Widespread discrimination practices in Recruitment

New sanctions on employers could be on the cards after the government published research that revealed widespread racial discrimination in recruitment procedures.
Employment minister Jim Knight hinted that tough new measures could be introduced following the findings of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) study, which uncovered that workers with African and Asian names were victimised when it came to applying for jobs.
Researchers sent nearly 3,000 job applications to employers in the private, public and voluntary sectors. They found that for every nine applications sent by a white applicant, an equally good applicant with an ethnic minority name had to send 16 to obtain a positive response.
Knight revealed his department would introduce specific plans to deal with discrimination in the workplace later this year. He said: "This research clearly shows that some employers are discriminating when it comes to choosing staff. This has no place in a modern society, and racial discrimination cannot be allowed to continue.
"We are determined to stop this scourge on society – the Equality Bill will strengthen our hand and we are already preparing to publish specific plans for dealing with discrimination in the workplace later this year."
A DWP spokesman could not expand on the details of the plans but said they would be published before Christmas.
Personnel Today's sister title Employers' Law first reported on the race discrimination investigation in July.
Sandra Kerr, national campaign director at membership organisation Race for Opportunity, described the findings as "deeply troubling". She said: "More worrying is that more than 30 years after the Race Relations Act there has been a lack of real progress on this issue.
"In the current climate of rising unemployment, we must act swiftly to eradicate bias and prevent the ethnic minority employment gap from widening further. This is not the time for employers to bury their heads in the sand."

Criminal Convictions

Employers are now entitled to access more information regarding the previous convictions of potential employees, following a ruling by the Court of Appeal.

A successful legal challenge by five police authorities, against guidance stating they should delete older files regarding criminal convictions, will enable employers to now access details on the older convictions of job applicants held on police databases through the Criminal Records Bureau.
Previously, the Information Commissioner and the Information Tribunal had said the retention of police documents outlining old convictions should be destroyed as they breached the Data Protection Act. Police authorities can now keep the information for "as long as they feel necessary".

Guy Lamb, an employment partner at DLA Piper, told Personnel Today this ruling would enable employers to access more detailed records for potential employees, but it would not affect the type of information available to employers.

He said: "It means that what is available to be checked will go back much further than it would have done before, but it won't change the rules about what you can ask for, what's a spent conviction and what isn't."

While he said it would "have a fairly limited impact for employers", Lamb warned HR functions to act rationally with any information obtained about older convictions.

He said: "Just because someone has a conviction is not a good reason for not employing them, and that's amplified if now you can start to get convictions that are considerably older. The same rules apply. Employers must think what relevance is the conviction to the role and how long ago it was."

Kevin McKenna, senior associate at law firm Weightmans, added: "So the theft of a 99p packet of meat in 1984 for a person who was under 18 at the time and was fined £15 (one of the examples in this case) will be regarded as a spent conviction unless you are dealing with one of a number of specified jobs. If an exemption applies, then it is necessary that the information exists in a database to ensure the individual is accurately confirming their past criminal record."