Brianna is a college student who is applying for summer jobs in town. She is maj

Question

Brianna is a college student who is applying for summer jobs in town. She is majoring in communications and marketing. She has experience in customer service and is very sociable. She applies for a part time job at a local store.

Tom, the store manager, thinks that Brianna would be a good fit for his department and is interested in pursing an interview. He emails Jessica, the HR manager, to set up an interview. Tom interviews Brianna, and like he imagined, he is interested in offering her a position with the company.

In a series of email exchanges, he and Jessica discuss the three candidates that have applied for the job and they review pros and cons for hiring each. In one email Jessica states “well, I agree that all candidates did a fine job in the interview but I think we should hire Brianna; after all, we don’t have any black employees and it’ll be good for marketing us.” Tom, replies with more information from the applications and ignores Jessica’s comments about Brianna being black. Jessica sends a follow up email where she again addresses Brianna as black. This time, Tom responds “well, we do need a token black person and she is really qualified so let’s hire the black girl.”

You are a manager in another department and someone anonymously leaves copies of the emails on your desk.

1. How would you handle this situation? If you choose to tell someone, whom would that be?

2. What would you say? Answer this question, as if you were truly emailing someone. List what you encountered, and your thoughts on if this is an appropriate discussion or not.

3. What recommendations do you have for the company?

Explanation / Answer

1. The situation could be handle easily by discussing about a girl who has knowledge, expertise in certain area, attitude and behavior, most importantly how she can justifies her role in the company. There should be no bias between white and black people. The discussion should be made with HR department and make them understand about the employee laws in the company.

2. The email could be "Hire someone who is the right candidate and do not differentiate any employee in terms of white and black person. What important is the skill set, qualification, experience, etc. which needs to be recruited in the company.

3. Employee law is very important and should abide by the employers in the company . Some of the Employment-at-will law is as follows

1. An employee cannot be fired for a discriminatory reason based on race, national origin, religion, color, or sex.  

2. An employee cannot be fired for retaliation for performing a legally protected action. For example - Employee refusing to perform illegal activity.

3. An employee that has terms of employment in a contract cannot be fired outside of those terms.

4. An employer who provides protections in employment policies must abide by those protections.

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