Being able to truly display inclusive recruitment is essential for building a diverse and equitable workplace. By actively seeking out and hiring candidates from all backgrounds, businesses benefit from a wider range of perspectives, skills, and experiences.
As a leader are you comfortable your teams have the right tools in place to recruit more inclusively? I have seen this done very well and led a programme in a previous role training thousands of hiring managers to recruit more inclusively, effectively giving them a “licence to hire” in the company.
Not all businesses have this in place, and even those that do, need to make sure their hiring managers have as much knowledge as possible to develop and maintain an inclusive mindset, whether they recruit every week or once every few years.
I’ve pulled together a high-level guide on some of the basic things you should consider when you look at your own approach to inclusive recruitment:
Provide unconscious bias training: Do you educate your hiring managers and recruiters about unconscious biases and how they can impact the recruitment process? You would be surprised to learn that it’s not commonly provided to hiring managers, where it is in place it’s certainly not always annually refreshed. If you don’t have this in place for your hiring managers there is plenty of information available in the public domain which you can easily adopt by using a team of L&D, HR and talent acquisition professionals to compile and deliver a minimum level of knowledge for your business.
Review and update job descriptions: Start with the basics and ensure that you have a standard for your job descriptions, that they are up to date, clear, specific, free from jargon and focused on not being too long winded when it comes to essential skills. When it comes to the JD ensure that your teams are trained to remove biased or exclusionary language. There are plenty of online tools you can use to assist with this but also make it a good practice in your teams to review and update your job descriptions annually which helps ensure the JD is moving with the role content.
Job adverts: Less is more but language is critical to encourage inclusion. The job description and the advert are not the same thing and should be completely different. Your advert should firstly be attractive, engaging and succinct. Too many words, too many minimum criteria points and the use of language can all exclude candidates. Not only will this affect your chances of attracting the talent you want but it will reduce your ability to hire more inclusively. Companies are often restricted or have policies on what they can or cannot do when it comes to job adverts. However, my advice is always advertise salary ranges, working patterns, benefits and your ability to consider flexible working. By doing so you will see more passive talent and increase your ability to hire the best.
Expand your talent search: Firstly, make sure you’re not always looking in the same places for your talent or relying too heavily on generic sourcing and attraction plans. No matter what your strategy is to fill your role it’s key you work with your recruiter or inhouse recruitment teams to understand the strategies they have in place to increase diversity in your talent pools. If you rely on advertising, consider where you are placing these adverts, and can you use other channels to attract candidates from a wider talent pool. At the drop of a hat, all good recruiters or search companies should be able to talk you through their plans to fill your role and the companies where talent exists to ensure you are broadening your search. Referral programmes divide opinion so how you use this really comes down to your own priorities or views as a business, however used in the right way they can help target candidates to achieve a more inclusive hiring result in the long term.
Ensure your teams have scoring criteria at all stages of the application process: Not all companies have the requirement to score applications at all stages. In our view this is poor practice and allows for biased decision-making so our advice is always to ensure there is a consistent scoring criteria throughout the recruitment process.
Conduct structured interviews: It’s unbelievable how this is not a common practice in more companies similar to scoring applications. By ensuring there are consistent and structured interview processes for all candidates, you immediately make your approach to inclusive hiring significantly more likely to succeed. Take the time to put in place a fair and consistent process to ensure that all candidates are evaluated fairly and consistently.
Ensure your business is encouraging and providing reasonable adjustments: Whilst this has been entrenched in law for as long as I have been in recruitment, I don’t think there is strong enough guidance and training provided when it comes to the provision of a reasonable adjustments. Start by ensuring your hiring and TA team understand reasonable adjustments, work with your people teams to ensure there is a process and policy in place to provide the candidates with the best possible support in the process and finally ensure that someone is there to provide guidance should there be a unique or complexed request. Reasonable adjustments are there to ensure there is no disadvantage in the workplace and this includes all stages of a recruitment process.
Insist on a feedback culture: Aside from the obvious issues not giving feedback will create, by insisting upon a culture where feedback is expected to be given you will increase your employer value proposition and longer-term ability to see return applications. By being better than your competitors at providing feedback 100% of the time you will see increased advocacy from your colleagues, leaders and future employees. Some companies have policies that restrict what will be provided so we encourage you create your own rules – but stick to a simple approach that all candidates should have an ability to access and receive feedback.
Focus creating a welcoming and inclusive culture: Moments matter at all stages of a recruitment process and colleague lifecycle. I saw a post recently where a new joiner (after a long recruitment process) arrived on day one of their new job and no-one was aware they were joining, no kit, no manager and the new joiner felt isolated on what should be a very happy day in a new company (the manager was actually on holiday!). What all companies need to do is make sure they are honest about what their culture really is and be consistent in ensuring that candidates and colleagues feel valued at every stage of the colleague lifecycle. If you have work to do then don’t try and mask it and really do focus on fostering a positive and inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued and respected – not just on day one.
Make sure everything you do is reflected in your recruitment, attraction and onboarding: Make sure your hiring teams have a plan on how you will recruit, be bold and from the start inform people on your process, what your inclusion goals are and why they are important. In the age where people will leave you a review on Glassdoor, Indeed or Google, by being more open on what you are (or not) you instil transparency in everything you do.
I’m by no means an expert but having worked in talent acquisition for over 20 years and personally led a project to put in place a minimum level of knowledge for someone to be able to recruit more inclusively, I know from experience that by implementing better structure and education you will over time see it benefit your employees, business performance and the communities you operate in.
If you are considering how you can improve your own approach to inclusive hiring and would like to understand more about any of the elements in this blog, contact me directly and I can walk you through some of the key considerations for you to be successful in your own approach.
Mark
07900557982