Diverse Hiring
Helping employers make meaningful change
Aspiring to an inclusive and accessible culture
D&I has been high on organisations' agendas for many years, but the pace of change remains slow. Critics note that many Diversity and Inclusion initiatives have failed to result in a seismic shift towards the inclusive and accessible culture they aspire to.
Audit and re-engineer your recruitment process
Recruitment and Talent Acquisition teams can impact the diversity of the talent that joins your business more than any other function, yet bias minimisation and inclusion initiatives largely focus on employees rather than potential employees.
Blending a deep knowledge of recruitment, HR tech and diversity programme management, our Diverse Hiring Practitioners focus on auditing and re-engineering your recruitment and careers content and processes to minimise bias and foster inclusive hiring.
End-to-end Inclusivity Audit
Your hiring process has likely evolved over time, with new processes, content and technology added and removed. Whilst this process may deliver a functional talent acquisition service and experience, bias is likely to be threaded through each stage of your process. Our research indicates that bias is introduced before candidates even visit your careers page and continues through selection, assessment, interviewing and onboarding.
Our end-to-end inclusivity audit is the most advanced diverse hiring audit available, analysing the impact of recruitment content and processes across seven different lenses:
Age
Disability and neurodiversity
Ethnicity
Gender
Faith
LGBTQ+
Socio economic
Unlike many diversity initiatives, our fully remote Inclusivity Audit focuses on actionable, meaningful change, ensuring clients are provided with an immediate ‘to do’ list to help achieve diversity objectives and goals:
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Blending academic research and best-in-class case studies from over 100 sources
157
Analysing 157 data points
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Producing a minimum of 44 recommendations for quickly actioning meaningful change
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Key findings playback within 30 working days
"This company has a business model that allows it to advance the bias minimisation agenda, and judges were glad to see that. There is great potential for impact led by the Robert Walters Group as they are already showing some impressive innovation on inclusion and diversity."
Reuters Responsible Business Awards
CASE STUDY
Enabling diverse hiring through recruitment inclusivity auditing
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust partnered with Resource Solutions to help achieve their diverse hiring objectives, using a pioneering research-based Recruitment Inclusivity Audit.
The challenge
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of London's largest and busiest teaching hospitals, with a strong profile of local services primarily serving the boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Bromley. The Trust is proud of their diverse workforce and how an eclectic mix of backgrounds enables them to provide compassionate care to all their patients. As an NHS Hospital Trust, it’s essential that they accurately reflect the communities they represent.
In 2021, the Trust appointed Funmi Onamusi as Director of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (ED&I). Inclusive hiring is a core part of the Trust’s ED&I mandate, and in order to promote this, Funmi was keen to understand how the current recruitment and hiring process impacted talent from different communities. Peter Absalom, Associate Director of Workforce Operations, was a senior-level sponsor of the project, aligning the audit with the Trust’s strategic workforce objectives.
The Trust was keen to find a credible partner with a deep knowledge of diverse hiring, recruitment best-practice and bias minimisation, so they selected Resource Solutions as their partner for auditing their end-to-end recruitment and hiring process.
Our solution
Resource Solutions’ Inclusivity Audit applies a proprietary academically informed, research and data-led framework to assess the end-to-end recruitment and hiring process, identifying and assessing bias.
The audit analyses bias across 12 stages of the candidate recruitment journey, through seven diversity lenses:
- Gender
- Ethnicity
- Disability & Neurodiversity
- LGBTQ+
- Age
- Socio-economic
- Faith
This pioneering audit referenced research from over 60 peer-reviewed academic papers and studies, to ‘hold up a mirror’ and parse out aspects of King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s current hiring processes and career content that had the potential perpetuate bias. The Inclusivity Audit analysed 257 data touchpoints for bias, to provide immediate, actionable, research-informed recommendations that provide an actionable roadmap of meaningful change.
"The inclusivity audit provides a recognised standard in the world of diversity and inclusion for organisations to reach and then build upon. There can be no doubt that in order to thrive and offer a place where people truly belong, it is essential that NHS trusts have inclusive recruitment practices. We are very pleased for what this process has given us - the ability to grow."
Funmi Onamusi, Director of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Results
The audit findings were played back to senior stakeholders and included 49 bespoke, actionable recommendations to minimise bias in hiring, including:
- 8 Recommendations to minimise gender bias including changing the way pay information is collected and rewording job descriptions.
- 9 Recommendations to enable ethnicity inclusion including changing the way ethnicity data is captured and closer partnerships with Employee Resource Groups.
- 11 Recommendations to further improve accessibility for neurodiverse talent or candidates with a disability including tailored interview adjustments and interviewer training.
- 16 Recommendations relating to LGBTQ+, Age and Faith including re-engineering hiring processes and updating careers content.
Resource Solutions and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust continue to work together to enable meaningful change.
CASE STUDY
AXA UK Minimises Bias in Recruitment with Resource Solutions’
Inclusivity Audit
The challenge
One of the world’s largest insurance companies, AXA UK, has always ensured their Diversity and Inclusion priorities were more than just an agenda item; but rather, a key pillar of their employer brand. To further advance their longstanding commitment, they wanted to ensure every aspect of their candidate journey aligned with their Inclusive Recruitment strategic goals – to build a diverse talent attraction plan through industry best practices.
Our solution
Having worked closely with our diverse hiring practitioners on previous programmes at Resource Solutions, AXA UK commissioned us to conduct our Inclusivity Audit of its recruitment practices through seven D&I lenses (ethnicity, disability, and neurodiversity, LGBTQ+, age, socio-economic background, and faith) across 12 stages of their candidate journey.
Our method – the first of its kind and considered one of the most progressive and forward-thinking audits available in the UK – applies a D&I framework drawn from over 60 peer-reviewed academic papers and studies to parse out what aspects of an organisation’s hiring processes and career content are perpetuating bias.
Results
Our Inclusivity Audit carefully analysed 279 data touch points for bias. Additionally, we reviewed: job adverts for biased and gendered language and wording; facial representation across career content; technical barriers; and recruitment and selection processes that were unknowingly exclusionary to particular groups.
The report we provided to our client led to the implementation of 36 proactive, purposeful and actionable recommendations that would drive immediate and long-term change, including:
- Implementing a ban on asking direct questions around a candidate’s salary and training hiring managers to focus on candidate salary range and expectations to avoid perpetuating gender pay inequality
- Offering an Adjustments Concierge to ensure all candidates are given the opportunity to be their best when interviewing at AXA UK
- Updating the job search functionality on the careers page to highlight non-traditional working pattern opportunities
- Updating the way diversity data is requested and captured for accessibility purposes
- Creating an inclusive calendar that captures the dates of religious holidays, festivals and celebrations to offer candidates more flexibility when choosing an interview date
- Creating an anti-nepotism policy to drive meritocratic hiring
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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
How to uncover hidden bias in your hiring process
Our personal biases aren’t always apparent to us, we can teach ourselves to become more aware of them. In this blog, we’ll explore the ways gender bias can hide within your recruitment process, and how to tackle it in order to create a more inclusive experience for female applicants.
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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Four ways to reingineer your hiring process to be more inclusive
Infuse your hiring process with inclusion. These four practical steps can help any organisation boost diversity.
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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Why now is the right time to rewrite your diverse hiring plan
A strong focus on the bottom line is key to ensuring that businesses thrive moving into 2021. At first glance, a diversity strategy is not a direct route to business success. It may be time to take a second look.
