New Michigan State University–led research suggests the difference between a hiring policy that harms recruiting and one that doesn’t may come down to just a few words.

As some companies scale back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, the study found that how organizations explain certain hiring policies can significantly influence how job seekers respond. Published in the Journal of Management, the research shows that using moral case framing rather than business case framing to explain Fair Chance Hiring, or FCH, policies can reduce negative stereotyping among applicants without criminal records.

Fair Chance Hiring policies are designed to reduce barriers to employment for people with criminal records. In the context of this study, moral case framing emphasizes that hiring individuals with criminal histories is the right thing to do, while business case framing focuses on profits, competitive advantage. The researchers also found that nearly 88% of Indeed job postings mentioning FCH policies relied on legal compliance language.

“Simply having an FCH policy creates reputational risk with other applicants, but the negative outcome isn’t inevitable. A few words of moral framing in a job ad can meaningfully counteract it. Legal compliance language, the most common approach companies currently use, offers no protection,” said Francisco Moreno, assistant professor of management in the MSU Eli Broad College of Business and lead author of the study.

Moreno and his co-authors — Michael Johnson, associate professor of management at Louisiana State University and Terrance L. Boyd, assistant professor of management at Texas Christian University — conducted three experiments examining how job applicants responded to different explanations of Fair Chance Hiring policies in job postings. Participants were randomly assigned to view job ads that varied in how — or whether — the company described its policy on hiring people with criminal records. The studies included both employed adults and active job seekers and used a simulated job-search platform designed to mirror a real hiring experience. Researchers then measured participants’ stereotypes of the company and their willingness to apply.

Across all three studies, applicants without criminal records assigned significantly more negative stereotypes to companies advertising FCH policies than to those that did not, reducing their interest in pursuing the job.

The studies also found that applicants with criminal histories were largely unaffected by the language used to explain Fair Chance Hiring policies.

“Applicants who themselves had a criminal history were largely unaffected by either justification, likely because they don’t hold the same negative stereotypes about the group to begin with,” Moreno said.

However, framing the policy as a matter of fairness and ethics consistently reduced negative reactions among applicants without criminal records.

“Companies don’t have to accept applicant pushback as inevitable. By framing these policies around fairness and doing the right thing, organizations can protect their reputation with other job seekers without abandoning the policy itself,” Moreno said. “This approach could extend beyond criminal history hiring to other groups that face stigma in the workplace.”