Hi all, 

I recently caught up with my friend  who looked completely depressed for not making it through an interview. When enquired upon she revealed that everything was going so well till the last day when she was supposed to submit all her certificates. The HR came to know that she was a relative of one of the employees. The HR declined her candidature on the basis of a company policy that the company cannot hire siblings or a close relative of any employee.

This sounds absurd to me though I've heard and seen these kind of cases earlier. I request the members to throw some light on the logics applied here.

Regards,

Vayjanthi

Thers nothing to feel absurd about the company having a policy.

There is a logical reson for the companies to have such a policy not to have relatives in the same organisation.

Infact most of the government and nationalised banks has the same policy.

One of the reason is if a close knit relative is working in a organisation they start discussing about the family matters if theres a argument or a misunderstanding or any thing happening in the family in turn which will affect the performance.

So many organisations has a policy not to have relatives in the same organisation.

Every coin has two sides. There are pluses and minuses of these policies. The situation vayjanthi has mentioned might be a discrimination from the point of the candidate and can demotivate the existing employees.

On the other hand like hrquest mentioned these recruitments might lead to frauds and other matters.

Even in Sri Lanka some companies have these policies but limiting the relatives to work in the same department, branch or division. But many companies take other controlling actions, have better systems, processes and procedures and they DO recruit relatives etc.

After all it is a small world and even new relationships can occur among the existing employees (in laws through marriage) and also any sort of relationships can lead to performance management and other issues

So I think having proper systems, processes and procedures will be better than these sort of policies.

mishram

Dear all,

If I may add, There is also a tremendous need to ensure that those systems, processes, n proceures that are put in place are closely monitored, reviewed and audited for 100% compliance on a continuous basis in order to ensure that people understand and are carrying out their tasks correctly and diligently.

Differentiating by family links is no different to differentiating by gender in this age where the clamor for equality is being heard loud and clear across the global village.

Regards,

Ronald

This is surely not fair with the candidate. If the company is so large that the HR is not aware of a candidate being a relative of one of the employee, then while the candidate comes for an interview or applies for a certain post the questionair should have a clear mention of a question if any relative is employeed with the organization.

If the company has a policy of NOT keeping relatives (certain close relations) on job, then this information would help in shortlisting the candidate.

Also to add to this, I do not see any reason not to hire relatives, one of avoiding favouritism is not to keep them in the same group and not to keep them as direct subordinate manager relationship.