The Discrimination Codes of Practice recommend that employers should monitor (monitoring ) their recruitment practices by sex, race and disability to ensure that they are not operating in a discriminatory way.
Monitoring involves checking whether the proportion of job applicants, shortlisted candidates and successful candidates who are from a particular sex or racial group or who are disabled is roughly equivalent to the proportion of that group in the particular labour market from which the employer is recruiting. (The labour market may well differ according to the job at issue.) Monitoring need not be a complex process. In small companies, monitoring can be carried out from personal knowledge and visual identification.
Gathering monitoring information is not an end in itself. The aim is to identify whether there is a marked disparity between the number of applications or successful appointments from a particular group, and the number that could be expected in the light of that group's representation in the relevant labour market. If there is, the company should review its recruitment practices in order to decide whether they are being affected by direct or indirect discrimination. Action should then be taken to end any discrimination that is discovered.
Employers who are considering including a commitment to monitor in their equal opportunities policy should bear in mind that effective monitoring takes time. If an employer has said it will monitor but then fails to do so, an employment tribunal hearing a discrimination claim against the employer may form an unfavourable view of its commitment to equal opportunities.