Equality of opportunity at work

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Leadership and Human Resources - Miscellaneous, grade: B-, University of Derby, language: English, abstract: Outline the legislative framework for achieving equality of opportunity at work. Explain the importance of clear policies at the workplace and critically discuss the tensions between policy and practice at the point of recruitment and selection. According to Dickens (2002), statutory individual employment rights have become moreextensive since the election of the Labour Government in 1997. There are more rights,including in areas earlier unregulated in law in Britain, and the exposure of them has widenedto include people, who used to be excluded from protection. There have been modifications inthe institutions and dispute resolution processes and procedures. Dickens (2002) argues thatan opportunity for an essential reorganisation was missed. Colgan et al. (2007) report that the academic literature regarding progress in UK organisationequality and diversity policy and practice has pointed to the gap existing between equalitypolicy and practice. Evaluation of progress within the UK has shown the weak points of antidiscriminationlegislation and the uneven application over time and within organisations ofarguments based exclusively on the social justice and business cases. Human Resource International Digest (2006) raises some questions: How do people find anew position? Do they see it listed at a local employment agency? Perhaps they respond to anadvert in a national newspaper. Maybe it is an old friend from university who gives a usefultip that that particular company is recruiting and you find yourself qualified for the job. Thejournal Human Resource International Digest (2006) suggests that the way a person answersthis question gives a good clue of this person s gender and/or ethnic background. These threeways to a job application supposed to be the main ones people go through, whereby whitemales are much more likely to discover about vacancies with the help of informal friendshipnetworks. Women and ethnic minority applicants are already disadvantaged before theapplication process even begins because the only positions, which are opened to them, arethose that have been publicly advertised. [...]