Watchdog upholds ‘racial stereotyping’ complaint against industry recruitment firm

A recruitment firm that works for many estate agents has had a complaint about its marketing upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

The complainant, who is likely to be an estate agent, was unhappy with the tone and claims made within a mailshot sent out via an industry media platform.

Property Industry Eye (PIE) emailed the mailshot to its database on behalf of Grantham-based Outsourceful Ltd in August last year.

The complainant believed the advert within the mailshot perpetuated negative racial stereotypes and challenged whether they were harmful and likely to cause serious offence.

Philippines

The mailshot copy included a claim that Outsourceful could find overseas staff  “predominantly from the Philippines” who would work for a quarter of the cost of a UK employee, claiming one agency saved £66,000 a year on salaries, and that they were harder working and more reliable than their UK counterparts.

Upholding the complaint, the ASA says: “We understood that there was a stereotype that Asian people were hard workers and self-sufficient…[and] considered there was a risk that ads that reinforced or promoted stereotypes regarding Filipino people’s work ethic, including a propensity not to take sickness absence, could be harmful to both groups and leave them open to exploitation.

The ASA sought a view on the ads from the Kanlungan Filipino Consortium, a charity representing Filipino and other migrant communities in the UK.

Recruitment

“Their view was that the ads used language which supported racial and ethnic stereotypes about Filipino workers,” the ASA says.

“They considered that such stereotypes might influence UK companies to recruit Filipino and other East and Southeast Asian migrants on low wages, which could increase cases of labour exploitation and trafficking amongst Filipino workers, both in the Philippines and abroad.”

On that basis the ASA says it concluded that the ads had not been prepared in a socially responsible way because they promoted harmful racial stereotypes and that they were also likely to cause serious offence to some people.

Outsourceful says it has made extensive changes to its website to address the concerns raised, and that they would not use the email ad or similar emails again.

PIE told the ASA it had no editorial control over the content of the email and that it checked its content prior to sending for unsuitable or inappropriate content and found there to be none. They did not receive any complaints from their subscribers.