5.3 The Law and Recruitment and Selection

Recruiting employees can be considered a passive process, one that does not directly involve making decisions about people. A job is posted and applicants apply. Seems simple but your ‘ad’ needs to accurately reflect the requirements of the job and candidate. The process of specifying the desired knowledge, skills, abilities, others (KSAO’s) implicitly can exclude potential applicants. In the event that some criteria may affect some of the protected categories disproportionately, it is important that these criteria be proven to be job related. It is important as well that HR departments follow the law.

Wages, working conditions, diversity, employment equity, labour relations and human rights are all intertwined in recruitment and selection of employees. All steps in the Recruitment & Selection process need to adhere to legal requirements.

Employment Standards Act

This Act ensures the recruitment and selection of applicants ensures employees and the employer have the right person in the right job and at the right time.  The act helps employers plan their workforce, attract and select the right employees, and achieve goals of the company. It provides advice on taking proactive approaches to recruitment, helps with guidance on strengthening collaboration and planning for promotions and succession of employees, and that planning follows a plan that is inclusive and diverse (LawTeacher, 2019).

Pay Equity Act

Pay Equity was established to narrow the gap in wages between men and women. This law covers both public and private sectors with more than 10 employees. It does not cover federal government issues such as chartered banks or private sector companies with less than 10 employees (Government of Canada, 2023). It requires that employers pay equal wages between males and females when the job has been compared and the job is comparatively  equal.  Employers group jobs into male dominated, female dominated or neutral. They make job comparisons and evaluate the women and men’s jobs. In the recruitment and selection, the law ensures gender neutrality or no favouring for work done by men. It must be based on skills, efforts, responsibility and the work conditions (LawTeacher, 2019).

Labour Relations Act

According to LawTeacher (2019):

This act has the following obligations;

It provides the labor relations strategies in order to support the optimal employee and the labor relations in a responsible manner.

It develops and maintains a positive labor relation coupled with the bargaining agents and also manages the existing processes with the aim of improving the overall working relations between the employees.

The act provides the employment advice in addition to the legislative rights and the compliance especially with the matters relating to unionized and the non-unionized workplaces.

It addresses the unique employee and the labor relations in line with departmental and the Ontario provincial strategies for recruitment and selection of the employees. (para. 15)

Human Rights Code

This law ensures that employers are compliant with legislative requirements under the Employment Standards Act. It ensures recruitment and selection is fair for people with a disability under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The essence of the Human Rights Code is to ensure diversity and equity are built into an employer’s policies, protocols, codes of ethics, and procedures (LawTeacher, 2019).

Health and Safety Act

This Act ensures the safety and wellness of all employees. It ensures health and safety programs are delivered to prevent injury and to be compliant with the legislation. All employees, and those being recruited and selected would be protected with the above legislation. This includes both unionized and non-unionized places of employment. These legislations regulate the recruitment and selection of employees (LawTeacher, 2019).

“5.3 The Law and Recruitment and Selection” from Human Resources Management – 3rd Edition by Debra Patterson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.