Equal Employment Opportunity in Malaysia: Laws, Discrimination Types, Affirmative Action and Diversity Management

HUMAN RESOURCE

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................1
1. Concept, laws and authorities for equal employment opportunity....................................1
2. The types of employment discrimination such as disparate treatment and disparate
(adverse) impact.....................................................................................................................5
3. Affirmative action, how and why Malaysia is using affirmative policy............................7
4. Concept of diversity, elements of diversity workforce and how the diversity
management is meaningful for multicultural organization of Malaysia................................9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................13
References................................................................................................................................15

Introduction
Equal employment opportunity is an employment process that used by the
organizations for offering the competitive and healthy working environment legally and
ethically. The aim of this practice is to overcome the level of discrimination and create equal
opportunities for people for employment. There are various laws are developed and
implemented for managing such issues and maintain the smooth process of recruitment,
hiring, promotion and offering the training and benefits to the employees. Apart from that,
affirmative action refers to the policy that helps the racial minorities and woman to get the
job. This policy is design and developed to counter discrimination against minority groups to
maintain equal opportunities for them. The current report will explain the concept of Equal
Employment Opportunities (EEO) in Malaysia and identify the laws that affecting these
employment opportunities. The report will also discuss the types of discrimination and
adverse impact on the EEO. Moreover, the report will define and discuss the affirmative
action and explain why Malaysia is using this policy. In the end, the report will describe the
concept of diversity and examine the various elements of the diverse workforce. Additionally,
it will provide the critical arguments for the development of multicultural workforce at the
organization.
1. Concept, laws and authorities for equal employment opportunity
Concept of equal employment opportunity (EEO)
In the early 1960s, the Civil rights Act entitled the discrimination among employees
on the basis of protected classes as a federal crime. The equal employment opportunity or
EEO is basically a right provided to the job applicant throughout a hiring process. The law is
not just focused with hiring and firing process but also involves the policies for harassment,
promotions, getting training and wages specifically. It is mainly referred to the protection
against the discrimination based on the religion, race, sex and nationalities provided to the job
candidates. It is important for the state, federal and local entities along with employment
agencies to abide by the standards strictly (Pedriana and Stryker, 2017, pp.86-135). The
concept also covers the employees against the discrimination for pay, benefits, promotion or
discharge. The equal employment opportunity provides with the equal access to all the
training, jobs and promotional opportunities. It serves with the similar benefits and services
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to each and every candidate. The human resource implements the policies and practices
consistently to the applicants and staff.
The EEO concepts do not differentiate between the applicants or the employees
according to the nationalities, race, sex, mental or physical disability, marital status or age. It
is even considered to be the set of policies and laws which requires the rights and equal
opportunities of individual at workplace against the discrimination. In other words, the EEO
hinders the employment discrimination at the workplaces and provides the candidates or
employees with appropriate rights. It has been commonly seen that every workplace includes
people coming from diversified religions, cultural and social backgrounds (Leibbrandt and
List, 2018, pp.15-18). These diversities might give rise to the discrimination acts based their
differences, regardless of the facts that many of the economies had enacted the regulations to
restrain from its occurrence. It is essential for the HRM professionals to ensure that the
employment decisions are been made on the basis of who is best qualified rather than the
differences.
The governmental authorities of Malaysia had initiated to address the law against
inequality in both public and private sectors. The establishment of equal employment
opportunity enables to ensure the fairness and address the excessive discrimination in case of
the abuses by any dominant groups (Burton, 2017. pp. 157-164). The practices generally do
not aims to extract the equal results but seeks to make sure that all the job applicants or
employees gets equal opportunity or getting engaged in the labour market. Moreover, the
emergence of the concept of equal employment opportunity had proved to be beneficial to the
great extent.
The EEO compliance had led towards the mutual trust and understanding between
the employees and the employers at the workplaces. It even helps in reducing the workplace
conflicts as EEO practise enforces the fair and equal treatments of the candidates or
employees at the workplaces. Another substantial benefit of the EEO practices includes the
minimization of fees for the legal expenses and the related cost incurred in defending the
employment actions (Connolly Jr, Connolly and Feinstein, 2018, pp. 20-25). It is also
observed that the ensuring the compliance of EEO practices helps the employers in boosting
the trust and goodwill among the employees and making the workplaces more productive.
Laws in Malaysia affecting equal employment opportunity
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