Hiring without bias
Fair recruitment, equality law and bias in selection.
- Level
- Bitesize
- Learning time
- 2 hours
- Where
- Leading people
- Price
- £39
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion
Overview and Outcomes.
Overview
Fairness in hiring comes from how decisions are designed, not from good intentions alone. The course begins with recruitment and selection, where equality law protects applicants from the moment an advert is drafted: interviewing for evidence, reasonable adjustments, the ICO audit of AI recruitment tools and Bauer's Four Cs of onboarding. It then sorts equality law in motion, including the preventative duty on sexual harassment, the Employment Rights Act 2025 and pay gap reporting. It closes with the evidence on bias in people decisions, from the Implicit Association Test to Bohnet, Dobbin and Kalev, and the orchestra audition study.
What you'll develop
In this Bitesize, you will develop the ability to:
- Identify how affinity and confirmation bias shape selection decisions and use structured, evidence-based interviewing to reduce them.
- Explain the preventative duty on sexual harassment and what changed on 30 October 2026, including liability for harassment by third parties.
- Explain why bias is real but awareness training alone has not been shown to change behaviour, drawing on the evidence on the Implicit Association Test.
- Apply the Equality Act 2010 to recruitment, including reasonable adjustments, the limits on pre-offer health questions and the lawful checks before a start date.
- Set out which equality changes are in force, which are coming with a date, and which are still pending.
- Recognise how affinity, confirmation and proximity bias enter recruitment, appraisal and hybrid working.
- Plan an onboarding and probation process for the first six months using Bauer's Four Cs.
- Judge shifts in the wider diversity debate by reading the reasons behind them, keeping legal duties distinct from trends.
The Modules.
2 hours of learning.
- 04Recruitment, Selection and Starting WellRecruitment is where the law first touches the working relationship, because equality law protects applicants from the moment an advert is drafted. This module explores affinity and confirmation bias, interviewing for evidence, reasonable adjustments and adverse impact monitoring under the Equality Act 2010, lawful pre-employment checks, the ICO audit of AI recruitment tools, and Bauer's Four Cs of onboarding, ending with a practical approach to the first six months.37 min
- 04Law in Motion 2024 to 2026Parts of equality law are moving fast. This module sorts what is in force, what is coming and what is pending as at November 2026: the preventative duty on sexual harassment, the staged Employment Rights Act 2025, liability for third-party harassment, pay gap reporting and the 2025 Supreme Court ruling. It also examines the US rollback of DEI and the UK financial regulators' decision on diversity rules.41 min
- 05Bias in People Decisions: What the Evidence ShowsBias in people decisions is real, but awareness alone rarely changes what people do. This module uses Avanti's three-part model of how bias gets in, examines the Implicit Association Test and the Civil Service decision to phase out unconscious bias training, and looks at affinity, confirmation and proximity bias. It sets out what the evidence supports, drawing on Bohnet, Sackett, and Dobbin and Kalev, and revisits the orchestra audition study.40 min