Question

Under federal, state, and local laws, employers are prohibited from considering the following factors in making hiring and other employment decisions: age, color, disability, genetic information, marital status (some states), military status or experience, national origin, pregnancy, race, religion, and sexual orientation (some states and cities).

Equal employment laws are important because they reduce discrimination and biases for and against potential employees based on the protected characteristics.

Why are these laws important in today’s employment setting?

Answer 1

Equal employment laws are important in today’s employment setting as the pace of expansion, development and progress of companies are happening at an unprecedented pace. In today’s world of globalization and the world becoming flat companies and organizations are looking to expand across the globe rapidly. This is being done either organically (through greenfield expansions) or inorganically (through mergers and acquisitions, buyouts and other forms of inorganic expansion). When companies are expanding on a global basis often a difference in culture of different geographies may impact the organization’s hiring process. In the quest for rapid expansion companies often tend to develop biases when hiring employees and this may make their employment practices unfair towards certain sections of the society.

This is the primary reason why equal employment laws are important in today’s employment setting. The law ensures that companies, in their quest for expansion, do not make use of discriminating employment practices. Another reason why the equal employment laws are important in today’s employment setting is that today employees consist of people from different nationalities and background and not necessarily the domestic country. For instance if you look at employees of Facebook a large proportion of their employees are Asians (mainly Indians and Chinese). This may lead to cultural differences and formation of biases and these elements may eventually lead to discriminatory practices. Hence equal employment laws are important in today’s employment setting.