COLLAPSE SUBDISCUSSION
Jessica Bowers
SundayApr 25 at 3:48pmManage Discussion Entry
One area where employment practices can result in disparate impact that is not aligned with disparate treatment is in employment assessments. While using assessments to determine employment is not disparate treatment as long as it is equally applied to all applicants (Ashe & Lunquist, 2010), the design of many assessments contains inherent bias for minorities, multi-national applicants, and people of advanced age, which can result in disparate impact in the hiring process (Ryan & Tippens, 2010). To prevent disparate impact in the use of assessments, the job competencies, KSAs, and requirements should be clearly defined and aligned to jobs that are similar globally (Ryan & Tippens, p. 583). Additionally, any assessment chosen for employment selection should be normed and validated in the culture or sub-culture where the assessment will be utilized, rather than assume that the norms for any assessment apply equally to all groups. This is especially important if selection or non-selection for employment will be determined by the standardized assessment.
References
Ashe, R. L., & Lundquist, K. K. (2010). The legal environment for assessment. In J. C. Scott & D. H. Reynolds (Eds.),Handbook of workplace assessment:
Evidence-based practices for selecting and developing organizational talent(pp. 643-670).
Ryan, M. & Tippens, N.T. (2010) Global applications of assessment. In J. C. Scott & D. H. Reynolds (Eds.),Handbook of workplace assessment: Evidence-based practices for selecting and developing organizational talent(pp. 533-576).
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COLLAPSE SUBDISCUSSION
Tiffany Frank
TuesdayApr 27 at 7:16amManage Discussion Entry
One area many organizations get tripped up on is unintentional discrimination. At the end of the day, discrimination is still discrimination, even if it’s not intentional and as such, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) specifically notes that discrimination that occurs based on having a negative impact on a specific group even when that was only a by-product of the situation is still illegal (Sowell, 2018).
Disparate impact is what occurs when an organization’s actions, policies, or some other aspect of their processes inadvertently result in discrimination against people who are in a protected class. This happens when one or more protected groups are negatively impacted more so than other groups, even though the policy, action, or item in question would otherwise appear to be neutral. What matters is the outcome, not the intent. The policy or action could appear to be completely neutral but still, have a disparate impact when implemented (Herman, 2005).
Disparate treatment has a similar name but differs from disparate impact. While the disparate impact may not be intentional, “disparate treatment” is the more obvious version: purposefully treating individuals from one group in a way that results in a negative impact. This occurs, for example, when an organization singles out individuals from a specific group and treats them differently somehow. For example, when interviewing, if only women are intentionally singled out to have to perform a skill test, that would be disparate treatment and would be discriminatory (Herman, 2005).
References:
Sowell, Thomas (2018). Discrimination and Disparities. New York, NY: Basic Books. ISBN 9781541645639.
Herman Aguinis; Cascio, Wayne F. (2005). Applied Psychology in Human Resource Management (6th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-148410-9.