We all know that being fully inclusive and embracing a diverse and equitable workplace for all is the right thing to do, but prioritising it has many proven benefits, from businesses experiencing more innovation and higher employee engagement to a better bottom line.

A growing number of candidates and employees are scrutinising businesses and their Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (ED&I) practices, wanting to work for organisations that align with their values and prioritise what's important.

How do you know you are even reaching under-represented talent with your talent attraction and sourcing efforts? How many potential candidates are put off by a negative first impression? Hidden bias is also a common problem in recruitment, with legacy processes often negatively impacting under-represented talent.

If you are serious about driving meaningful, long-lasting change and being a truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation conduct an inclusivity audit to get started on the path to best-practice diverse hiring.

What is an inclusivity audit?

Simply put, an inclusivity audit evaluates your end-to-end recruitment process for bias – identifying strengths, weaknesses resulting in actionable toolkit of recommendations.

At Resource Solutions, our Recruitment Inclusivity Audit is one out of several Diverse Hiring tools that have helped our partners develop actionable, measurable approaches to fully inclusive talent acquisition.

Why should you conduct an audit?

You already know the benefits of an organisation rich with employees from different backgrounds, but to reap those benefits, you first must build that diverse company. An inclusivity audit gives you the insights you need to make it happen. Here’s how:

• It looks at your business through eight diversity lenses to identify where you can improve.
  
• It evaluates your current state and maps how to achieve a better future state by comparing you to competitors and other top organisations.
• It provides a framework for how to measure diverse hiring initiatives in your organisation. 
• It offers insights into systemic problems that could hinder your ability to attract and retain top talent.
• It provides reassurance to your stakeholders that you prioritise ED&I.

What key areas does the Inclusivity Audit cover?

We look at everything so you can fix every part of your recruitment process, not just one. Our Diverse Hiring consultancy services are designed to help organisations like yours minimise bias from the recruiting process and keep diversity at the forefront of business decisions. Our audit looks through your end-to-end recruiting process through eight diverse hiring lenses:

1. Gender
2. Ethnicity
3. Disability/neurodiversity
4. LGBTQ+
5. Age
6. Faith
7. Socioeconomic status
8. Parental and Caregiving

Reviewing your end-to-end recruitment process

Have you thought about what your candidates do before they land on your careers page? With a wealth of resources, like Glassdoor, Indeed etc., job seekers are learning more about your business before they decide whether they want to work with you.

We examine the third-party sources your candidates may visit before they head over to your careers page, as what they read there could shape their opinion of your organisation and if they continue to your website.

From first connect to onboard

Through our eight diverse hiring lenses, we examine 12 stages of the recruitment process in our end-to-end impact audit to ensure you're minimising bias. After a thorough audit, we will give you:

• Reports that look at a minimum of 257 touchpoints along the recruitment process and at least 44 recommendations based on academia and the ED&I best-practice.
• Recommendations for incremental changes that have a measurable impact.
• Showcase of companies/competitors with best-practice diverse hiring examples.

Minimal time investment, maximum impact

Comprehensive audits are incredibly beneficial for an organisation, but they can also be overwhelming—which is why we do the heavy lifting. Our audits don't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement, nor do they require a hefty time commitment.

We'll spend five weeks conducting our audit. All we need from you is 90 minutes to gather documentation and fill out our questionnaire. We know you're busy, so we do our best to limit your time investment. And once we're done, it might surprise you how quickly you can implement small changes that have a substantial impact. 

To get an idea of what you might receive in your reports, here are a few examples:

• Recommendations and small changes: An example might be to humanise the equal opportunity statements on your website to highlight your dedication to diversity, or changing the way you capture diversity data.
• Intelligence: We don't know what we don't know (innocent ignorance). We'll shine a light on where bias exists and show you how to improve. For example, you may not have thought about digital poverty, so you only make your job applications available on iOS devices, which can exclude much of the talent pool.

Time to get started with an inclusivity audit?

There is no right or wrong time to audit your business. If you want to build a more diverse workplace and ensure you're giving a bias-free recruitment experience, from the pre-apply process through onboarding, please contact our diverse hiring practitioner team and get started today.