- The benefits of providing an accessible recruitment process
- What accessibility barriers are applicants facing online?
Steps to make your recruitment process accessible:
1. Use an Accessibility Toolbar on your candidate facing website
2. Sign up to be accredited as Disability Confident and Athena Swan
4. Remove bias from recruitment with anonymous shortlisting
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Thursday 18th May 2023 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. You can find out more about Global Accessibility Awareness Day here. To ensure your recruitment process is accessible for all, continue our blog below.
In 2022 we wrote about inclusivity in the recruitment process and what you can do to ensure applicants stay engaged and aren’t switched off by a difficult to use careers website and application experience.
Since our last visit to the topic of accessibility, our Talent Intelligence team have produced their latest Market Trends Report which includes illuminating insights around accessibility!
Just assuming your recruitment process is inclusive is not enough – there’s an array of steps you can take to make improvements which we'll cover below. Through our ATS, many of our own clients have implemented processes and technology that supports an inclusive recruitment process. With the serious shortage of candidates, can you afford to not think about more ways to attract and engage with candidates?
Read on for our tips and advice!
The benefits of providing an accessible recruitment process
Just by changing the perceptions and the way disability is considered in your organisation can drive positive changes to the way you attract, recruit, develop and retain disabled employees. Web accessibility and inclusion is also often seen as complex and expensive - but this is simply a misconception According to our partner, Recite Me.
According to Recite Me, the average cost of making an accommodation for a disabled employee is relatively low. Data also shows that employees with disabilities take less time off and tend to stay with organisations longer. Other benefits include:
- Drawing from the widest pool of talent available.
- Discovering new skill sets - neurodiverse employees are often creative thinkers and strategic problem solvers.
- Improving innovation thanks to the wider perspective gained by a more diverse team.
- Demonstrating fairness in the workplace.
- Improving staff morale.
- Showing customers and other businesses that you are committed to equality in the workplace.
- Increasing revenue and profits – there is growing evidence of links between improved inclusion and financial success.
What accessibility barriers are applicants facing online?
Barriers can exist in a multitude of ways, including those faced at the beginning of the recruitment process before an application is even made. Candidates arriving on your career’s website can often be experiencing disabilities such as:
- Visual impairments
- Deafblindness
- Colour blindness
- Dyslexia
- Hyperlexia
- Dyspraxia
- ADHD
- Epilepsy
- Language barriers
So from a digital point of view, what can you do to ensure you’re making the recruitment process as inclusive as possible?
Use an Accessibility Toolbar on your candidate facing website
As a provider of applicant tracking systems, we work closely with specialist assistive technology company, Recite Me to support our clients like Chester Zoo, NHS Scotland, Electricity North West and Citizens Advice to deliver fully accessible experiences for candidates.
Recite Me’s Accessibility Toolbar ensures organisations are doing everything they can to deliver an accessible and inclusive candidate experience for everyone. Removing these barriers can drive real change to build an open and inclusive company, the same ambition our client Chester Zoo has – it’s also one of the reasons they chose to manage their recruitment through our applicant tracking system.
An accessibility toolbar on each page of your career’s website provides candidates with a variety of features such as a screen reader; reading support for those with dyslexia; the ability to change the style of website pages; and change the language of the content.
“What makes a website truly inclusive is giving people as many choices as possible so they can modify their own view and consume the information in a way that is personalised and tailored to their individual needs.
Ross Linnett, Recite Me Founder & CEO
Disability Confident and Athena Swan
A growing influence on candidates’ choices of employer is their policies and practices with regards to equality, diversity & inclusion.
In our latest Market Trends report, we found increasing numbers of our own clients are beginning to see the value of participating (and advertising the fact) that their organisation is a part of schemes and accreditations such as the Disability Confident or Athena Swan.
Across the country, there are 20,000 employers already signed up to the Disability Confident scheme – that’s over 11 million employees – according to the Department for Work and Pensions – not being a part of it could make you stand out for all the wrong reasons.
Offer flexible working
Our reports also found that candidates who prioritise homeworking above all else was 10%. A low figure you may think, however, 80% of those surveyed said home or flexible working was important to them when choosing their next job.
There are many reasons candidates might only apply to a home-based job. For example, according to the ONS, 93% of male workers and 75% of female workers have some degree of dependent care to factor into their working life. There’s potentially a huge pool of candidates that will simply be unable to apply for a job that is office-based – can you afford to miss out on this talent by demanding that jobs be full-time office-based roles?
A statistic from LinkedIn said remote jobs received 50% of all applications in February 2022. This is despite representing less than 20% of all jobs posted.
To add to that, a recruiter in front line healthcare and customer facing services recently found full time adverts received zero applicants, but almost immediately received one hundred applicants when it was re-advertised as part-time / flexible hours.
Anonymous recruiting
Is your shortlisting process fair to all? Unconscious bias can be problematic in any organisation and seep in without you realising.
Think about implementing an anonymous recruitment process whereby key information about candidates can be held back, such as education, until a later stage to ensure every applicant is treated equally and fairly at initial shortlisting stage.
These are just some of the areas to consider to make your recruitment process inclusive and accessible for all.