10 tips to help you build an inclusive recruitment & onboarding process
Evidence persists of continuing racial inequalities and injustice in UK society and organisations. According to Baroness McGregor-Smith’s review, while one in eight of the working-age population were from Black, Asian or ethnically marginalised backgrounds, only 10% of the workforce were Black, Asian or ethnically marginalised. In addition, only 6% of top management positions are held by Black, Asian or ethnically marginalised people.
Decisive action is needed to tackle this racial inequality, and the demonstrations during the summer of 2020 show the public support for this much-needed change. There has been an increase in action taken by employers since 2020, but there’s still a way to go before we can say equal opportunities exist for all ethnicities within the workforce.
Building inclusion into your processes and policies and getting these policies right is vital when creating inclusive cultures. Good policies offer clear direction and guidelines for everyone in your organisation and help create realistic and consistent standards to advance racial equity.
In 2017 research by the CIPD found that discrimination was a significant issue in career progression. 29% of Black employees reported discrimination had played a part in a lack of career progression to date, almost three times as many as White British employees. Even though significantly more Black, Asian and ethnically marginalised employees said career progression was an essential part of their working life than those from a White British background (25% vs 10%).
There are many actions you can take to build inclusivity within your organisation.
Here are 10 top interventions you can implement at your organisation to help create cultures where all ethnicities can thrive:
#1: Recruit for ‘culture add’, not ‘culture fit’:
Audit job adverts for bias and language.
Ensure job adverts acknowledge the value of experience working with people with racially and culturally diverse identities, as colleagues and as clients.
Ensure there’s ethnic representation on promotion and recruitment panels.
Target recruitment using ethnically marginalised-focused job boards or set up targeted university recruitment programs focusing on ethnically diverse universities.
Share testimonials from employees of all ethnicities on your website and social channels to highlight inclusivity.
“Larger employers should ensure that the selection and interview process is undertaken by more than one person. Wherever possible, this panel should include individuals from different backgrounds to help eliminate any lingering unconscious bias.” -Nii Cleland, CEO & Co-founder of FLAIR
#2: Build inclusivity into your onboarding process:
Encourage all new joiners to create a ‘User Manual of Me’ and share it with their team (here at FLAIR, we use Notion for this purpose).
Encourage all new joiners to use the name their family refers to them by.
Reject the term ‘BAME’ in the workplace.
Set up shared interest networks.
#3: Leading from the top with lived values:
Publish anti-racism targets externally.
Commit to at least one racially diverse supplier on every request for proposal.
Encourage accountability by recognising and celebrating leaders who significantly contribute to advancing anti-racism.
Develop an internal communications strategy to highlight ethnically marginalised role models in leadership positions.
Continuously ensure communication materials appropriately represent members of ethnically marginalised communities as valued managers, staff, clients and community members.
#4: Encouraging employees to add phonetic pronunciation to their email signature:
Research from FLAIR shows that mispronunciation of names is one of the key drivers behind ethnically marginalised women feeling their ethnicity makes it harder to be themselves at work.
Adding phonetic pronunciations to email signatures is a practical way to signal the importance of pronouncing names correctly while reducing the frequency of mispronunciation.
NameCoach and NameDrop are two organisations that provide tools for adding phonetic pronunciation to email signatures.
#5: Introduce a mentoring scheme:
Establish a mentorship scheme to make sure all employees feel they are being developed and also to ensure they understand the process for progression.
Hold mentoring sessions on specific topics, such as negotiating for oneself and career advancement, to empower participants to develop themselves.
Train mentors and mentees so both parties understand their role and benefit from the mentoring relationship.
#6: Practice Role Modelling within the organisation:
Encourage line managers to have open conversations about Race.
Identify role models of various seniority levels and showcase their contributions to the workplace community.
Identify Black colleagues’ progression barriers and make informed recommendations to facilitate change.
Encourage line managers to explore systemic racism and identify practical approaches to remove racism from the organisation.
#7: Implement networking with colleagues:
Develop a colleague network to explore barriers and how to overcome them.
Connect colleagues by creating a buddy system and encourage peer-to-peer learning.
Support colleagues within the internal peer-to-peer networks to have a voice and promote change.
#8: Invest in coaching:
Invest in Black colleagues and facilitate the development of rich personal development plans.
Provide coaching for success and progression by empowering Black colleagues to target areas they may have previously struggled with and address them.
Be curious about the experiences of Black culture, educate other races and drive equality through this feedback.
#9: Create training programs:
Train line managers and other people-oriented roles (HR included) to create equity at work through representation and diversity policies.
Educate line managers to play a pivotal role in changing behaviour and creating balanced workplaces.
Train Black colleagues across various skills, developing soft and technical skills and providing them with experience and opportunities to help secure promotion.
Ensure the leadership is accountable to give all employees clarity around progression, providing them with access to support and training where necessary.
#10: Implement a structured, fair and transparent promotion process:
Run a simple, transparent and structured promotion and reward process.
Publish the process and policies, so they are available to all.
Give clear communication on the timing and frequency of fully integrated and inclusive promotion cycles.
Set ethnicity promotional targets alongside inclusion and equality targets and monitor progress.