So I'm applying for a job and the company using Arctic Shores assessment. One of the tasks is displaying faces and assigning emotions to them. Is this legal as surely this is direct discrimination against autistic applicants?
So I'm applying for a job and the company using Arctic Shores assessment. One of the tasks is displaying faces and assigning emotions to them. Is this legal as surely this is direct discrimination against autistic applicants?
If the skill isn't needed for the job then it is discrimination. The company should know what the testing involves if they're using it for employment and they should know that they are not suitable tests for neurodivergent people.
We absolutely can protest it because it goes against our rights. How can an autistic person prove themselves capable when they're not given the chance because of a test that goes against their brain. Absolutely ridiculous.
Maybe. Maybe not. We can't offer you legal advice but you should be aware of the law on indirect discrimination https://www.stammeringlaw.org.uk/disability-equality-law/discrimination/indirect-discrimination/ and resionable adjustments https://www.stammeringlaw.org.uk/disability-equality-law/discrimination/reasonable-adjustments/
This policy might fall fowl of either law but it could be justified depending on context.
Also in the event you wanted to pursue this legally you need to remember it would have to be through an employment tribuanal and as a general rule you'd have 3 months from the day you took the test to file the paperwork.
I will say as an employer is that often it's the people I liked the least who were the best suited for the job. They worked the hardest and provided the best results.
It would depend on whether they were the best candidate for the role - if you gave them the position over a better suited candidate then this is a from of reverse bias, but bias none the less.
I have recruited autists (quite common to find them applying for IT support roles hoping to be behind the scenes fixinig stuff rather than customer facing or on the phones a lot,
It has been my experience that they stuggle with many aspects of the job, whether having to speak to user on the phone or face to face, dealing with multiple streams of work at the same time, the often loud office environments (phones ringing, people talking and stuff beeping) and the incessant flow of work from multiple sources that has to be responded to in agreed time periods.
The pressures are a major stresser, the noise and bustle frustrating, the endless stream of work demoralising and the time demands to meet Service Level Agreements on time response being the thing that tips them over the edge.
There is no rocket science, just a steady, focussed effort needed to balance all the demands.
If you add in conflcting personalities to the mix then this creates the risk of explosions of negative emotion in my experience. Whether it is arguements, constant sniping or micro bullying or just meltdowns - it means the right personaity needs to be found to integrate well into the team.
Psychometric tests do filter out a lot of unsuitable candidates from where I have had to use them so while they may be discriminatory they do a similar job that an experienced recruiter would - score down those who they believe would not survive and benefit the team.
I can only speak from experience of hiring all levels of support staff and lower level management (probably about 100 hires over 32 years).
If I kept giving those candidates a chance who I strongly suspected would not survive just to avoid discrimination cases then I would loose my job for underperforming once those hires started going on stress related sick leave, quitting or performing so poorly they were put on PIPs.
What would you do in this sort of situation?
Sorry, but that's just not what the latest research is showing. In fact, increasingly psychometrics are being called out over the appropriateness of their use. Psychometrics are, in effect a house built upon sand. There are numerous claims and criticisms of the fundamental principles upon which they are built. J. Uher does a great job of exploring many of these in their piece as published in the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/teo0000176).
Having hired people myself in the past one of the things I will say as an employer is that often it's the people I liked the least who were the best suited for the job. They worked the hardest and provided the best results. Their social interactions within the workplace, their personal hobbies - none of it was relevant. Famously, a double act on TV that had great on screen chemistry was Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of Discovery Channel's Mythbusters, even in some places claiming they actively dislike each other. However, Hyneman hired Savage despite this dislike and they created a successful product that lasted well over fifteen years. They are on record in numerous places about how they aren't friends and haven't even ever had a meal together. This isn't uncommon in workplaces, and definitely isn't uncommon in the entertainment industry let me tell you.
It's also worth taking apart the idea that these tests give employers something to hide behind - a quick internet search would reveal just how many big UK companies have fallen foul of discrimination laws - specifically with respect to Autistic or Asperger's folks. BT, UK Government are just two such organisations which have lost discrimination cases where psychometric testing was used. So an employer thinking they can hide behind these processes - it's not entirely convincing. And that's before we get into the requirement under the Data Protection Act 2018 for a company to be clear about when a decision is made about someone using automated processes. If a computer program had an impact on a decision based on your data - there is a legal requirement for that to be made clear...despite the fact that often it isn't and companies ignore this section of the law.
The problem is that we actually do have mechanisms (tribunals) to whom we can take discrimination cases - it is just that sadly the process is a long drawn out one.
The weakness of course in both of our positions is the relative sparsity in research into the recruitment process itself. There's almost no data on which recruitment processes produce the best workers. Nothing objective to which we can point and say 'here's some evidence'. I actually started to work on some research focused specifically on the entertainment industry which is discriminatory at its baseline (judging on looks before almost anything else). Sadly, the prohibitive costs of running such research mean that the field is ill understood and ill-defined. HR, Recruitment and other such fields are frequently making it up as they go along and trying to wield tools they ill-understand like the aforementioned psychometric testing. I dearly wish there was some solid and independent research that could clear through some of this stuff.
I'm intrigued as to what the job is that you're applying for and how assigning emotions to faces relates to it?
It is not that the job requires this specific skill but rather a fairly complex set of questions that build up a profile of the character of the interviewee.
This link explains the theory behind them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychometrics
When you consider how many people post on this site about issues they have in work with understanding their colleagues / managers, the team social interactions, handling customers or many of the day to day aspects of the job (phones ringing, multi tasking, pressure to deliver and of course managing others - we (neurodivergents) have become a problem hire in a lot of roles that stress our weaknesses.
With this track record the company has developed a way to filter out people who do not meet the personality type that the companies have found to be a stable hire in such a situaiton.
Does this disadvantage autists - most certainly.
Does it give companies more reliable hires - also most certainly.
From the companies perspective they can hide behind the test results and say "it wasn't me guv, we just folllowed their recommendations" so absolves them of claims of discrimination.
You can game the system - I certainly did in my last decade of so of management when I had to do these - but I understood enough about psychology and the testing process to know what they were looking for so gave them answers they wanted.
There seem to be plenty of test prep sites out there where you can prepare yourself and get better at what is effectively masking - it seems the only way to beat that part of the system.
Is it wrong? Not from the employers perspective but probably yes from an autists perspective. Alas we have no effective way to protest this while it is giving positive results for the employers.
I'm intrigued as to what the job is that you're applying for and how assigning emotions to faces relates to it? As others have said, it depends whether this is a relevant skill needed for the job.
Honestly, and coming from a background where I've been trained in the general concepts of employment law - I believe that a strong case could be made for discrimination unless the company in question can provide a good reason why such tasks are necessary. The simple question I would be asking is if it is made clear by what rules you're being assessed?
If, they don't have a good reason why the tasks are necessary and can't provide a list of what is being assessed I'd suggest there's a good case for discrimination - though not a solicitor. If you're in a trade union they might have a clearer idea though. There is case law on this though - several organisations have lost cases where psychometric tests were used - https://torquelaw.co.uk/beware-the-discrimination-pitfalls-of-psychometric-testing/ - https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/recruitment-multiple-choice-psychometric-test-discriminatory-holds-eat/ there are more, but they all follow the same pattern.
Practically though, recruitment is a sector where it's the wild west. By the time you get in front of ACAS to put a case of discrimination to the hiring company, the vacancy has long since been filled and interest you might have had in the job will be gone too. I'm hearing that ACAS can take up to two years to hear discrimination cases. The guardrails in my opinion may as well not even be there because they aren't fast or effective enough.
Arctic Shores in particular make some VERY big claims. In many interviews they've claimed that autistic people favour an automated process, and as such their software removes unconscious bias. I've not seen anything from them though that actually backs up their claims. In fact the whole outfit gives me very bad vibes.
One of the tasks is displaying faces and assigning emotions to them. Is this legal as surely this is direct discrimination against autistic applicants?
A big part of answering this question is whether the skills they are looking for involve being able to detect emotions in others.
If it is required then they are quite entitled to discriminate agains those who lack these skill, whether autistic or not.
It would be like a position for a taxi driver being unsuitable to autists because some of us find driving stressful - it is all about context.
I've had to do a lot of psychometric assessments over the years and they are getting more effective at finding the "temperament" of applicant for the jobs but this does often rule out needier applicants such as autists.
I certainly found a lot of clearly autistic applicants for entry level IT roles I interviewed dropped off markedly once the psychometric tests were introduced.
It i hard to draw conclusions but it is clear that most autists are not suited to many types of work - each of us being different make it vary from person to person.
