Affirmative Action and Legal Issues in Human Resources Essay

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Affirmative ActionAffirmative action is a concept that dates back to John F. Kennedy when it started as an Executive Order. President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, which included a provision requiring government contractors to take affirmative action to ensure the equal treatment of all job applicants regardless of sex, religion, race, national origin, or color (Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, 2023). The order was issued to demonstrate the government’s commitment to ensuring equal opportunity for all qualified applicants. Moreover, it sought to demonstrate the government’s positive action in fostering efforts toward the achievement of true equal opportunity for all. Executive Order 10925 later became Executive Order 11246, which ensures that companies working with the government have a mechanism for taking action against hiring discrimination. Therefore, prohibiting hiring discrimination and promoting equal opportunity for all has been the basis for affirmative action. Affirmative action seeks to ensure that qualified underrepresented entities like minorities have equal opportunity to be hired (Oyinlade, 2014).Given its objective, affirmative action refers to specific actions in job recruitment, hiring, and promotions that seek to eliminate discrimination and its effects. It is essentially a set of specific actions that an employer carries in good faith to ensure that all applicants and employees have equal employment opportunities (Green, 2004). These actions and good-faith efforts include training programs, procedures, and outreach initiatives. These procedures and actions should be included in the written personnel policies of the company. The written affirmative action plans must be implemented and reviewed annually to ensure equal employment opportunity for all.Throughout the years, affirmative action has evolved and diverged into three distinct paths. First, affirmative action arises in the context of government contractors. In this context, affirmative action is undertaken as a requirement for receiving a contract from the federal government. This context is the premise with which President John F. Kennedy established affirmative action under Executive Order 10925. The second context is court-imposed relief, which occurs when a court orders affirmative action as a solution to address past discrimination by an employer. The third context of affirmative action is voluntary, which is undertaken by an employer (Appel et al., 2005).According to the Department of Administration (2021), affirmative action is critical in current human resource practices for various reasons. First, affirmative action helps to increase the utilization of minorities, people with disabilities, and women in job categories and equal employment opportunity job classifications. Secondly, it helps to address and change employment practices that hinder equal employment opportunity through analysis of specific practices and implementation of corrective measures. Third, affirmative action helps to strengthen accountability and assessment by allocating major responsibilities to the management. Finally, affirmative action enhances support for equal employment opportunity and workforce diversity. Such support is evident as affirmative action provides training on issues and topics relating to fair employment practices.Affirmative Action PlanAn affirmative action plan refers to a written document or program specifying steps or processes a company has carried out and will carry out to ensure equal employment opportunity (Department of Administration, 2021). The written document or program details steps for ensuring that qualified people are not discriminated against in employment decisions on the basis of their race, religion, color, national origin, or sex. The creation of an affirmative action plan involves a review of employment data from previous years. Such data is used as an outlook of what the employer will do over the next year with regard to equal employment opportunity for all. When analyzing employment data, a company utilizes the required regulatory statistics. Using a summary of the results, the company formulates an affirmative action plan in compliance with federal requirements. If an employer is covered by federal affirmative action obligations, he/she may be required to establish certain policies.The process of establishing an affirmative action plan incorporates three major elements. The first element in this process is reasonable self-analysis, which involves determining whether existing or probable employment practices are discriminatory toward certain groups or do not address previous employment discrimination. Reasonable self-analysis determines whether employment practices restrict, exclude, or promote discriminatory treatment of certain groups. When conducting the self-analysis, the employer also seeks to determine why employment practices could be discriminatory or have an adverse impact on certain groups (Legal Information Institute, 2021). Reasonable self-analysis helps to create a problems/barriers identification statement, which stipulates conditions or situations that should be changed or corrected. In addition, the statement specifies personnel/management policies or actions that could be contributing to the situation or conditions (Department of Administration, 2021). This statement is the premise for creating an action statement that details steps to be taken to remedy the problems and barriers.The second element in the creation of an affirmative action plan is reasonable basis, which is determined based on the results of the self-analysis. Reasonable basis for an affirmative action plan is established if one or more employment practices are deemed to have an adverse effect on employment opportunities for certain groups. Moreover, such a basis is established if employment practices do not correct the effects of past discrimination or they contribute to disparate treatment of certain groups. However, reasonable basis can exist without a previous violation of relevant employment laws such as Title VII.Once reasonable basis is established, the third critical element is reasonable action. Reasonable action may include goals and timetables as well as other suitable employment tools to promote equal employment opportunity. Goals are narrowly customized objectives for hiring and promoting groups protected in equal employment opportunity categories. These objectives seek to remedy the lasting effects of previous discrimination. As part of the plan, goals can be used as adaptable targets to guide affirmative action steps. However, they should not be used to discriminate or prohibit people from employment opportunities through reverse discrimination (Department of Administration, 2021). Timetables help to ensure that the specified actions are implemented in a timely manner. In essence, affirmative action goals must be specific, measurable, and timely in order to be effective in promoting equal employment opportunity.When creating an affirmative action plan, a company should develop and publish a policy on equal employment opportunity. Such a policy should specify that the employer does not discriminate against protected groups and stipulate actions intended to enhance the representation of these groups while protecting the majority.

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Some potential actions to improve the representation of protected groups include providing training programs to the company’s internal stakeholders, especially those in key decision-making positions. An important part of the implementation of an affirmative action plan is assigning responsibility to people within the company. These individuals should be mandated with the responsibility of implementing the plan and conducting regular reviews to help address any challenges. This would help ensure that the affirmative action plan is up to date and complies with relevant laws.Company Website DesignBeing an employer of choice is an important success factor in today’s highly competitive business environment, particularly in the retail trade sector. A company that is deemed an employer of choice is highly sought after by job seekers because of its stellar reputation (Grones, 2020). Companies build their reputation as employers of choice by providing rewarding working environments characterized by good employee experience. As a grocery chain, building a reputation as an employer of choice is critical in a highly competitive market. Workers in the retail trade sector have a wide range of choices of occupation, industry, work arrangements, and employer locale. As a result, attracting and retaining top talent in this sector is increasingly difficult. In this situation, attracting and retaining such talent is more difficult because our website does not represent the company’s desire to be an employer of choice. Unlike the three grocery stores listed in Fortune Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2016, our grocery chain is not renowned as an…

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…the necessary technical and communication skills were not based on any evidence. His personnel files and performance appraisals show otherwise. In addition, the VPRC reported that Mr. Ron was highly qualified for the new CCS position.Disparate Treatment Claim – RebuttalHaving received Mr. Ron’s claims of disparate treatment, we do not agree with the complaints. Mr. Ron’s claims of age discrimination are not well-founded and his statement is based on some errors. Age was not a factor in the hiring and promotion process since the qualifications of all interested and potential candidates were considered. We disagree with Mr. Ron’s claims of age discrimination due to the following reasons.First, the argument the restructuring process was simply carried out to replace older employees with younger ones is erroneous. The restructuring and reorganization process was carried out to help ensure WDE remains competitive in an ever-changing insurance market. Since the restructuring was already agreed upon by the firm’s management, the involvement of the VPRC was not necessary in the hiring and promotion process. The failure to involve the VPRC in this process does not imply that age discrimination was the reason for the restructuring of the company. In addition, the VPRC was not consulted in the hiring and promotion process to avoid bias. Since the VPRC was Ron’s boss, his involvement in the decision-making process would have increased the possibility of bias.Secondly, from the outset, the new CCS positions were to be redesigned and upgraded in knowledge and skill requirements. The upgrade was necessary to help enhance WDE’s competitiveness in the market. This implies that the new positions required innovativeness and technical skills that would improve the firm’s operations and productivity. Therefore, the new positions required better technical and communication skills. While Mr. Ron had served well in his RCM position, better technical and communication skills were necessary for consideration for the new CCS position. In this regard, Mr. Ron was not promoted and effectively terminated because he did not possess the required technical and communication skills for the new CCS position. His effective termination was as a result of lacking the necessary skills for the new positions, which replaced RCM positions.Third, the SVP and two MCCs carried out internal promotions for the new CCS positions as was planned from the outset. All RCMs including Mr. Ron were asked to apply for the new positions. Upon application, each candidate including RCMs was given a fair chance and consideration for the job. When creating a list of employees who could be interested in the new positions, the SVP and MCCs included Mr. Ron. If age was a factor in the hiring and promotion process, they could not have considered Mr. Ron from the very beginning. The inclusion of Mr. Ron from the very beginning implies that age was not a factor in the decision-making process. Moreover, since each candidate was given a fair chance by the hiring team, the question of age discrimination does not occur. While the process ended up in the selection of candidates below the age of 40, it was simply a coincidence rather than intentional age discrimination.Fourth, the personnel files and previous performance appraisals of the candidates were neither reviewed nor evaluated because of time constraints on the part of the hiring team. Since the RCM positions were essentially deemed redundant due to the restructuring and reorganization, the hiring team needed to move with speed to fill out the new positions. These new positions needed to be filled out quickly to avoid interruptions in the company’s operations. Consequently, reviewing the personnel files and past performance appraisals of the candidates would have been a time-consuming process that could have affected WDE’s business operations. In addition, the files and appraisals were also not reviewed since the candidates were relatively unknown to the hiring team. The hiring team had not had many interactions with the candidates previously. Therefore, there was no way….....

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