Equal employment opportunity in HRM: Meaning and its importance

EEO Guidelines: Equal Employment Opportunity in HRM: Meaning and its importance

Equal Employment Opportunity 

Table of content

1. Equal employment opportunity in HRM
2. Equal employment opportunity examples
3. Importance of equal employment opportunity in HRM

Meaning of equal employment opportunity in modern HRM

Equal employment opportunity is a concept that emphasis the opportunities in employment should be freely available to all citizens irrespective of a person’s thinking style, religion, sex, race, color, gender, ethnic origin, political association, pregnancy, spirituality, belief, disability, military status, genetic information and age that has no bearing on his qualification, performance, and ability.

The equal employment opportunity does not guarantee to hire a potential employee. The purpose is that no one is rejected based on any discrimination.

Example of equal employment opportunity

EEO

If someone is doing the same work just as well as another staff member, they should be getting paid the same for that work. An example of an equal opportunity employment issue is wages. Paying someone less because of discrimination is unacceptable. That's regardless of gender, age, and other factors.

Importance of practicing equal employment opportunity in HRM

The Equal Employment Opportunity helps employees to feel treated equally and fairly. This greatly promotes other factors in HRM, such as employee engagement, improved performance, job satisfaction, etc.

The importance of equal employment opportunity is as follows:

1. Employee retention

Organizations that promote equal employment opportunity leads to employee satisfaction and engagement that automatically results in employee retention.

2. Promotes diversity

The Equal Employment Opportunity policies allow employees to openly interact and engage with each other without discriminating peers on their races, sex, religion, or their hierarchical rank in the organisation. The concept of equal employment opportunity promotes a culture of diversity and encourages every employee to work in a harmonious atmosphere irrespective of their origin.

3. Creates equality within the organization

It is a hard fact that people belonging to a minority or specific ethnic culture often face discrimination, and it is this concept that can help to remove it altogether and create equality within the organization.

4. Strong brand image

Organizations with policies like equal employment opportunity can create and maintain a strong brand image amongst its target audience and the industry as people tend to look upon such companies that leave a positive mark on others.

5. Increased employee engagement

It not only promotes respect toward fellow employees but also breeds an open, friendly culture with an opportunity to help and encourage co-worker performance and add up to diversity in the organisation. Such policies, when implemented, create a healthy environment for the employees to quickly reach out to their subordinates as well as higher authorities and build an effective, transparent communication system within the organisation that scales up their productivity and broadens the scope of knowledge-exchange.

6. Improved recruitment

The organisation can focus on evaluating the talent, skill-set, and abilities of applicants who can efficiently contribute and make significant value-addition to the organisation. Usually, most organisations overlook the demand of the vacant position and fail to recruit the right candidate by hiring an individual who seemingly fits the role without any evaluation or assessments done to measure one’s qualification. Hence, on the lines of Equal Employment Opportunity policy, the companies can spread word of mouth of their transparent and ethical recruitment process, attract potential applicants and make unbiased hiring decisions to employ qualified candidates, and build a proficient team with the right know-how and capacity to perform challenging tasks to add to the overall growth of the organization.