Inclusive Hiring: Advancing Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in the Workplace


InclusiveHiring

In response to our callout for articles for this issue of the INOU e-bulletin, an affiliate sent us this interesting article on Inclusive Hiring.

Inclusive Hiring Policy

Inclusive hiring can be defined as the process of connecting with, interviewing, and hiring a diverse set of individuals through understanding and valuing different backgrounds and opinions. Inclusive recruiting should be intersectional and consider more than just gender or race.  

Many organisations operate an ad-hoc recruitment policy e.g. “word of mouth”, online job adverts, local media outlets, and social media. Organisations are generally focused on complying with employment legislation and not pro-actively recruiting for or measuring diversity within their organisation.

Inclusive Hiring should aim for the following:

  • All vacancies advertised publicly and ensure proactive use of diverse job boards for advertisements.
  • Candidates being interviewed have applied for and been shortlisted based on suitability criteria for the role they are being interviewed for.
  • Management at all levels are trained in offering and providing reasonable accommodations at recruitment and selection stage, and during employment for candidates.
  • An intersectional approach is taken to the complete hiring process, with leadership and management confident in provision of supports.
  • Candidate pool is monitored for diversity at all stages of process.

Equality Diversity and Inclusion

Groups including disabled people, older people, LGBTQIA people, religious minorities, black and minority ethnic people are more disproportionately disadvantaged in the labour-market and legislative requirements alone cannot remove structural obstacles for disadvantaged groups.

Organising processes that produce inequality, include the general organisation of work based on the assumption of an unencumbered worker, organising jobs and hierarchies, recruitment/hiring/promotion, wage setting/supervision, and informal interactions in doing the work.

Approaches linking diverse employee perspectives and approaches incorporating them into organisations’ processes to leverage the benefits of diversity to enhance organisational learning and growth seeks to achieve integration and inclusion.

Inclusive Hiring initiative rollout:

Undertaking an analysis of the current recruitment process within an organisation and identifying organisational gaps to equality, diversity and inclusion including:

  • Organisational Culture and Values - establishing the ‘tone from the top’ of the organisation, directors should lead by example in order to encourage good behaviours throughout the organisation. Establish and embed diversity policy within organisational leadership and management. Establish an EDI taskforce in the organisation from all staff levels.
  • Highlight diversity in job adverts – institutional discrimination is described as one of the primary ways societies produce and maintain group-based inequality, gendered language, wording associated with individualism used in job advertisements likely serves as a covert institutional practice, review job adverts for gendered or other biased wording and amend accordingly.
  • Leverage diverse job boards - review talent attraction methods, currently there is a heavy reliance on “word of mouth” and other informal recruitment methods.  Ask for diverse referrals by contacting organisations working with marginalised groups and those experiencing barriers to employment. Use a diverse range of job boards.
  • Teach recruiters to avoid biases - providing unconscious bias training for those involved in the recruitment, selection, development and promotion processes helps raise awareness of subconscious preconceptions so that bias does not affect their decision making. Individuals involved in the recruiting process are themselves recruited and socialised in a manner that ensures they will act in such a way that undesirable actions and outcomes are avoided. Ensure recruitment and selection panel is diverse and openly inclusive in their focus.  
  • Implement blind screening – various measures can be taken to address unconscious bias in the recruitment process. Blind recruitment is the process of removing personally identifiable information from applications information, CVs are sifted without personal details included.
  • Diverse interview panels – establish interview panels within the organisation. Seek outside assistance to ensure gender balance and diversity if necessary. 
  • Flexible working policies – review all positions within the organisation and assess flexibility options within roles and establish flexible working policies. Monitor uptake of policies and success of initiatives for staff.
  • Work shadow opportunities – establish contact with local schools, Third level institutions and organisations working with marginalised groups and those experiencing barriers to employment with a view to offering work shadow/placements within the organisation. Offer Student/Jobseekers visits or open days and Guest lectures by staff members.

Measuring the success of “Inclusive Hiring”:

Ongoing monitoring is necessary, along with employee feedback and on-going engagement with employees from all levels within the organisation and from all backgrounds. Findings and employee feedback should be used to ensure continuous improvement in Equality Diversity and Inclusion throughout the organisation.

Given the barriers experienced by certain groups in accessing and remaining in the workplace it is crucial that employers adapt a proactive approach to recruitment and selection rather than focusing solely on compliance with the law.