Inclusive Hiring: What Is It and How to Implement It?

What is inclusive hiring?

Inclusive hiring is the practice of making your recruitment processes fair and providing equity for all candidates. This includes minimising the bias present during the hiring process, ensuring that you can attract and retain talented candidates with diverse backgrounds. Inclusive hiring isn’t just changing one process; it is implementing steps across the entire hiring process to improve equity and diversity in your hiring.

Areas of improvement can include:

• Inclusive language in job descriptions
• Structured interviewing processes 
• Committing to sign-up to policies
• Providing a welcoming workplace
• Encouraging inclusive referral approach

It is your responsibility as an employer to comply with inclusivity laws and ensure equitable hiring across all nine protected characteristics.

These characteristics include:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Race
• Religion or belief
• Sex
• Sexual orientation
• Marriage and civil partnership
• Pregnancy and maternity

Why is inclusive hiring important for your business?

Inclusive hiring is essential for businesses looking to develop a better work environment, as well as manage their social impact and employer reputation. Every business is responsible for providing an inclusive environment.

Adapting your hiring practices can strengthen your workforce through:

Improved productivity

Inclusive hiring is essential for improving productivity as the diversity it brings raises the overall talent capabilities of your workforce. By removing biases, and focusing on skills, experience, and quality talent, you’re better able to find high-performing candidates who bring innovative thinking to your workforce, resulting in better problem solving, driving higher business performance.

Workforce morale

Effective cost management in terms of recruitment, comes from improving the workplace to ensure higher levels of retention and worker morale. By providing an inclusive workplace that focuses on belonging and equity, particularly when it comes to career progression, recognition and rewards, you’re able to ensure that hired candidates are comfortable and valued in their work, helping to increase retention and drive down costs associated with rehiring positions. Social impact

As an employer, it is important that your employer branding highlights the positive social impact of how your organisation does business, providing an effective cycle of employee advocacy, for candidate awareness and attraction. By working on your diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, you’re better able to attract candidates with the same values and build a workforce adept to current social standards, maintaining your workplace environment through hiring suitable talent for each team including management and leadership positions.

Accessing the wider employment market

If your business is struggling to attract quality talent, then reevaluating your job descriptions and hiring methods might be a necessary step in diversifying your talent pool. By implementing inclusive hiring processes and job advertisements, you can open your business to a much wider talent pool, increase your candidate attraction, improve your application rate, and find quality talent suited for your business without bias complications.

Inclusive Hiring Research

Inclusive hiring is an essential strategy for many businesses looking to improve their positive social impact. In fact, 66% of organisations claim to have a formal EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) strategy in place.[1] With more businesses looking to set in place their own EDI strategies, understanding the impact of inclusive hiring and other methods for supporting diverse workforces is essential to your business’ future.

From anonymous CVs to inclusivity training for management staff, there are many ways your organisation can create a more supportive environment for your diverse workforce. Research by CIPD has found that 50% of businesses have provided inclusivity training to their leadership teams, which is a step in the right direction for providing a more suitable workplace for all. However, only 28% admit to training all interviewers on legal obligations and objectives. This can leave your candidates vulnerable to unconscious bias and damages the effectiveness of your EDI strategies.

While more businesses are improving their EDI approach, lack of training and time spent evaluating recruitment strategies in line with your EDI goals could be hindering your performance and social impact. In fact, only 51% of businesses that are looking to fill vacancies say they recruit a more diverse workforce than a year ago. EDI is an ever-evolving practice that requires companies to continually adapt recruitment and workforce strategies to provide an equitable and inclusive environment.

How to make your hiring process more inclusive?

When it comes to improving the inclusivity of your hiring processes, there are a couple of elements to consider. Some steps you can take to make your hiring process more inclusive includes:

Establish a comprehensive EDI strategy

A well-established EDI strategy is necessary for ensuring an effective, inclusive work environment. By working with a trusted recruitment partner you’ll be in a better position to apply inclusive hiring practices to your specific business and job role needs, while remaining compliant with industry standards.

Prioritise inclusive job descriptions

To develop an inclusive and diverse workforce, you first need to be able to attract diverse talent. By optimising your job descriptions to ensure inclusive language, you can attract the attention of a diverse candidate pool offering a variety of skills and experiences for your role. By reducing non-inclusive language, you improve the likelihood of attracting candidates from new talent communities. Overly strict job descriptions can also deter many candidates from applying for roles, so collaborating with a trusted advisor with experience developing quality job descriptions for key industries is essential if you’re wanting to improve the diversity and volume of your applications.

Reducing screening bias

Screening bias can directly impact the diversity of your workforce and your business’ ability to offer equitable work opportunities for all. By implementing processes like anonymised CVs and automated screening, you can remove the unconscious bias that can impact hiring decisions and ensure that you’re finding the right talent for your vacancies. These processes are designed to ensure equitable access to job opportunities for each applicant; however, it is only one step in the process for curating and maintaining a diverse and inclusive workplace. 

How recruiters and recruitment agency partners can help

Working with a trusted recruitment partner with expertise in inclusive hiring and delivering EDI strategies can simplify your EDI journey and fast track results based on tried and trusted techniques. At Tate, we provide a high-quality service that puts your people first, ensuring our recommendations are tailored to your unique organisational goals.

Learn more about developing your own inclusive hiring practices by contacting us at marketing@tate.co.uk