In Singapore, there is an organization to ensure that no companies use discriminatory wordings in their job advertisements. If you are in the Human Resource Industry long enough, you will commonly know them as TAFEP – or Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment.
Basically, TAFEP ensures companies uses fair practices during hiring or while at work. There have been a number of companies who have been given demerit points, fined, or asked to attend compulsory courses by TAFEP to ensure that discriminatory practices do not happen again.
But do you know that apart from the benefit of ensuring fair practices - there is another benefit?
Increased Applicants
Studies have shown that job advertisements which do not seem to steer towards a preference for a gender type are able to attract more applicants. With a wider pool of applicants, you can have more choices about who is going to be the good fit with the company.
Recruitment website ZipRecruiter found that job listing with gender-neutral wording gets 42% more responses than listing with gendered wordings. In this case, gendered wordings could also imply words that people associate with masculinity or feminism.
Increased Employer Branding and Increased Employee Retention
Imagine if you are in a company, whom you are aware are hiring based on discriminatory practices – would you not think that they might promote based on discriminatory practices as well instead of meritocracy?
If they are going to promote based on discriminatory practices, current employees would be concerned. If gender, race and age are going to be a consideration factor for the time when you would get the promotion, then we would not suggest waiting too long.