Week 6: Diversity and inclusion in recruitment and career progression

Introduction

Last week you focused on the personal skills and strategic tools you can use to support your work on diversity and inclusion.

This week, you’ll take a look at recruitment – a core process where diversity and inclusion must be embedded. You’ll consider some of the key issues to be aware of as well as good practice ideas and examples.

First, watch this short video of Mark Ealing, one of our employer interviewees, sharing his thoughts on the importance of communicating genuine, inclusive messages throughout the recruitment process.

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Transcript: Video 1: Introduction to Week 6

Mark Ealing

The way an organisation describes itself has to be genuine, and it has to be genuine to the people that already work there. So I spent at least a year refusing to talk outwardly from our business until we were in a position where we had something to say. We were actually taking some actions that would make people feel included, and that it’s valuable to us and we’re spending time and effort doing it.

Once it feels like we’ve actually got something to say, then we started to say it externally. And also, it needs to sound genuine to people who are from underrepresented groups. If you’re a disabled person, you get very attuned to when companies are saying it because it’s a legal requirement or they pick some wording off the internet. People get very attuned to who’s genuine and who’s ticking some boxes.

And that takes time and it needs to be in every communication that you play. So whether you’re in your job advert, the way you represent yourselves on your website, the offer letters, the information that you send along with, this is the business. People become very attuned to these things. And unless it’s consistent and heartfelt throughout, people will spot it. And if they spot it, they’ll recognise that you don’t mean it and they might vote with their feet.

End transcript: Video 1: Introduction to Week 6

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By the end of this week you will be able to:

• understand the importance of inclusive business branding
• describe useful tactics and techniques to support diversity during the recruitment process
• recognise the value of promoting inclusivity during onboarding/induction and beyond.

Most large employers have the capability and resources to build comprehensive recruitment systems with diversity and inclusion at their core, so this week’s content may be more useful for smaller organisations without dedicated teams or large budgets.

However, even if you are an experienced HR professional, there will hopefully be some nuggets of recent thinking to catch your attention.

You’ll start by looking at making your employer branding more inclusive.