Introduction
Personnel is the backbone of any organization, and the expertise which employees bring ultimately is a major factor in organizational success. The United States Department of Justice is a major agency and its effectiveness is particularly dependent on its staff. Therefore, the agency must maintain proper employment practices to ensure that it employs people who are professionals in their respective spheres. Moreover, in modern governmental organizations, the composition of the workforce must reflect the population of the country, which makes the issue of diversity extremely important for the United States Department of Justice.
Laws Affecting the Agency
The agency’s personnel management is regulated by numerous laws and acts, which ultimately impact the way the department conducts its employment. First of all, the department is subject to the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It postulates that any organization, including government agencies, cannot discriminate against employees or potential candidates based on their characteristics such as race or sex (“Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964”, n.d.). In other words, the United States Department of Justice must not engage in any kind of discriminatory practices when hiring personnel, otherwise, the affected party can sue the agency. Another major piece of legislation which governs the way the agency must conduct its hiring is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The act states that the employer must not discriminate against workers based on their disability and has to provide them with an opportunity to work as long as they can perform their functions (Americans with Disabilities, 1990). Thus, the United States Department of Justice has to ensure that it has no improper treatment of job-seekers and employees with disabilities.
Personnel Recruitment and Hiring Practices
The United States Department of Justice has designed a special enterprise-wide strategic framework for equal employment opportunity. It aims at enforcing anti-discrimination laws and creating a culture of diversity, accountability, and equality in the organization (“2019–2022 enterprise-wide,” n.d.). According to the strategy: the agency will process all complaints related to recruitment discrimination, provide proper training to diverse employees, and support the employment of people with disabilities (“2019–2022 enterprise-wide,” n.d.). The strengths of the approach include willingness to resolve problematic situations, commitment to assist minorities in their work, and determination to hire vulnerable populations. Nevertheless, the department’s hiring practices also have weaknesses, especially in the sphere of its workforce composition. Namely, the agency’s personnel are still predominantly male, with more than sixty percent being men, sixty-nine percent of the department’s workforce is also white (“Workforce composition,” n.d.). Such statistics show that the agency still has to improve its hiring practices to achieve better diversity.
Ethics and Diversity Training
The agency provides an extensive set of diversity training opportunities to its employees, which correspond to its inclusion efforts. For instance, some of the training topics delivered by the department include microaggressions, unconscious bias, management of conflict in the workplace, and management of multiple generations in the same environment (“2019–2022 enterprise-wide,” n.d.). Such programs demonstrate the fact that the department thoroughly approaches the issue of inclusion and wants to ensure that its employees are familiar with diversity management. The agency also conducts harassment prevention training to minimize the exposure of its employees to inappropriate behavior from their colleagues (“2019–2022 enterprise-wide,” n.d.). Nevertheless, the agency lacks more targeted pieces of training, such as ones involving educating employees on the proper rules of conduct when communicating to people with different cultural backgrounds. Moreover, the department’s diversity and inclusion training efforts can be stopped by the U.S. presidents, which can interfere with consistency.
Recommendations for Recruiting and Training a Diversified Workforce
The department can take to major steps to significantly improve its inclusive hiring efforts and increase the number of diverse employees in its workforce. Namely, the organization has to conduct better advertising among diverse populations to show that the department is willing to hire them. For example, the department hum resource managers can visit universities where the majority of students are minorities and promote the agency as a viable future workplace for them. Similarly, the department representatives can visit gatherings of veterans with disabilities and explain to them that they have considerable employment opportunities. Additionally, the department has to introduce special programs to attract diverse job-seekers. For example, the department can create a special employment program for Hispanic women and support such candidates after hiring them by providing them with training. As a result of taking these steps, improving advertising among diverse populations, and creating special programs, the United States Department of Justice will be able to achieve a diversified workforce.
Conclusion
The United States Department of Justice is a major institution in the country’s political system, and its workforce must reflect the diverse composition of the nation. Thus, the agency must observe all the laws related to hiring, especially the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on gender and race. Moreover, despite efforts to improve diversity, the department still struggles to achieve complete equality and inclusion, which means that it needs to improve its activity in this sphere. Currently, the department conducts diversity and inclusion training for its employees which even involves educating workers on different biases. Nevertheless, the United States Department of Justice can still benefit from introducing special hiring programs for diverse populations to significantly increase inclusivity in the workplace.
References
2019–2022 enterprise-wide strategic framework for equal employment opportunity. (n.d.). The U.S. Department of Justice.
Americans with Disabilities Act, Publ. L. No. 101-336, 104 Stat. 327 (1990).
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (n.d.). U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Workforce composition. (n.d.). Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.