This week saw Homes England pledge to make the housing industry more inclusive as it published its first annual report into equality and diversity. The government’s housing agency said it will work with partners to better cater for “the diverse communities it serves” over the next four years to ensure a more inclusive, equal, and diverse workplace.
It has set five objectives in the report to achieve that aim, including improving its recruitment and staff experiences, focusing on delivering homes that improve housing inequalities and demanding more from suppliers on diversity.
What needs to happen to achieve these improvements from a recruitment perspective?
Accessibility is the practice of making your websites usable by as many people as possible. We traditionally think of this as being about people with disabilities but making websites accessible also benefits other groups such as those who are neurodiverse and prefer a different experience.
Inclusivity is different altogether and considers people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalised such as those where English is a second language.
During the recruitment process, it is important to ensure an accessible experience for all. One option to achieve this is the inclusion of an accessibility toolbar for candidates to be able to create their own adjusted experience.
This can include the facility to change the website background and font colours; increase or decrease the text size; change the language, the font; or even read the content aloud to the reader. This functionality gives candidates the facility to create their own perfect experience immediately - right from visiting the website to onboarding as a new employee.
Building a diverse workforce will bring a wider variety of perspectives and creativity, enabling companies to be stronger and perform better as a result. The diversity of backgrounds, thoughts and ideas will provide a strong platform on which organisations can grow.
Creating a diverse workforce will firstly need opportunities to be visible to potential candidates across all areas. Change where you advertise your jobs and look for opportunities to source candidates using different channels. Job boards such as DiversityJobs.com and Diversifying specifically support organisations looking to showcase their jobs to a diverse community. Write inclusive job adverts, removing biased language and make changes to speak to a broader range of candidates.
Images and videos in job adverts can be used to portray the company as a diverse workforce and encourage applications from those who otherwise might not apply. An example of this is including a ‘day in the life of’ video from a female employee in a role that is usually male-dominated (or vice versa!).
Use the careers section of your website to share your approach to diversity and inclusion in the organisation and what you are doing as a company to create a more inclusive employee experience.
In the recruitment process, unconscious bias can happen when you form an opinion about a candidate based solely on first impressions. It can also occur when a judgement is formed about a candidate based on their name, picture or even where they live. Anonymous applications can help to remove unconscious bias by automatically removing all personal and identifiable information during the assessment and selection process and revealing this only at a later stage in the recruitment journey, such as at interview stage.
Creating a culture of inclusion and belonging is a shared responsibility across the business but this can start as soon as a candidate is offered a position within the organisation. Providing a nurturing onboarding experience is a great start but consider extending this to include a portal for the new joiner to access information about the company. For instance a message from their line manager, information about their induction and other engaging images and videos to make new employees feel part of the team, even before their first day.
Having access to report easily on diversity in recruitment is imperative for any organisation looking to improve Equality and Diversity. All good applicant tracking systems should provide reporting as standard on Diversity & Inclusion looking at both application and hire rates. As a minimum, this should include measures such as protected characteristics i.e. age, gender or gender identity, disability and sexual orientation although organisations must be clear and transparent about why they need to collect this information and how it will be used.
With such focus placed on recruitment within Housing and the strong plans set out by Homes England, the introduction of changes to equality and diversity within organisations is essential to achieve the goals outlined.