Question

Discuss the legal aspects of adverse impact and what recommendations could be made to reduce adverse impact .

Answer 1

Adverse impact is the employment practices that appear neutral but does have a discriminatory effect on a specific protected group. It may occur in promotion, training and development, transfer, layoff, and even performance appraisals. The adverse impact may be unintentional. Under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines, it is defined as a substantially different rate of selection in hiring, or other employment decision which works to the disadvantage of members of a race, sex or ethnic group.

The EEOC has adopted a rule of thumb under which they generally consider a selection rate of any race, sex, or ethnic group which is less than (4/5ths) or 80% of the selection rate for the group with the highest selection rate as a substantially different rate of selection.

There are several things which can be done to reduce the adverse impact they are:

• 1. Conduct a Thorough Job Analysis
• 2.Undertake a Validation Study                                                  
• 3. Use Valid and Defensible Assessments
• 4.Ensure Your Testing Process is consistently Fair
• 5.Cnstantly seek Improvement

These are some of the measures which can be taken to reduce adverse impact.