07th May 2008
In the UK, potential bosses consider your womb
After yesterday’s post, I remembered a survey in the United Kingdom of bosses and managers and how they felt weighed hiring people who might become pregnant (a pretty big group, mind you):
More than 75% of bosses would not take on a woman recruit if they knew she would become pregnant within six months of starting a job.
During the selection process, 52% of those surveyed will weigh up the chances of a candidate getting pregnant, taking into account age and whether they have just got married.
68% would like more rights to quiz candidates about their plans for a family.
Only 5% of bosses have employed someone knowing the candidate is pregnant.
I find the second and fourth point most disturbing. It’s interesting that in a place with paid maternity leave, there is what appears to be discrimination in hiring so as not to have to offer that paid leave and other parental leave and flexible work options.
It’s unfortunate, but it makes sense. They are thinking about the business’s immediate needs - most likely because that is what their performance is rated by. I wonder what the numbers would be like if the question was phrased more generically to refer to any kind of medical procedure with prolonged leave?
I’m thinking that it’s really part of a larger issue about businesses being run with such lean staffing (read lean = understaffed) that there is scrambling around when anyone is sick, not to mention extended leaves.
Speaking from experience, having pregnant people in the group SUCKS–either you have to get a temp (it generally takes three months to train a person in our group, so that’s out) or you have to divide up the work and cover for them. I’d say we have exactly enough people to get the job done in normal circumstances, so it’s not only affecting understaffed companies. For the people left behind, it can be really, really stressful.
BUT, I understand also that it could easily be me. Or it could be someone with cancer, or with a sick parent, or whatever. It’s the risk you have to take when you hire humans and not machines.
I’m not particularly arguing with you as thinking in comment form….so forgive.
In places I’ve worked and consulted, “normal circumstances” are few and far between, so to me we have to consider all those times when someone has to leave early, or is sick, or on medical leave, or on maternity leave as part of “normal” rather than exceptions to the human experience in the workplace and then staff accordingly. Because the alternative seems to be that we discriminate against people or resent them for perfectly normal human behaviors…. Perhaps there’s some middle ground here?
Ms. T - good point - current business models to tend to treat sickness, death, and pregnancy as “abnormalities” although … when I think about it, that makes absolutely zero sense. A real case of doublethink ….