What You Should and Should Not Do When Recruiting Staff in England

When you spend time and money recruiting new staff for your business, you must do it correctly. Not only must you encourage suitable candidates to apply for the job role, but you must also recruit effectively and fairly. If you fail to do so, you could face an employment claim in an employment tribunal. To avoid such disputes, this article will explain what you should and should not do when recruiting staff in England.

Make Reasonable Adjustments

You are legally obliged to make reasonable adjustments for employees and job candidates when you know they have a disability. The adjustment must be reasonable and help reduce or eliminate any disadvantage their disability causes in the job or recruitment process. For example, providing a ramp for the interview for a person who uses a wheelchair. Reasonable adjustments will also aid those with a disability to work safely and productively.

 When asking about reasonable adjustments for the interview stage, you should consider other options such as:

• the use of a sign language interpreter;
• extra time to complete any tests; and 
• assistance with any use of a computer.

Write an Effective Job Description

When recruiting staff, writing an adequate job description or specification is essential. A good job description will clarify to your job candidate what the role entails and what training they may require. It can also indicate how you may manage their performance at an early step. 

An excellent job description should contain:

• a succinct description of the purpose of the job role;
• a list of the primary tasks of the position; and 
• the scope of the job role, which will detail the role in the context of your business.

Provide a Diversity and Equality Monitoring Form

When preparing the documents for your job applicants, an essential one to provide is an equality and diversity monitoring form. This enables you to monitor who makes up your workforce and can help courage equality and diversity in your business. 

An equality and diversity monitoring form can ask for information about:

• race, nationality and ethnic group;
• religion and belief;
• sex; and 
• sexual orientation. 

However, you cannot ask about temporary characteristics such as pregnancy or maternity. Furthermore, you must ensure that the job candidate’s identity is not revealed through this form, so they should hand it in separately from the rest of their application. For example, you cannot ask about gender reassignment as this could reveal the person’s identity.

Do Not Discriminate

It is illegal to discriminate during employment, including during the recruitment process. Hence, you must ensure that you do not discriminate against potential job applicants. 

Discrimination is unlawful when it concerns one of the nine protected characteristics. These characteristics include:

• race;
• sex;
• disability;
• religion;
• maternity and pregnancy;
• sexual orientation;
• age;
• marriage and civil partnership; and 
• gender reassignment.

Furthermore, you should consider other potential means of discrimination, including:

• forcing applicants to handwrite their forms which could potentially discriminate against those with a disability or those whose first language is not English; 
• asking interviewees different questions based on their characteristics which are likely to be an unfair and discriminatory process; and
• asking direct questions which relate to a protected characteristic during the interview.

Do Not Rush the Job Offer Letter

Once you have chosen a suitable candidate, you should not rush your job offer letter. This is because you will need to consider how detailed your letter is and how much time you wish to give the potential employee to accept and start the job. When thinking about the time, do not just consider your needs; you should also consider the amount of notice the applicant will likely have to give to their current employer. 

Regarding the amount of detail in a job offer letter, you need to decide if you wish to include the written statement of terms and conditions of employment with the job offer. This document is a legal requirement where the job candidate will be employed for at least one month with you. If you do not detail the Statement in the job offer letter, you must give it to your employee within two months of starting their employment with you.

A job offer letter should:

• the job title;
• conditions attached to the offer, such as passing probation pre-employment checks;
• basic terms and conditions of employment, such as work hours, pay and place of work;
• start date of employment, including any probation period; and
• details about how the applicant accepts or declines your offer letter.

Key Takeaways

You must know what you should and should not do when recruiting staff in England. This can aid in a smooth recruitment process and help you avoid a legal dispute. For example, you should avoid illegal discrimination during the interview process. You should also ensure that, when advertising the role, your job description has essential information, such as the primary task of the role and how the role relates to the rest of your business. Correcting the recruitment process will likely get you the ideal job candidate and help you avoid an unwanted employment tribunal claim.

If you need help understanding the dos and don’ts when recruiting staff in England, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

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