Human rights
Human rights
SEEK develops and implements strategies to prevent exploitative recruitment and modern slavery on SEEK’s employment platforms and to identify and manage risks in SEEK’s supply chains.
Fair hiring
SEEK’s fair hiring purpose is to improve working lives by preventing exploitative recruitment and modern slavery.
As an organisation that operates to improve millions of working lives, SEEK is uniquely positioned to lead change against unfair hiring practices. Technology and expertise in hirer and job ad screening has been developed and implemented across SEEK's platform to improve SEEK’s fair hiring processes and systems. SEEK has a Fair Hiring Steering Committee to provide oversight on fair hiring risks and issues across the business. SEEK’s focus is to create marketplaces with job ads that are free from illegitimate or illegal jobs, unlawful charges or placement fees where the worker pays for a job and discriminatory language or requirements.
Candidate security
SEEK is committed to ensuring that all job ads on its employment platform are for legitimate job opportunities and that job searching is safe and secure. A key condition of advertising on SEEK’s platform is that the job ad is a genuine, paid employment opportunity. Employment platforms continue to face cyber-themed scams and email phishing through job ads that ask for personal and financial information or recruit for illegal activities such as money laundering. SEEK responds through its investment in cybersecurity to proactively monitor and address current and emerging threats and vulnerabilities.
Advice on safe job searching is provided and updated as employment scams and other threats emerge. The Security and Privacy Hub contains security and privacy resources for customers which include location-related updates on the latest scams and tips, and links to government-specific online safety resources. This hub highlights the latest scams targeting candidates and hirers on the SEEK platform as well as impersonation scams on other messaging services. The hub also contains tips on what customers can do if they believe they have been scammed.
For more information refer to the Security and Privacy Hub page and the Human rights (Fair Hiring) section of the Sustainability Report 2024.
Creating transparent job ads
SEEK’s job ad posting process is designed to help hirers adopt fair hiring practices. SEEK’s platform provides automated tools and recommendations to help hirers produce informative job ads while avoiding discriminatory or otherwise offensive content. Candidates are also able to identify and report a hirer should their off-platform communications not align with the original job ad. These reports allow SEEK to respond to these high-risk hirers appropriately.
Hirer and job ad screening
SEEK has various inbuilt controls that combat the risks to candidates when job searching on its employment platform. The aim is to ensure the online employment marketplace is a safe environment for candidates. Hirer and job ad screening is in place across the unified platform using procedures based on known risks and when elevated risk is detected.
Reporting suspicious job ads
The ‘Report this job ad’ feature on the SEEK platform and customer service channels enables candidates to directly report suspicious job ads to SEEK for investigation. Additional measures help candidates protect themselves from fraudulent job ads. Warnings to protect personal and financial information are embedded in the online job application process. Candidates in Australia are also encouraged to use the free platform SEEK Pass and not provide sensitive personal documents with job applications.
Modern slavery
Coercion, threats or deception to exploit victims and undermine their freedom can occur across global supply chains and within business operations. SEEK is committed to identifying and preventing modern slavery in SEEK’s operations and supply chains.
SEEK’s approach to assessing and addressing modern slavery risk aligns with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The technology and the employment marketplaces SEEK operates in expose the business to a unique set of human rights risks; SEEK’s attention is directed to those areas that present the most risk. This is achieved through a range of policies and processes aimed at prevention, mitigation and remediation of risks to human rights.
SEEK’s employment marketplaces (operations)
SEEK has a part to play in safeguarding against advertising job opportunities that could result in modern slavery, such as deceptive recruiting for forced or bonded labour including human trafficking. SEEK reviews the modern slavery profile in each country in which it operates its employment platform. For countries with higher risks of modern slavery, SEEK prioritises modern slavery due diligence assessment of the employment platform.
Supply chains
SEEK applies a Supply Chain Risk Framework across its global operations to identify and address modern slavery risk within its supply chain. This involves a three-step approach to: analyse suppliers for inherent modern slavery risk; assess the operations and governance of suppliers with elevated risk; and work with suppliers to take remedial action when modern slavery incidents or inherent risks are identified.
Direct supplier risk (Tier 1): Business services, technology software and support services and marketing make up the majority of SEEK’s global spend. Suppliers within these categories tend to have a low inherent risk of modern slavery and relatively well-advanced controls relating to labour and human rights.
SEEK’s Supply Chain Risk Framework provides oversight of these suppliers’ operations, governance practices and supply chains, so that SEEK can make an informed judgement as to whether these practices are acceptable or require remediation.
Indirect supplier risk (Tier 2): SEEK recognises that, even in categories of spend considered low risk for modern slavery, risks can exist in the secondary levels of the supply chain (indirect suppliers).
While SEEK has primarily focused on understanding the modern slavery risks associated with its direct suppliers, there is increased focus on indirect suppliers. SEEK’s strategic and elevated risk suppliers are asked to disclose details regarding their supply chain due diligence so that SEEK can analyse its indirect suppliers for modern slavery risk.
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