Does Your Hiring Protocol Have Hints of Illegality?

Legal Trends: Employment Selection Systems – How Risky is Yours?

Curator's Comments: I've just returned from a certification training for the Predictive Index Assessment Tool.  Though I've used many in my practice, I will be limiting my use of the others due to what you'll read in the following post. Luckily for me and for my clients, The Predictive Index has passed and continually exceeded accepted validation standards by a considerable margin for the EEOC.  For the hiring protocol of many companies, that is not true...and they don't even know it.

Source: Charles - Rocket Hire - The Blog
With a doctorate in I-O psychology, one side of me is a trained ‘talent selection system designer’. A big part of what we learn in grad school, and then apply in the real world, is the legal compliance side of testing. There are a raft of regulations to consider (i.e. the EEOC Uniform Guidelines and OFCCPcompliance) to help companies avoid discrimination through testing. And I’ll tell you from experience, most companies are very concerned about keeping their legal risks low (they’d love them to be ‘nil’, which is difficult if not impossible) when planning a selection process or system to implement.

There are all kinds of things to take into consideration, and you can read up on prohibited practices if you are interested, but in the end the likelihood that you will get sued as an employer increases based on some predictable factors. To help you get an overview of whether or not your organization might be at higher risk, there is a new online calculator available.

Development Dimensions International (DDI) has developed a simple online ‘Instant Risk Profiler‘ to give you an idea of the factors that might impact your likelihood of experiencing a legal challenge to your selection system. The Profiler asks a series of questions, then assigns a score to each answer – gathering a cumulative total that appears on a ‘heat map’ graph ranging from low-risk green through yellow to high-risk red. It is designed to measure ‘situational risk’ in relationship to job analysis and validation rigor – all terms familiar to us I-Os.

As DDI states, “All selection systems involve legal risk, but some situations are riskier than others. The Profiler uses information about litigation and regulatory trends to forecast the legal risk for a particular organization and job type, and provides examples of the job analysis and validation activities needed to offset this risk ."

While the results are not a definitive legal opinion, you can use this calculator to get a quick overview – which might get you thinking about your selection processes and whether you have the right stuff in place. –Charles  |  Source Link: http://rocket-hire.com/blog

For additional an article explaining legal exposure more in depth - see this article / case study on the Jacksonville Fire Department

I encourage you to learn more about the Predictive Index and how it can meet your talent management needs, particularly in your hiring practices. Click here