Free Sample on Determining EEO And Affirmative Action Compliance

Many businesses in the United States, especially those with at least fifteen employees, are obligated to meet specific legal requirements to protect employees from discrimination against color, race, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability or genetic information. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that illegalize discrimination. The EEOC's requirements apply to all types of work situations, which include hiring, firing, promotions, training, wages, benefits and harassment. However, the compliance of the EEOC's laws has been at stake due to specific critical reasons; for instance, some job opportunity attracts many applicants. This paper will examine the EEOC and affirmative action compliance with regards to EECO's seven suits against harassment facing several businesses in 2018.

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Actions that the companies could have taken to prevent the violation of rights

In the seven suits filed by the EECO 2008, there are several approaches that the affected companies would have taken to ensure compliance by the EECO's laws. The actions can be divided into three; educating employees, establishing anti-discriminatory policy and handling rights violation complaints (Kilbertus et al., 2017). During the early stages of employment, new-hire training is very crucial. This would have made the new-employees to be aware of the behaviours that won't be tolerated in the organization. The education can be done through the orientation of the new employees and affording them up-to-date handbooks. The handbooks should contain all the policies, including the discrimination policies. The companies could have made sure that the new employees understand every bit of the information contained in the handbooks. They could have also made EECO materials available for the employees, and these could have included the EECO posters, brochures and other related documents. Again, education should be done from time to time and not once. Another essential spectrum is to make sure that companies have regular meetings with the employees and discuss issues that can escalate discriminations.

The companies should have also established an anti-discriminatory policy or could have made sure the plans are adequately adhered to if there were some complaints (Kilbertus et al., 2017). Creation of company policy statement affirming the companies view of discrimination could have helped to avoid discrimination and retaliation in the companies sued by the EECO. Sufficient information could have been provided to define who the policy protects, the conducts prohibited under the policy as well as outlining the complaint resolution procedure. Another significant bit is that the companies could have ensured that their statement policies clearly define the consequences of involving in prohibited conducts. For, instance, there could be policies such as you engage in banned behaviours three times, and then you are fired. The procedure of handling discrimination complaints is also another significant spectrum. More than one person could have dealt with the allegations, and the method should also be clearly defined so that either the employee or the employer doesn't breach the process complaints (Kilbertus et al., 2017). They could have made sure that the accusations are investigated promptly and records kept. They could have also made sure that the process of investigation is treated with a high degree of confidentiality.

Damages awarded to complainants in cases similar to those mentioned in the EEOC article

Apart from the discrimination complaints filed in the EECO article, there are diverse workplace discriminations in the United States that have taken different spectra. There are two common types of discrimination that companies engage in; disparate treatment and disparate impact. Desperate treatment is where the employee is discriminated because or colour, race, religion, sex, age etc. On the other hand, disparate impact is where the employer's regulations or policies are discriminatory. Away from the cases in the EECO article, there is another aspect of discrimination in the U.S., which involved religion. For instance, a study revealed that Muslim women were discriminated in the workplace against their decision to wear the headscarves (Kadiresan & Javed, 2015). Moreso, the terror attacks faced in the U.S. escalated the rate at which Muslims are being discriminated in the workplace in the U.S. For instance, after the terror attacks, many companies in the U.S. did not employ Muslims, and those who were already employed were being discriminated (Kadiresan & Javed, 2015). Forms of discrimination here included name-calling, staring, acts of intimidation and refusal to serve etc. (Kadiresan & Javed, 2015). Some of these forms of discrimination have also been evident in the EECO suit article

My actions as Human Resource Manager to prevent discriminatory allegations

As a Human Resource Manager, I understand that my company should be prepared to defend itself in the face of discrimination and other employee-generated lawsuits (Nowrouzi et al., 2017). Thus, the first step is to ensure the prevention of such allegations. Therefore, I would make proper documentation of the employee reviews, performance evaluations, records of attendance, plus other benchmarks. I would also make sure that the supervisors are honest and accurate in the employee reviews. I would also make sure that managers and employees are adequately trained on how to avoid discrimination (Nowrouzi et al., 2017). I would make sure that I comply with local, state, and federal laws. Again, I would educate myself through further studies as well as attend relevant forums. More importantly, I would make sure that I maintain consistent policies to make sure they apply to all employees across the board (Nowrouzi et al., 2017). This way, I would be sure to prevent discrimination allegations in any given company.

References

Kadiresan, V., & Javed, N. K. (2015). Discrimination in employment and task delegation at the workplace in the Malaysian context. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 5(7), 30, http://hrmars.com/hrmars_papers/Discrimination_in_Employment_and_Task_Delegation_at_Workplace_in_the_Malaysian_Context2.pdf

Kilbertus, N., Carulla, M. R., Parascandolo, G., Hardt, M., Janzing, D., & Scholkopf, B. (2017). Avoiding discrimination through causal reasoning. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (pp. 656-666), http://papers.nips.cc/paper/6668-avoiding-discrimination-through-causal-reasoning

Nowrouzi, B., McDougall, A., Gohar, B., Nowrouz-Kia, B., Casole, J., & Ali, F. (2015). Weight Bias in the workplace: a literature review. Occupational Medicine & Health Affairs, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.942.5428&rep=rep1&type=pdf