S2E11: Guidelines for Fair and Legal Employment Practices with Guest Nicki Vander Meulen
Diverse Joy’s June 2025 episode: “Guidelines for Fair and Legal Employment Practices with Guest Nicki Vander Meulen”
The cohosts and returning guest Nicki Vander Meulen are dressed up in rainbows and sparkles in honor of LGBTQ+ Pride Month! Nicki’s joy is a bracelet with a neurodiversity symbol for Autistic people, and Will’s joy is a rainbow necklace and a pin he got when our Inequity Agents of Change nonprofit was admitted to Wisconsin’s LGBT Chamber of Commerce. Amber’s joy is her work with The Rainbow Connection at Camp Ukando, where she helps kids cope with battling childhood cancer. This episode’s discussion topic makes use of Nicki’s expertise as a lawyer, as we discuss diversity and legal issues in the hiring process. We discuss laws and protections related to various group statuses and identities in the workplace, and what people can and cannot discuss when making hiring decisions. Even people who have good intentions related to diversity sometimes make big missteps in this area. The discussion also lends itself to a nice chat about disability and accommodations issues in hiring, including whether and when to disclose a disability-related need or diagnosis in the hiring process. We also talk about how to legally bring in diversity-related values to recruitment and hiring processes. During Story Time, Nicki shares a story of someone violating the legal guidelines related to race in a hiring process, and a more positive story related to someone from her past reaching out to apologize for not being receptive to her accommodations needs! Since this episode is coming out in during LGBTQ+ Pride Month, the question is “Why are Pride/Heritage/History months important?”, which leads to a great discussion about recognition of how many social groups, their histories, and how their contributions are sometimes overlooked. This month's bias habit-breaking skill is to Think Ahead. Bias is more likely to happen when we’re being more spontaneous. Especially in hiring situations, we can think ahead by committing to the types of credentials we want to use to make our hiring decision, which reduces the likelihood of bias coming into play. We also cover how these credentials you think ahead about can have built-in flexibility. We finish with Nicki’s joyful recommendation, which is the heartwarming, trendsetting, and transcendent music of Dolly Parton!
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