Wanting to hire and promote in an inclusive way should encourage a more diverse workforce – but what steps can you actually take?
Why is Inclusive Recruitment Important for Employers to Understand?
Understanding the roots of a truly equal and inclusive working environment is essential to making your company more diverse. However, no matter how much work you do to create an inclusive company culture, it will not develop a more diverse workforce if your recruitment is exclusive.
Frequently, companies fail to develop an inclusive recruitment system because they do not consider the perspective of their potential applicants. There are lots of different experiences that will influence the way a person will perceive your company.
If you are already in an industry that is dominated by people who identify with or belong to a particular social group, you have an even greater mountain to climb. However, there are steps you can take to stand out from your competitors and encourage a more diverse workforce.
Reaching a Diverse Audience
First and foremost, there is no point in putting in place a stringent structure to ensure diverse recruitment if you are only reaching a very specific type of candidate. Furthermore, this is not just related to the job adverts themselves but your branding altogether. If your target customer is not diverse, it is unlikely that a diverse set of applicants will know and want to work for your company.
We have collected a range of different considerations you should make in the early steps of your recruitment process so that you can reach a greater variety of applicants. One way to achieve this is by using our jobs board, which encourages applicants who are from one of the protected characteristics. By hiring through us you are directly reaching a more diverse set of candidates.
Making the Adverts Inclusive
Once you have reached a diverse selection of applicants you need to make sure that your advert isn’t going to make them feel excluded. When potential applicants go through the long list of potential jobs what they are often doing is deciphering if they qualify or will fit in in the company.
There are so many different companies in the UK, applicants are unlikely to know the details of your inclusivity, especially if you haven’t made an effort to advertise it. They will take any evidence they can from the advert, including the type of language you use.
Although many employers are often trying to be inclusive, they don’t realise that little things can have a big impact on whether someone will apply to their role. Take a look at our guide to developing inclusive job adverts so you don’t make the same mistakes.
Diverse Decision Making
Reaching and attracting a diverse set of candidates is not useful if those deciding whether to hire those candidates do not understand their own unconscious biases or have no accountability for making a discriminatory decision. In order to make sure the selection process is fair and accepts a diverse set of candidates you should review your decision-making processes, including the staff who oversee it.
Most of the time, there is no easy solution to making sure this process is void of any bias, but our dedicated guide helps employers to find any of their mistakes and encourages them to think outside the box for developing fairer answers.
