Michael Slade, managing director of Bibby Consulting & Support, says that the measure would give companies immunity to discrimination claims.
Slade’s comments follow news that more than 100 major UK companies have agreed with a government suggestion that CVs and application forms should not show a school’s name or identify a candidate’s ethnicity, to eliminate any chance of discrimination during the application process.
According to the government, applicants could be disadvantaged if they put on their application form the name of a school that doesn’t have a good reputation. At the same time, their ethnicity should be irrelevant to their suitability for a post.
Says Slade, ‘It is very important that business owners are seen to be 100 per cent fair when taking on new employees, so the recruitment and selection process needs to be able to prove that a person got the job based on their ability and not where they came from.
‘The deputy prime minister has gone on record as saying that getting a job should be about ‘what you know, not who you know‘ and we couldn’t agree more. So it is absolutely vital that companies reflect this approach and design their selection processes to avoid the risk of discrimination claims.’
