There is a movement for Evidence Based decision making. Basically if there is evidence that if you choose option A you are likely to get result B. Sounds obvious but apparently lots of decisions are made on here-say and gut feel rather than evidence.

If we accept that we should make decision based on the evidence rather than just dogma we appear to fall foul of equal rights in recruitment.

There are 2 candidates for a particular career position. They are equal in every way EXCEPT one has a 20% chance of taking a year off work in the next five years and you as the company will still have to pay them for some of this time and then re-employ them after this year gap as if nothing had happened.

The evidence would suggest you would select the candidate who will be able to work for the next 5 years rather than 4 out of 5.

It is illegal to make the decision based on this evidence.

Yes, the candidate with a 20% chance of taking a year out is a woman aged in her mid to late 20s

Is this right?

Does it matter you would have to prove that was the decision.

Depends on the validity of the evidence. The woman in question could be an exception to the generalisation and therefore you are simply discriminating against her because she knows the offside rule better than so-called experts.

So you give this as a reason to not employ someone and then they tell you they are infertile – how does that work?

Bit pointless as purely hypothetical, no candidates are going to be exactly equal and if two candidates are close and you have your time-off concern then it’s easy enough to make the ‘preferred’ candidate a better fit…

There was a nice discussion about this on “Woman’s Hour” (Radio 4) at the weekend 😳

Some expert was making the point that too much maternity leave hinders equality because some women are taking years off. (My wife took a full year and probably will again when we have number 2).

Her suggestion seems to be that men should be entitled and incentivised to share the leave with their wife/partner and take long leave too.

A fine proposition, but unless my moobs suddenly start producing milk, a little bit flawed.

Typical woman 😉

You are confusing things up there. It is illegal to discriminate on grounds of sex, you have no grounds to suppose she will be taking mat leave, if you really want an objective recruitment process you should take the names and ages off the data you use to base your selection on. Thats best practice nowaday. All applications come in, names are removed and a number put to each one then the applications are scored against objective criteria to decide who gets interviewed. All interviewees get asked the same questions off a crib sheet and answers scored against objective criteria.

The man may fall ill, he may have dependents he needs to take time off work to care for, he will be entitled to paternity leave etc etc.

Generalising and then using this generalisation to disadvantage someone is discrimination.

Capt – agreed it is a generalisation based on the evidence of men vs women between 25 and 30. Not all women get pregnant and not all men or women stay with the employer for 5 years. However the evidence shows that there is a significant increase in the chance of the person taking extended leave if they are a woman.

You do not have to state this as the reason but if challenged you have to prove it was not the reason.

If faced with two near equal candidates the decision can be very arbitary based on gut feel such as ‘I felt they came across better’. This is an acceptable reason I think but is not based on reliable evidence. If you take the evidence based approach though you are breaking the law.

TJ – I know you should remove the facts that allow you to make and evidence based decision. That doesn’t mean the evidence is wrong. That is a case of making the process fit the thought police rather than making the process match reality.

I agree you can just lie about why you chose one person over another, it just seems a shame to have to be dishonest to follow the evidence.

There’s also the argument that giving virtually no maternity leave, as per the usa, causes greater discrimination because employers are aware that a lot of women will give up their job completely once they’ve given birth.

What evidence? You simply do not have any evidence that that woman is going to have a years mat leave.

TJ – There are statistics to show that women between 25 and 30 are more likely to take maternity leave of up to 1 year. I cannot remember wether it is more likely than other women but is certainly more likely than men. I will Google for the stats unless you have the time.

That is no evidence for the individual in question. That is your mistake. Statistical evidence is meaningless in a sample of one.

HA HA

one has a 20% chance of taking a year off work in the next five years and you as the company will still have to pay

Sexual discrimination, tough but there you go…if you were wanting to start a family with your partner/wife might the shoe be on the other foot?

Statistical evidence is meaningless in a sample of one.

No it’s not!

Statistical evidence is meaningless in a sample of 1?

So if I only play the roulette wheel once, all of the statistical evidence about my chances of winning are now meaningless and the whole thing is based on my sock colour?

A woman of 20 is twice as likely as a woman of 40 to have a baby and a lot more likely than a man.

I agree that this doesn’t mean EVERY woman will have a baby and believe it or not I agree with the concept of the anti discrimination. My problem is how to implement it.

What we currently have is equal rights for two groups who are statistically not equal. This is not like racism where you base a decision on skin colour or sexism where you pay women less for the same work.

Capt – agreed it is a generalisation based on the evidence of men vs women between 25 and 30.

MrsGrahamS is 35 and on her first mat leave now.

If you’d refused to employ her on those assumptions when she was 25 to 30 then you would have missed out on a top employee for no reason.

YOu have no EVIDENCE about that individual womans chance of becoming pregnant. None. Its that simple.

You cannot extrapolate in the way you are doing – its is just nonsensical

Yes if you employ 100 women its likely that some of them will go on mat leave but with one individual you cannot extrapolate in that way.

Teh margin of error whan you do it with one person is so large as to make the extrapolation meaningless.

GRahamS – That’s the problem with statistics and generalisations but based on the evidence and a general population …

BTW Congratulations!

I can’t believe you even considering it never mind asking, it’s discrimination based on sex and age. Honestly I’m staggered.

My understanding of evidence based practice (medicine) is that you use the evidence to make decisions on the bits that are based on fact (so in your case you choose the 2 candidates you’ve ended up with).

You still have to apply your judgement and experience to the fuzzy bits like quality of life (in your case what are the chances of the bird [soz TJ] getting preggers).

So I don’t think you’d apply evidence based decisions to your situation.

Heh, I’m off to get some biscuits…

Tea anyone?

So just to get this clear, you think you should be able to make a choice not to employ me because I’m a woman, even though I have no plans or desire to have children, and this should be allowed as I’m more likely to get pregnant than a man??

This really is not evidence based decision making. It is excluding a valid candidate on assumptions based on their gender so blatant discrimination.

You cannot extrapolate in the way you are doing – its is just nonsensical

Im going to run that one past my insurer….

Exactly even if your ‘evidence’ is right you still can’t not give her the job because she’s a woman in her 20s. Your not Gene Hunt or you?

Of course as “Sir” Alan Sugar alluded to on some program/newspaper article, the maternity legislation is the cause of all this mess. If employers were not required to provide maternity pay and job reinstatement after funding maternity cover, then theyd be more likely to employ a mid 20s woman in the first place. Any employer who wants to can fiddle the recruitment process deftly enough to be biased against a 20’s woman without the risk of getting strung up for it.

Make sure you don’t employ any men in there’s 50s who are overweight too, in fact best sack anyone in that category because their more likely to have a heart attack.

TJ go flip a coin. The probability of it being heads is 0.5 (assuming a fair coin).

The probability (assuming the stats stated earlier are correct) of a random woman in her mid to late 20s taking mat leave is 0.2.

I was under the assumption we are talking about a hypothetical situation. Therefore the woman is random, therefore the probability of her taking leave is 0.2.

If we were discussing a specific woman then I would still consider the probability to be 0.2, unless I had other data on that woman that would suggest otherwise (infertility, hates kids, she’s a nun, etc).

Make sure you don’t employ any men in there’s 50s who are overweight too, in fact best sack anyone in that category because their more likely to have a heart attack.

If you want to maximise profits of a business, then you probably would have to do things like that. Same as not hiring fat people to do strenuous jobs (it will take them longer), smokers because they “need” breaks, murderers as school teachers, etc.

You could get away with it in a small business, but what if you’re a massive global corporation. If you hire lots of people who are statistically likely to die or otherwise be unable to work, you lose money.

WCA – you are confusing evidence with supposition based on statistical probability and conflating the two factors producing an invalid hypothesis. Evidence can only relate to something that has happened, thus evidence based recruitment is reliant on what people have already done. So boo to you with knobs on.

And frak me but I wish I could take 3 months off on half pay to follow a life choice.

Yes, the candidate with a 20% chance of taking a year out is a woman aged in her mid to late 20s
Is this right?

Pics?

Mmm… Evidence Based decision making

I thought this was simply; tell me about a time when you… Worked in a team, lead a project, dealt with performance, etc.

The interviewer then probes the interviewee, using situation, task, action and result (STAR) or similar to elicit evidence.

I disagree with TJ re the statistics. It is helping you make a decision. If you had a loaded coin 75% heads, 25% tails which one would you pick? You might be wrong but overtime you will win more with heads so you’d pick heads.

We’ve just had diversity and inequality pushed at us at work and they were basically saying that they are going to positively descriminate for women if the candidates are of equal ability. They have also starte women only management training courses. Several women complained about both of these.The chances of a man taking maternity leave are close to zero.

I do think they should allow couples to split maternity leave or even let people with no interest in children take a 9 month paid leave of absence but I think the chances of the latter are slim.

GRahamS – That’s the problem with statistics and generalisations but based on the evidence and a general population …

Indeed. And that was my point.

IMO if a specific role genuinely requires a candidate that will be fully committed to that role for several years then you need to consider whether that candidate is suitable and can offer that commitment. So you may need to consider factors like pregnancy/parenthood (for a man or woman!), health, how long they stayed with previous companies etc.

In all honesty though most roles don’t really require that kind of commitment and the truth is employers avoid woman of a certain age because they don’t want the maternity bill and the hassle of finding someone else.

BTW Congratulations!

Ta. Not too recent – we’re nine months in now (and it seems like a lifetime).
Luckily the NHS is a pretty reasonable employer when it comes to maternity and we have some savings, so MrsGrahamS won’t be going back till Aprilish.

I have literally no idea how folk that go back sooner can cope!

WCA:

Sexual discrimination, tough but there you go…if you were wanting to start a family with your partner/wife might the shoe be on the other foot?

Mrshora was asked if she had children, then if she planned to have children. She binned the job offer.

Its swings and roundabouts. Your missus will ‘enjoy’ the time off just as much as ‘wimin’ in your company ‘enjoy’ taking the year out.

Its NOT TIME OFF. Its hardwork. Doubt any man would run and grab the opportunity of sitting in cafes bored out of their brains whilst smearing copious amounts of shit out of their small pride and joy 😆

I have literally no idea how folk that go back sooner can cope!

My wife was back at work (all be it part time) 3 days after she gave birth, no drama.

The simplest solution is surely for women that really want jobs to be sterilised and marked with an identifying tattoo that employers can ask to see?

I’m sure there will be complaints about that, but “what price equality?” eh?
Certainly easier than throwing yourself under the King’s horse. 😉

TJ – There are statistics to show that women between 25 and 30 are more likely to take maternity leave of up to 1 year. I cannot remember wether it is more likely than other women but is certainly more likely than men. I will Google for the stats unless you have the time.

This is a common misconception and misinterpretation of the stats. What the stats are saying is that 1 in 5 women like the one in question will take maternity leave. This is very different from saying that the woman has a 20% chance of taking maternity leave.