Why inclusive recruitment is important for organisations like yours, and how to make it happen…
Despite DE&I being a major draw for professionals across the consumer product sector and beyond, it’s still something that organisations are struggling to implement effectively within their hiring process.
Here’s everything you need to know, from key definitions and obstacles to the solutions that can help you solve your inclusive hiring problems:
- Defining inclusive recruitment
- Solutions to key inclusive recruitment challenges
- Overcoming unconscious bias
- Improving talent pool awareness
- Boosting employer branding
- Transparency
- Making your recruitment more inclusive
Defining inclusive recruitment
Here’s what DE&I means within the context of recruitment:
- Diversity means valuing and promoting a workplace culture that respects and appreciates individual uniqueness.
- Inclusion is about creating an environment where all individuals feel welcomed, respected, and valued.
- Equity is the process of addressing systemic barriers that disproportionately affect certain groups, to create a level playing field.
But, while 61% of UK employers have a formal DE&I policy, according to research by CIPD, just 32% of organisations are ‘very or extremely active in their efforts to recruit more diverse candidates across the board’. And, at the other end of the scale, ‘a similar proportion (30%) are not active at all’.
Solutions to key inclusive recruitment challenges
If your organisation is hitting roadblocks when it comes to inclusive hiring, here are the steps you can take to overcome them…
1. Overcoming unconscious bias
We all have unconscious biases. But, by implementing robust systems, you can ensure those biases (for example, affinity bias, halo effect, and confirmation bias) don’t influence your organisation’s hiring decisions.
CIPD have found that only around a quarter of employers take the necessary steps to remove bias from their recruitment processes. These steps can include inclusive language job ads and job ad testing, as well as more objective methods of candidate assessment.
By far the most effective approach to alleviating bias includes fully anonymous and interactive shortlisting. The methods that we at The Advocate Group employ have been honed over more than a decade, and offer employers key capabilities, including:
- Anonymous and interactive digital shortlists and LiveList functionality, so you can compare top candidates based solely on experience, potential and ability.
- Assess competencies prior to meeting.
- Assess cultural alignment through behavioural/psychometric analysis.
- Enhanced and inclusive external comms.
For more information on how we can help consumer product organisations like yours combat unconscious bias in recruitment, drop us a direct message. Our free expert resources are often the best place to start!
2. Improving talent pool awareness
Awareness of talent pools is essential to making informed hiring decisions. Plus, it’s far harder to implement effective DE&I measures without an in-depth understanding of the talent available to you.
That’s why we’ve invested heavily in big data solutions that allow us to effectively map markets based on specific criteria, like demographics, experience and location.
The benefits of this approach can be game-changing for employers:
- Understand diversity within your available talent pools – remember, you can’t hire what isn’t there!
- Understand the volume and relevance of talent available to you, based on tailored criteria.
- Find, engage, and attract passive and inactive talent.
- Uncover niche, in-demand and/or underrepresented professionals.
Access to this sort of in-depth, insider knowledge won’t just help you improve diversity in your organisation; it will also give you an edge over your competitors.
3. Boosting employer brand
To make your organisation more attractive to wider groups, it’s important to prioritise your employer brand. Your employer brand shapes how your organisation is perceived by both current and potential employees.
If, for example, your organisation is not currently as diverse as you would like it to be, effective employer branding can highlight your commitment to getting there.
It is possible to do this in-house. However, if you want to ensure maximum impact, then we offer services through our internal Marketing team that can make that happen:
- Branded recruitment campaigns.
- Innovative video content created exclusively for your brand.
- Highlight particular attributes of your organisation or people.
- Be seen by a minimum of 50,000 consumer product professionals.
- Targeted candidate attraction campaigns.
With tailor-made, targeted content, it’s possible to improve the perception of inclusivity in your organisation while you take other practical steps to diversify your workforce.
4. Transparency
One of the greatest barriers organisations face to inclusive hiring is a lack of transparency among key stakeholders.
We see a lot of cases where employers have inclusive hiring policies that aren’t always communicated or acted on effectively. This is backed up by additional research from CIPD. They found that, while 67% of organisations say they follow objective assessment criteria when hiring, just 28% actually train their internal interviewers on legal inclusivity obligations.
That’s why a detailed stakeholder meeting at the very start of the process is essential for any hiring project. This ensures everyone is aligned on key requirements and nothing crucial is missed. And, when external talent partners are involved, it also means more effective representation, stronger results and added value.
Making your recruitment more inclusive
As well as being consumer product recruitment experts, we’re also specialists in inclusive hiring…
So, if you want anonymous, diversity-balanced shortlists, in-depth demographic insights, EVP strengthening and promotion, and access to underrepresented or in-demand talent, we can help!
Drop us a message, give us a call, or follow us on LinkedIn for more expert insights on inclusive recruitment and much, much more:
Call us: 0333 772 7200