
Our other recommendation is always to prepare a table of the essential criteria in your selection process (4 or 5 is about optimum) and rate each candidate against those criteria – perhaps from 1 to 5. The protection such a process gives you against a spurious claim is well worth it.
Make the right recruitment decisions and you’ll be on the right side of the law.