What Is Equal Employment Opportunity

What is equal employment opportunity? It means employment decisions are made on merit and the requirements of the job, free from discrimination on protected attributes.

The word doing the work is opportunity, not treatment. Those are not the same thing, and treating them as the same is the most common misunderstanding.

Identical treatment of people in different circumstances produces unequal outcomes. An interview process that suits confident extroverts, a promotion round that quietly favours people who can attend evening events, or a recruitment requirement nobody has questioned in a decade all treat everyone identically and open the door unevenly.

EEO asks whether the opportunity was genuinely available, which sometimes requires doing things differently for different people.

Reasonable adjustments follow exactly the same logic. They are not a concession or a favour, they are what makes the opportunity genuinely available to someone who could otherwise do the job well.

The Australian Human Rights Commission covers the protected attributes. This is general information rather than legal advice.

See Sentrient’s EEO training course and diversity, equity and inclusion course.