Inclusive Recruitment
Methodology for Change

What is inclusive recruitment?

Without recruiting inclusively, we cannot build a diverse, inclusive and equitable businesses. We know that the standard recruitment process is biased. Disabled people might not (literally) be able to get through your door. Potential entrepreneurs in your business may have their CVs dismissed if they’re dyslexic (and 40% of entrepreneurs are dyslexic), if they have typos (or their emails do). Men called Mohammed are 4x less likely to get called in for a job interview. Black male graduates are twice as likely to be unemployed as their white counterparts.

Inclusive Recruitment is the process for bringing in talent that draws in a diverse pool of candidates and welcomes them to the recruitment process. The process should be structured in such a way as to encourage people from all backgrounds to apply, and give adjustments as necessary to ensure every candidate is entering the process on an equitable footing. 

Inclusive Recruitment is the groundwork for reshaping the way businesses operate and for making sure that our unconscious - and conscious - bias does not shape our hiring process. 

By focussing on reforming the talent pipeline, businesses can ensure that they are hiring the very best staff from all backgrounds and that they are geared up to take on the future together. .

Overall Process

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The Inclusive Recruitment Audit Process

Step 1: Audit

We work with your HR team to understand your current recruitment practices and how they fit within your overarching organisation strategy and culture. This starts with an in-depth survey examining various aspects of your hiring process, onboarding strategies and your recruitment partners practices.

We also examine your policies, investigate a sample of your suppliers list and a sample of candidates. Our aim is to get a full picture of your current recruitment practices.

Step 2: Grading

We take your assessment and compare it to research- based best practices. From there we’re able to understand where your strengths are, where support is required and what can be improved.

To give you a clear understanding we provide an overall grade, which gives a benchmark as to where your practices currently sit.

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Step 3: Report + Debrief

We provide feedback on where your practices sit currently, and how you compare to best practice in an debrief - breaking down step by step your recruitment process. We also provide an in-depth report for you to take away. View a sample report.

The Workshops: Rewire the Way you Hire

We run several Inclusive Recruitment Workshops designed to help your organisation rethink how bias can underpin the way you empower candidates on the recruitment journey and rework the recruitment process and facilitate change. We use the analysis from the audit, and together we co-create a solution that works for your organisation.

We’ve found that by having your team take ownership of the solution, change is championed and sustainable.

Step 1: Pre-workshop

We set up some (easy, low effort) pre-workshop homework for the attendees, to help them uncover their individual biases. It helps provide some personal context before we get down to business.

Step 2: The Workshops

Discover

We look at unconscious bias, particularly first impression bias and how it shows up in your own life, your networks and why this is a key blocker to many. We also look at access and privilege.

Explore

Using the outcome of the Audit, we map out a typical candidate journey into employment, understanding everything from outreach (where we are recruiting) to the CV selection process, interviews and onboarding. We then map where bias shows up.

Once we know the ‘whats’ (where the gaps are, where bias is showing up) - we look at the ‘whys’. Why has this come about? Why are the gaps here? What in the organisational culture is supporting these behaviours?

Commit

We then rewire the process, looking at what we can do differently to create a more fair and level playing field for all. How can we prevent implicit bias from us hiring great talent? What can we do differently, today, next week and in the next six months.

Taking everything we learned, we rewire our design thinking for four- five different groups: older workers, people with autism, wheelchair users, BAME staff, returning mothers and another ‘group’ the attendees choose.

Document + Communicate: Implementing Change

Building your Inclusive Recruitment Policy

Together we take the workshop outputs and build a revised recruiting policy to support communication and education of hiring managers and teams. This is your Best Practice, Inclusive Recruitment Policy.

Rolling out your Inclusive Recruitment Policy
We take this policy and introduce it to all your hiring managers and teams, with a support framework to ensure that everyone understands the new system moving forward.

Partners: Introduction to Inclusive Suppliers

We introduce you to our recommended partners list. Suppliers who work inclusively, who can support you in your inclusive recruitment practices.

It can be hard to know who to trust, so we only introduce you to partners we have worked with, tools we ourselves have trialled and use, and organisations we trust.