Application forms

An application form should provide the essential information you need to sift out unsuitable candidates quickly and to decide on the best shortlist for interview.

• Ask only for the bare minimum of personal details. Name, address and a telephone number is usually enough.
• Invite candidates to draw from experience gained outside employment where this shows that they have skills needed for the job, for example skills gained in voluntary work or during a career break.
• Ask specifically whether a candidate has a disability as in some circumstances you may need to consider making special arrangements for the interview, however, try to keep the disability question as simple as possible.
• Double check that questions on the form will give you information which relates directly to the job and your requirements. Remember only ask for information that is needed to find out if someone has the skills to match the job description or person specification, e.g., do you really need to know what a persons marital status is?
• You may wish to use a standard application form supplemented with a number of additional questions that relate specifically to the job on offer. Do make sure you leave enough space to enable candidates to demonstrate how they meet your requirements.

Consider, at this stage, how to deal with applications from people with disabilities. Some candidates may need to apply by telephone, tape or video for example. Indeed, this may be a "reasonable adjustment" required by the Disability Discrimination Act.

Short listing

Short listing involves matching evidence from the application form against the requirements set out in your specification. It is good practice to:

• have more than one person carrying out the sift, to reduce the risk of prejudice or bias;
• adopt a simple marking system to show how far each candidate has presented evidence that they can meet your requirements.
• take each application in turn and work systematically through your requirements, in order of importance, awarding a mark for each;
• carry out a brief review at the end of the exercise, making sure that marks have been awarded on the basis of evidence provided on the application form, rather than personal or second-hand knowledge about the candidate;
• invite the candidates with the best total scores to interview.
  In particular:
• do recognise that skills and abilities can be demonstrated by experience gained outside the workplace;
• count only evidence which is directly relevant to the job. In other words rely on the criteria you identified in the person specification. Changing your criteria to enable you to include someone else at this stage may be unlawful;
• do consider whether adjustments could be made to enable disabled candidates to meet your requirements.

Interviewing

Ideally interviews should be carried out by more than one person. Taken together the job description, person specification and your analysis of the application form should provide a useful framework for the interview, not a restriction. For example:

• it is quite reasonable that you should want to talk about particular points with different candidates and ask questions in various ways having considered the evidence in the application forms; however, you should make sure that you cover the same topics and issues in the same depth with each of the candidates;
• evidence about a candidate's experience outside the workplace can be helpful provided that it relates to the job. It often helps to encourage candidates to give a wide range of examples, which show how they can meet your requirements. Do be careful, though, not to stray into a candidate's personal circumstances (e.g. marital status, sexual orientation); doing this could lead candidates to believe they may not have been fairly treated;
• ask about a disability if it is, or may be, relevant to the candidate's ability to do the job. Talking about the effects of a disability will help the candidate demonstrate how they cope and help you to consider whether there are reasonable adjustments which might be made to help you get the best person for the job.

Making your decision

References

Many companies take up references after interviews, although they can be called in at any stage of the process. Rather than ask for a general character reference from a referee provide them with a copy of your job description and person specification and ask for evidence of the candidate's ability to meet your specific requirements. This is more likely to ensure that you get a reply quickly and that the information is relevant to you.

Eligibility

 

• Before appointing a person to the job, you will need to check their eligibility to work in this country under the Asylum and Immigration Act (1996).
• Do not make assumptions about candidates. Ask all candidates successful at interview about their eligibility.
• Explain why you are required to ask for this information, and make it clear that it is your policy to ask all successful candidates for this information.

Unsuccessful applicants

 

Let all candidates know the result of their application and provide brief feedback about their application and performance at interview if they ask for it. The cost of recruiting again if you do not offer the training and development to keep the staff you have can be considerable and more than justifies the investment in your workers' future.

The training of staff is something that you will have to consider from before they start with you. It is important that all staff have access to training regardless of whether they are part-time or full-time. All new staff should have an induction to your business that sets out your company rules, including your responsibilities to your employees, as well as theirs to you.

You will also need to cover health and safety practices at this time.

There will be a continuing need for staff training and development to advance the skills of your workforce and to enable then to adapt to new plant, machinery or systems. You should consider the best way of delivering this for your workforce.

• In-house training may be best for skills or knowledge that is specific to your company.
• College based training could be the best solution for more general skills such as business administration.
• Another possibility might be to support your employee in an open and flexible learning course, where they study at home.

Each need should be treated on its merits and you should consider a flexible approach to training. If all training is residential or requires additional time away from home this may disadvantage part-time employees or those with care responsibilities and stop them taking full advantage of any training opportunities. You will need to consider additional or alternative provision in these circumstances.

When selecting for promotion you need to follow the same principles as for recruitment.

• Vacancies that occur at higher levels should be open to existing staff as well as outside candidates.
• Ensure that all your employees, including those who work part-time, have equal access to any promotion opportunities and that no one is excluded.
• Staff movements to higher grades should be by application. You should assess each application against the job needs and hold a full selection process to make your final decision. In this respect it is identical to a recruitment exercise.
• You need to draw up a comprehensive job specification, detailing what the job involves, and a person specification explaining what qualities the successful candidate will have.
  

Giving equal access to promotion opportunities means that they need to be advertised in a way that is accessible to all staff.

There may be situations where some specialised posts are only suitable for people with particular skills but you should still be careful about limiting internal applications to these posts as some of your staff may have skills of which you are unaware, good practice would suggest that it is better to allow people to apply and then consider their applications in the usual way.

When it comes to the interviewing stage if you are seeing a mix of internal and external candidates, then you should ask questions about the same skills and competences of everyone. If an unsuccessful candidate was to find out that you asked questions addressing a different set of issues of internal or external candidates it could be used as evidence of discrimination.

At an Employment Tribunal you would be required to justify your difference in approach.

Your equality policy should make clear that breaches of the policy are a disciplinary offence and will be dealt with through your disciplinary procedures.

Grievances should be dealt with through your normal grievance procedure except where you have put in a separate procedure for dealing with harassment.

Equality legislation covers terms and conditions of employment and all employees are entitled to fair pay. Carry out a pay audit to make sure that men and women are getting equal pay and you are not breaking the Equal Pay Act. Providing equal pay means that you provide the same pay and conditions for men and women doing work that is:

• the same or broadly similar;
• has been rated as equivalent under a job evaluation scheme; or
• is of equal value in terms of the effort, skills, knowledge and responsibility required.

Providing equal pay also means that employees should know how their pay is made up.

So, for example, if you pay bonuses your employees should know what they have to do to earn a bonus, and how the bonus is calculated.

The Equal Pay Act applies to both full-time and part-time employees. If a female part-time employee is doing equal work to a male full-time employee she should get equal pay on a pro rata basis. This means that they should be on the same hourly rate.

The purpose of monitoring is to enable you to examine how your policy and action plan are working. If your policy is fully effective and has been in operation for some time your workforce should be broadly representative of the population of the geographical area from which it is drawn or demonstrably moving in that direction. Monitoring enables you to assess this.

For example, what percentage of your workforce are women and are they represented at all levels of the company? If you have a large Asian population within the travel to work area of your company and you do not employ any Asian people ask yourself why?

If you employ only a relatively small number of people then it may be enough to monitor your workforce from personal knowledge but for larger organisations a more detailed analysis is needed and will give you useful information, particularly as your company grows.

What information should be collected?

The key thing to bear in mind is to collect only information you are going to use. Collecting information for its own sake is pointless and will not help your planning or decision making.What information you collect will largely depend on what you are trying to achieve. Most organizations will try to collect information based around the current UK equality legislation.

These areas include the sex and ethnicity of your workforce and whether they have a disability and under new legislation their religion, sexual orientation and age although sexual orientation can be a sensitive matter and should be approached carefully (for public bodies monitoring of ethnicity, gender and disability is mandatory).

You might also want to look at how many workers are part-time or have caring responsibilities and the position that these groups of people hold within the company.

It is recommended that applicants and employees be asked to self-classify. If this method is to produce a high response rate it is essential that those asked for the information understand why it is being collected.
It is very important that you consult with staff or their representatives to let them know that you will be carrying out monitoring and to discuss what areas will be monitored.

Who do I monitor?

You should monitor both who is applying to work for your company and also your existing workforce.
Applicants

When monitoring at the recruitment stage it is good practice to ask, when possible, for monitoring data on a sheet that can be detached from the application form.

A separate sheet can be analysed away from those carrying out the selection process who will remain unaware of the information it contains. It should be made clear that the information will be kept separately and will only be used for equality monitoring and not in the short-listing process.

It is very important to remember that all applicants must be treated fairly at the point of selection and choosing someone because they are from a particular group or a particular sex is unlawful discrimination.

Existing workforce

When collecting this information it is advisable to make it clear that the reasons behind this are to ensure fairness within the workplace and that every employee has the same access to training, promotion and other opportunities.

You will be collecting the same data as at the application stage. This information should give you a picture of your organisation and allow you to see whether there are any inequalities, for example, you may find you have few or no women in managerial positions