We’ve all seen it in the news lately-racial discrimination seems rife in the nation and tensions are running extremely high. We, as a country, are becoming especially sensitive in regards to what discrimination is and how it affects us. This sensitivity is undoubtedly going to be leading to a greater amount of scrutiny into the hiring practices of employers in all industries, whether it be engineering firms or construction companies. One industry whose visibility in terms of staffing is much higher than others (and therefore will need owners and managers who are very educated on the subject) is the hospitality industry. Customers will be able to see and experience the makeup of your staff in such a direct way that differs from almost every other industry. This can lead to major problems if you are not well versed in the laws surrounding discriminatory hiring practices. These are some examples of non-intuitive discrimination that most managers wouldn’t even consider, and some tips for avoiding them.
- Discrimination based on national origin.
The biggest mistake hiring managers make in terms of potentially damaging discriminatory practices is thinking that discrimination ends at gender or racial reasoning. That is not even close to the truth! Take national origin discrimination: it is illegal to discriminate against an individual because of their birthplace, ancestry, culture, or linguistic characteristic common to their ethnic group.
This means that even in the simple case of you requesting employment verification for people who speak Spanish, or whose English skills are not at a level of fluency, you are practicing discriminatory hiring practices.
To avoid litigation, make sure you have a standardized hiring process that treats EVERY employee the same.
- Discrimination based on language
If you’re running a restaurant, you may want your waiting staff to have an accent that is similar to your typical customers. This may incite you to promote only English-fluent, non-accented personnel from within the business to the higher paying position of waiter. Unfortunately, this is another example of discriminatory employment practices. As long as you can understand the potential server reasonably well, it is illegal to not promote him based on their accent
When you are hiring, you have to keep in mind that the only reasons you cannot hire or promote someone based on their fluency in a certain language is due to it possibly making your workplace environment dangerous or terribly inefficient. If you give a fluency test as a requirement for hiring, make sure that fluency test only covers what language skills they need.
To be continued in part two!
