What would you do - Disabled candidate in Recruitment? - General - Diversity and inclusion

5 What would you do - Disabled candidate in Recruitment?

18 Jun, 2022 09:10

Hiya Team,

This is a real life situation currently, but to be clear its a client of mine that's in this position, not my organisation doing this.

I am an Employment Advisor.

Candidate applied for a hybrid role, working in office, home and outdoors.
organisation is a gov body
offered the role via email after application, interviews, presentation and tasks linked to the role (unknown at this time what the wording was i.e conditional offer with medical report)
initial onboarding has been slow to progress
when it did they asked about disabilities
candidate declared ME, protected under EA
Occ health was requested, candidate shared latest OH report from previous employer - which was a different role to that they had
Organisation requested their own OH report, which candidate completed
they then requested a more senior OH report
Not seen any report outcomes yet
But employer has now stated in email, they may withdraw the offer of employment due to OH report
No final outcome yet
Candidate has lack of faith in the organisation now, understandably
Unsure they want to work for them now with such a slow then bias way of onboarding
Candidate applied for this role, as they believed the change of varied role, would help their disability

As a former employer, recruiter - I find this really disappointing onboarding experience for the candidate, could be discrimination under EA.

I have advised client to wait for reports, email me access the initial offer email, I have sent them ACAS and CIPD resources, and told them to request a Subject Access report for all information they hold on the candidate. I will ring our CIPD helpline, when I have further information. I have also advised a conversation with an Employment Solicitor, because there may be a case.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Liz

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Keith | 0 Posts

21 Jun, 2022 16:19

I am not entirely sure (up to the point of the potential withdrawal) that the process has been that unusual compared to many recruitment processes. Many are slightly slower (especially in public sector).

They have sought OH advice, that's good, and it's understandable that they didn't rely on the advice produced for a previous different job. When they got that advice, it wasn't clear in some way, so they asked for some more. Again, nothing unusual at this stage and no reason for the candidate to feel aggrieved.

Clearly criux will be what happens next. If the offer is withdrawn because of the disability, slam dunk case, but if the offer is withdrawn because even with reasonable adjustments, they can't do the job well that's a different thing. I imagine that's why they sought further OH advice.

Personally I wonder if, at this stage, its the right course of action to be going all legal. Plenty of time for that later depending if the offer is withdrawn and on what basis.
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Robey | 0 Posts

22 Jun, 2022 10:55

Mostly agree with Keith. If I were responsible for on-boarding, though, I don't think I would've delayed the start of employment purely due to waiting for OH. Whilst the medical causes and effective treatment of ME/CFS remain contentious, its impact upon people's ability to work is pretty well known and the risks to the organization of proceeding with on-boarding are pretty minimal compared to the risk of withdrawing an offer of employment and facing a legal challenge. This smacks somewhat of the bureaucratic box-ticking for which some government departments are notorious.

If a person has completed the application process, attended interviews without difficulty, delivered presentations and undertaken representative tasks all as part of winning the offer, it would seem pretty clear that their ability to do the job has been established so why deprive yourself of the value of their labour?

But, as Keith says, the time for legal advice has probably not yet arrived. Although your client's loss of faith is understandable, they should remember that they're still dealing with the HR bureaucracy rather than with the people they would be working alongside day-to-day, so don't judge the job on the basis of their experience so far. If they did elect to walk away now they might still have a case for disability discrimination as they are losing money from having their start date delayed due to the employer waiting for OH reports which they could cogently argue weren't actually necessary to permit employment to begin, so they can show actual damage even if they never start work.
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Keith | 0 Posts

22 Jun, 2022 11:26

In reply to Robey:
If OH have highlighted something of significant concern (enough to get another more higher level report) then I don't think its HR bureaucracy to wait for that report before starting someone. - I think its common sense.
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Robey | 0 Posts

22 Jun, 2022 12:09

In reply to Keith:
I'll concede that point on the assumption that the referral was because of a disclosure of a more serious nature than ME.
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Nina Waters | 0 Posts

22 Jun, 2022 13:01

Just a thought to add to Robey and Keith's points - that depending on the nature of the government organisation/function, medical sign off could be a requirement before work starts. It is in schools (whether the job is pupil facing or not), which is my area, as an example - and that's a statutory requirement, not HR bureaucracy. If they work in an environment where a medical condition could realistically cause or allow harm to others without the proper safeguards in place, it's not unrealistic that this element of the process will be done carefully.

Let's hope that this simply means they are looking at ways that they can best support their new recruit, rather than finding ways to avoid reasonable adjustments.
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