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Diversity and the Law
MBA jobs are changing just as fast as other careers. Caroline Parry looks at legislation to enforce global movements towards diversity, and how leading MBA careers services and recruiters are taking the initiative in this arena.
Diversity policies aim to recognize and value the differences between everyone and are different to equal opportunities policies, which aim to reduce discrimination through positive strategies to create a level playing field. Diversity recognizes that people are different and, as such, can bring different attributes to a team.
Prof. Dr. Tawfik Jelassi, Dean of ENPC School of International Management, says “Diversity is not politically correct, it makes good business sense. Women tend to bring an equilibrium and fairer treatment of both hard and soft skills, and they bring more corporate responsibility, cultural and personal ethics. Diversity brings a fresh perspective to doing business that the corporate world needs.”
Juliane Kronene, Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group, Cologne, agrees: “Most of the customers of our clients are females, therefore we need mixed teams representing the overall expectations of the customer base. But diversity does not end with gender. We also need people with different backgrounds, who add a great range of skills to the team. Engineers are as welcome as biologists.”
There is a clear case for diversity on a business, social, moral and legal basis. While many industry observers argue that legality is by no means the most important, employers can face prosecution and large compensation pay outs if found guilty of failing to follow anti-discrimination laws.
However, international employers are faced with different laws when operating in several markets across the globe. US anti-discrimination laws, for example, may be underpinned by the same principles as Europe, they may not be applied in exactly the same way.
Perhaps the biggest difference is between the US and Europe enforcement and management of the laws. US federal anti-discrimination laws are enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, a government agency. It enforces laws and deals with complaints on age, disability, equal pay, national origin, pregnancy, race, religion, gender and sexual harassment. While these laws have been in place since the 1960s, there have been recent moves to update them.
There are also proposed laws under the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which will make it illegal to fire or refuse to hire or otherwise discriminate against employees for being gay, lesbian or bisexual. It is still legal to fire someone based on their sexual orientation in 30 US states, although 90 percent of the Fortune Top 500 Companies already include sexual orientation as part of their anti-discrimination policies. The bill, which was voted out in 1996, is still under consideration.
In Europe, the same principles are enforced through the Equal Treatment Framework Directive but not by any one single body as it is implemented on a country-by-country basis. The directive, which was introduced in 2000 and implemented over the past seven years, requires member states to establish laws for the prevention of discrimination on the grounds of religion or beliefs, disability, age or sexual orientation, but it also allows countries to balance this against their social policy objectives. This means individual countries can take different approaches to the implementation of the law. For example, the directive allows differences on treatment on the grounds of age if they are objectively and reasonably justified by a legitimate aim.
So far this has led to the introduction of anti-age discrimination laws in the UK, which were introduced in December 2006. This has affected laws around retirement, now 65 for everyone although, under the regulations, employers must take requests to work beyond that age seriously. However, the directive has already been challenged on point by a Spanish case, where the European Court of Justice ruled in favour of existing Spanish law that employees could be retired when they have completed the qualifying period to draw their pension.
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