Are ‘Name-blind CVs’ a way to end recruitment discrimination?

Prime Minister, David Cameron has announced measures to reduce discrimination in recruitment by introducing ‘name-blind cvs’ into public sector recruitment. Many other organisations such as HSBC, BBC and Deloitte have also taken this on board.

The government have pledged to support this scheme as they try and end the “disgraceful” discrimination culture where recruiters reject applications based on the names of the applicants.
The government have worked in partnership with the National Centre for Social Research and found that applicants who “appeared white” were far more likely to be invited to an interview than someone who “appeared” as a minority.

Our Employment Law expert, Gillian McAteer has looked at the scheme from a SME perspective to see how this could affect your business:

“Whilst this is something that a large employer can undertake quite easily, it is difficult to implement this in SMEs. The larger organisations are likely to adopt an application form where the name and date section will form a perforated section that the person processing the application can remove.

For many of our clients, the person who is receiving the application is the person who will be conducting the interview, which will make this difficult to implement. In addition, whilst name blind CVs may assist in removing discrimination, there will still be information on a CV which an employer may be accused of using to discriminate, for example, the school the applicant went to, the area the employee lives etc.”

Although the Prime Minister has pledged to use this process throughout the public sector there are no dates set in stone as to when they will begin to use this recruitment method.
It will be interesting to see how many SMEs take up this style of recruitment and how effective it will be across the country.