HR Process the Well-Known Americans With Disabilities

HR Process

The well-known Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the EEOC, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of labor outline the various provisions that are formatted to ensure the people with disability, the minority groups, and every caliber of Americans have equal access to the employment opportunities. The laws and provision are meant to ensure the people with disability live a normal and comfortable life, there is a reduce discrimination in term of color, race, country of origin, religion or sex. The EEOC for instance ensures that the rule of law is followed in employment and no single organization uses the neutral laws to disadvantage a given group or individual.

The ADA is mandated to ensure the Americans living with disability enjoy equal employment opportunities, equal rights to access and enjoy State and Local Government Activities, easy access to public transport, access and equal utilization of public accommodations, fair housing, fair access and treatment in the airport covered by Air Carrier Access Act, Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act, Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (U.S. Department of Justice, 2006). The HR managers and departments will have to adhere to the set standards of various government agencies and ensure that the regulations are followed in their organizations. The role of the HR will shift from just being one of recruitment, regulation of behavior and dismissal on valid grounds, but also to ensure that the ADA, Department of Labor and EEOC regulations are followed to the letter.

Legal requirements on HR

There are various requirements that are expected of the HR departments in line with the regulations that are set by the government agencies concerning the employee welfare and well-being as follows:

i. Interview and recruitments: ADA criminalizes cases of open discrimination against people with disability during advertisements and consequent interviews where the panel may go as far as questioning the capacity of an individual to carryout some assignments based on the physical disability or the recruitments being skewed towards people without prominent disabilities or with no disability at all. EEOC also criminalizes advertisements for jobs that suggest a preference for or discourages a particular group of people like encouraging females or some education level to apply (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2011).

ii. Remuneration; it is illegal to discriminate on the pay of the employees or the allowances based on their disability. The HR must also be aware that the EEOC illegalizes discrimination on the remuneration in terms of race, religion, color, origin, sex, age (40 years and above), disability or genetic information. The HR must also be aware of the statutory benefits like the sick and vocational leave, access to overtime and the accompanying pay, insurance and retirement benefits.

iii. Job assignments and promotions; there must be a proven equality in the allocation of jobs and while conducting promotion appraisals. The HR must be careful not to make job assignments that would be based on the aforementioned discriminatory grounds. For instance the HR cannot make a nightshift to be conducted by people of a particular color or race or age. It must be balanced just as the day shift.

The HR must also take caution not to base promotions on stereotypes and some formed assumptions. If there is a test to be taken before a promotion is given, there must be equal application of the test among all the concerned employees without exempting anyone unless it can be vividly shown that it was necessary for only a group and not all.

iv. Office and workplace infrastructure and accommodation; is another widely contented issue. Many buildings within the U.S.A. still don't have wheel chair access ramp as required by the law. The ADA requires that the employer must, of necessity provide reasonable accommodation and the essential office infrastructure so as to enable the physically challenged people to work with comfort within the work premises. The reasonable accommodation may include appropriate alterations to the building for easier accessibility like ramps, readers for blind, interpreter for the deaf and all other appropriate things that the HR department must work to provide in their organizations.