When firm undertake proper hiring practices, they reduce the legal risks, lower the costs of the process, and raise the chances that the practices would contribute positively to their productivity. Nevertheless, making improper decisions during hiring could result in adverse outcomes for the organization, including the fact that it could attract legal scrutiny to the organizations involved. In line with the legal considerations that managers should make during their staffing procedures, this paper analyzes the employment laws that guard both the employer and the employee, ranging from anti-discriminatory laws, to the types of questions that should be asked during the interviewing processes, to other regulations. Overall, the paper finds and reports that the labor laws that govern the hiring process, much as they have some levels of protection on the hiring institutions, they tend to protect the job candidates more than they do to the employers.
Anti-discriminatory laws are the most critical of the labor legislations that Human Resource Managers, HRMs, should observe during their staffing procedures. Precisely, according to Walsh (2015), job applicants are protected by the federal laws against discrimination during the hiring activities based on a collection of benchmarks, such as religion, disability, age, pregnancy, gender, national origin, and race. The federal legislative framework sets forth a collection of anti-discrimination laws, which are founded on the primary labor laws of the country. According to Twomey (2017), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 1981 of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, the Family Medical Leave Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act found the employment laws of the US. While the listed laws deal with diverse issues concerned with employment, they collectively bar employers from discriminating against specific groups of workers.
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Notably, the listed statutes in the preceding paragraph cover specific types of employees, which means that some of them could be left out. Nevertheless, the legislation against discrimination is made stricter by state and local laws that could specific addition groups of employees that are protected by the mother statutes. For a hiring organization to be included in the federal employment legislation, it should hire a specific number of workers, which relies on the types of employers and the type of discrimination under consideration (Ford et al., 2014). In this case, one should note that local and state laws cover smaller employers that do not meet the number of workers that are specified under the federal legislative framework.
Notably, workers are categorized by the existence of employment contacts or collective bargaining agreements, and in the absence of the two, an employment-at-will would be applied in the distinction of employees. Managers should understand that employment-at-will could be terminated freely by either an employee or employers for any form of reason with or without the issuance of notice, as long as the associated state, local, or federal law is not breached (Walsh, 2015). In any case, workers are assumed to be at-will until an employment contract creates a different relationship between the employees and their employers. Interestingly, when the employer and employees are bound by contracts, the relationship between the two parties is subject to an interpretation of the terms and conditions contained in the agreement (Ford et al., 2014). Another category used in determining whether the employment laws apply to specific cases is whether the employer belongs to the public or private sector, whether the employees are termed workers or independent contractors, and whether the same workers are exempt or not exempt from overtime.
The reported findings of this research seem to suggest the criticality of employment agreements in determining the relationship between employers and workers, which raises the question of whether any state, federal, or local laws mandate the existence of written employment agreements entered between workers and employers. According to Walsh (2015), written agreements are not mandatory since federal laws covering employment do not direct employers to furnish their workers with specific types of information. Nevertheless, some state and local legislations could mandate that employers include specific information in their written employment contracts. Another critical issues for consideration concerning the hiring process of companies in the US concerns whether any specific terms are implied into employment contracts by law. The latter cited literature suggests the flexibility that the legal framework allows employers to negotiate the employment terms and conditions that would shape their relationship in future. The same literature suggests that employers are always obliged to exercise good faith and fair dealings while constructing the employment contracts. Other terms could be implied into implied or express contractual terms according to the applicable local and state laws.
Another interesting finding is the fact that labor laws in the US set the minimum employment terms that should be presented in the employment contract. Precisely, according to the provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers have the obligation of pay their covered workers the minimum wage set by the federal legislation framework, including overtime as compassion for the number of workers that such employees shall have been on duty beyond the minimum forty per week. Furthermore, most states and local authorities around the country have enacted legislations that concern mandatory breaks, overtime, and the minimum wage.
Employers should also understand the extent to which the conditions of collective bargaining govern the employment terms and conditions. In this case, it should be known that the National Labor Relations Act is in charge of collective bargaining. The volume of employment agreements that collective bargaining covers, however, has reduced over the recent years even though that are more prevalent in some regions of the country and employment sectors than they are in others (Twomey, 2017). It is also useful noting that bargaining employment terms for inclusion in the employment contracts happens at company level, and they happen between the employees and employers of their representatives on typical situations. However, in some peculiar cases, bargaining occurs at industry or regional levels or between employers and worker unions.
Alongside the specific laws and provisions by state, federal, and local laws concerning the terms and conditions of hiring, the laws identified previously protect employees against the possibilities of being discriminated against during the interviewing processes. Precisely, employers are barred from asking specific questions that would drive them into making biased hiring decisions when they interview their job candidates. The employment laws set the classes of questions that employers should never ask job candidates during interviews, which include whether they have children or they have the intention of having some, their marital status, their race, religion, sexual orientation, age—apart from inquiring with the intention of understanding whether the job applicants meet the age limit under which they could legally be employed—disability, citizenship, and other questions that may concern the drug and alcohol use of the job applicants (Ford et al., 2014). In some cases, applicants may raise questions related to the classified topics, which calls on the need for the employers to discuss them with the perspective that they could potentially affect the hiring decisions.
The labor laws of the US also set the standard procedure that covered institutions should take while hiring new employees. The first step, according to Walsh (2015), is to obtain the federal employment identification numbers from the Internal Revenue Services for each of the new workers. The cited literature suggests that the next step would be to register the new employee with the employment departments of the specific states before they proceed to set up the payment systems of the employees that would ensure that the workers comply with their tax obligations. The employers would also be required to obtain their worker compensation insurance, prepare illness and prevention plans that would be submitted to OSHA, and other relevant procedures.
Conclusively, the employment laws that employers should observe during the hiring process appear to champion for the rights of both employers and their employees. On a large part, however, the regulations guard against the possible infringement of worker’s rights, especially through combating discrimination. The companies, apart from having a few provisions that protect them from employees, are obliged to ensure that they do not exploit their new employees, and that they provide standard employment terms as defined by the relevant state, federal, and local laws in the US. HRMs should always be aware of the legal implications of their hiring decisions because they could affect the corporate image and result in financial costs in mitigating the legal issues.
References
Ford, K. E., Notestine, K. E., Hill, R. N., & American Bar Association. (2014). Fundamentals of employment law . Chicago, Ill: ABA Tort and Insurance Practice.
Twomey, D. P. (2017). Labor & employment law: Text & cases . Mason, Ohio: Thomson/West.
Walsh, D. J. (2015). Employment law for human resource practice . Nelson Education.
