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Is your recruitment process neuroinclusive?

Neuroinclusive workplaces do it better! In fact, according to a recent study by Deloitte, teams that include neurodivergent professionals are 30% more productive. And JP Morgan Chase’s “Autism at Work” programme found that “participating employees were 90-140% more productive, with fewer errors”.

So why is that in the UK, the unemployment rate for neurodivergent adults is estimated to be 30-40%? Despite having both the awareness and the offer of support, we’re struggling to help neurodivergent professionals enter or re-enter the workplace.

And it’s not that those individuals don’t want to work.

The National Autistic Society recently revealed that 77% of autistic adults want to be in work. Recognising this need, autism charities across the country have developed a series of employment programs, offering skills and support to empower individuals and help them find meaningful work. Not only does this benefit them personally, it also has a positive impact on the economy. Figures have suggested that “doubling the employment rate for autistic adults would generate potential societal savings of £900 million to £1.5 billion annually” (reviewing figures for state-funded benefits).

So it would be beneficial for individuals, it’d be good to build the workforce, and it would be good for the economy.

So why isn’t it happening?

Employers who are finding it difficult to recruit are finding it a challenge to access this talent pool. Where are the bottlenecks, and what can we do about them? In this blog, we’re going to discuss the challenges to entry, specifically the recruitment process. We also want to demonstrate how neuroinclusive employers can refine their own policies, and improve internal retention.

What processes are we looking to refine?

Before we discuss what neuroinclusive employers need to take into consideration, we need to remind everyone of all the steps in a recruitment process:

• Identifying the need
• Defining the role
• Advertising the role
• Reviewing the candidates
• Conducting telephone interviews
• Conducting in-person interviews
• Selecting candidates
• Offering the role
• Onboarding

For candidates who are neurodivergent, we need to understand how to make the process easier to follow, and easier to pass.

Where the barriers exist

In a recent LinkedIn post, neurodiversity advocate Andy Ryan wrote: “It’s all well and good to create neuro-affirming workplaces, but that’s no use if neurodivergent people can’t even get in the door!”. The post goes on to highlight that while a multi-faceted application process (one that asks candidates to submit a CV, covering letter, and introductory video) is a great way for businesses to filter out unsuitable candidates, it creates a barrier for those who are neurodivergent. The process challenges those with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia by creating a high-pressure situation that can create anxiety and trigger personal difficulties associated with their neurodiversity such as organisation, spelling, and completing long writing tasks.

If a candidate does make it through the application process, the next barrier is the interview itself. The focus is often on soft skills more than competence – candidates who have the technical skills and working knowledge may struggle with eye contact, social interaction or team working, leading them to perform poorly in interview. Vague, open-ended questions such as “why should we hire you?” and “can you describe 3 strengths?” can be really hard to answer, again causing the talent to get lost in the process.

The barriers in recruitment can vary between individuals, the type of neurodiversity, and the process itself. So how can we make reasonable adjustments to improve their chance of success?

Steps to make your recruitment process more neuroinclusive

Improving your recruitment process to become more neuroinclusive will start with understanding the barriers, and developing a compassionate approach to all candidates. The processes themselves could often benefit from being shorter, more straightforward, and therefore, more inclusive.

We really like the high level outline that the Greater Manchester Good Work Charter provides. It provides a really strong set of guidelines of what you as an employer should be aiming to achieve. Here they are, what do you think?

They’re great guidelines but they’re outcomes. We can help to you refine those guidelines for your organisation, to identify exactly and concretely: what you could do, your processes, your practices, in your context, in your industry!

• Selection processes that are designed to eliminate unconscious bias
• Inclusive and fair recruitment practices with equality and diversity issues integral to all – this may include sending questions to candidates ahead of time and adapting the interview environment
• Recruitment processes which are anonymised, including the ‘disability confident scheme’ (or equivalent) and consistent with the ‘ban the box’ campaign (removing criminal record tick boxes from application forms, or equivalent)
• Job adverts which clearly specify the forms of flexible working that could be compatible with the role and the number of hours to be worked (see Flexible Work). Consideration should be given to a wide range of forms of flexibility that could potentially be made available to job applicants
• Recruiting managers who have completed equality and diversity training
• Recruitment methods that are appropriate to the role and the candidate – e.g. with adaptable methods of communication, interviews and other activities
• Recruitment processes, including the advertising of roles, which actively encourage the recruitment of a diverse workforce. This might offer candidates a choice of submission types or formats, as an example
• Clear and timely feedback offered in a range of formats to each individual candidate to discuss their performance and areas of improvement, if necessary
• Encourage feedback from candidates on the process itself for continual development

Taking such steps can improve accessibility, save time, and improve the quality of candidates in the selection pool – simply by being easier to understand and shorter in length.

Remove the barriers within your organisation, and create a truly neuroinclusive process.

Unsure where to start? Contact me for a brief consultation, and together we can create a plan to improve inclusion and diversity within your business.

Preventing Discrimination and Harassment – New Legislation effective from October 2024

Recently someone asked me about the workshops that I run and I mentioned the one on Preventing Discrimination, bullying and harassment.

I have many years of experience in HR and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within large global organisations. And now I support smaller ones that don’t have a team of people to handle those topics.

So if that’s your kind of organisation, read on!

Did you know that new legislation effective from October 2024 mandates a duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment of their employees at work?

This is an amendment to the Equality Act 2010. That law protects people against discrimination at work, i.e. treating someone less favourably than someone else, because of factors relating to age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

That might include:

• excluding someone from opportunities or benefits
• making it harder for someone to do their job
• causing someone emotional distress
• causing someone financial loss

It can still be discrimination even if the less favourable treatment was not intended.

The tone of this new legislation is a little different.

It’s not just about making sure you’ve got a policy in place (although I can help with that) or running some training for your managers (I can help with that too). It’s about taking action to PREVENT sexual harassment. Having those things in place is a good start but it won’t be enough. You’ll need to be able to demonstrate that your organisation takes active actions to prevent harassment from occurring.

This measure is also wide-ranging in that it also applies to contractors, self-employed people and job applicants, not just your own employees.

Examples of sexual harassment:

• Lewd or abusive comments, comments of a sexual nature such as regarding an individual’s appearance or body
• Unwelcome touching of a sexual nature
• Displaying sexually suggestive or sexually offensive writing or material
• Asking questions of a sexual nature
• Sexual propositions or advances

So here’s a checklist. Do you have it in place…?

• Policies against bullying and Harassment that define unacceptable behaviour, and that define how employees can report issues
• Training for staff and leaders?
• Leaders with a good understanding of the issue who can create the climate to avoid harassment and encourage employees to speak up?
• An assessment of the risk within your own organisation?
• Reporting mechanisms for individuals to report issues, together with a process to ensure follow-up?

Clearly, this needs to be set up to be appropriate for your organisation. Are you the kind of organisation that organises after-work drinks? Are you the kind of organisation that interacts with customers? Do you have playful banter within your workplace; do you know when that steps over the line into the unacceptable according to the law? Do your employees work shifts? There are many variables that make your organisation unique.

You’ll want to ensure that you’re creating processes and systems that work for your specific organisation. So you’ll want to work with someone who is focused on what makes a business successful, not just telling you what the new law says.

And it’s worth noting that implementing the elements of this checklist will be a good start, but it will take more time to have an impact.

So if you need help in implementing any of these topics in a way that fits your organisation, don’t delay; please contact me.

Gender Pay Gap Reporting

It’s the time of year when you’re likely to see a lot of information about companies’ gender pay gaps.

Why do it?

Gender Pay Gap reporting shows differences in pay between men and women when reviewed at an organisational level. The benefit of requiring companies to report their gender pay gap is that they must analyse and publish every year, in a standard way. It brings the data into the light.

This encourages a company to consider why the gaps might exist and what they could do to address the issue. It’s about pay, but also about other factors, such as occupational segregation, or the fact that in the main it’s women who look after children or other dependants, working part-time or taking career breaks to do so. It’s a measure of the situation for the whole company. It’s not the same as Equal Pay, which ensures companies compare like-for-like roles and ensure equal pay for equal value.

Across the UK, the gender pay gap has been declining slowly over time; over the last decade it has fallen by approximately a quarter among full-time employees, and in April 2023 it stood at 7.7%.

However, even with this scrutiny and focus, not everything is consistently moving in the right direction. The gender pay gap increased by a small amount between 2022 and 2023, although the gap is still narrower than in 2019.

The gender pay gap reduces women’s lifetime earnings and also affects their pensions – this is one of the significant causes of poverty in later life for women.

Interestingly, the EU is planning to copy the UK’s process. A new EU directive was issued in 2023 to introduce the UK’s style of gender pay gap reporting across all countries in the EU from 2027, because the UK’s process was felt to be the most robust mechanism to provide data that could be compared between companies and industries.

The UK rules

Any employer with 250 or more employees must publish their gender pay gap data each year, with a deadline of 30^th March for most public authority employers, and 4^th April for all other organisations. The data (and the explanation) is then publicly available on the UK government website, so companies always want to ensure their data looks good, or if not, that they have an explanation that sounds plausible!

The data that must be reported is

1. The difference between the mean hourly rate of pay of male and female relevant employees;
2. The difference between the median hourly rate of pay of male and female relevant employees;
3. The difference between the mean bonus pay of male and female relevant employees;
4. The difference between the median bonus pay of male and female relevant employees;
5. The proportion of male and female relevant employees who were paid bonus pay during the bonus pay period; and
6. The proportions of male and female relevant employees in four pay bands.

So, it is fairly onerous to calculate.

Most companies then also provide a verbal explanation of their data, including trends or notable elements within their organisation, that help an external party to make sense of the data.

The headline gap – the first figure – is the one that gets talked about the most. This indicates the extent to which women earn, on average, less per hour than their male counterparts. On occasion, a company may report a negative gap. This would show the extent to which women earn, on average, more per hour than their male counterparts. This may happen, for example, if an organisation employs a high proportion of men in low-paid, part-time work, and/or their senior and higher-paid employees are women.

There is no obligation to publish a narrative explanation of the figures, but it makes sense to do so. It’s an important data point that a company’s own employees want to understand, but potential employees, customers, suppliers etc can all view it too. For example, if a company’s gender pay gap is 20% but their competitor’s is 10%, potential employees might be concerned. So, it’s good to explain! In addition to the explanation, it may also be useful to include an action plan to show what is being planned to iron out the gap.

And since an organisation’s own managers and employees may also be interested in the result, it pays to have a communication plan ahead of publication, considering how they want to share the information and the narrative with them.

What to be thinking about if you have overseas entities

The process to implement the EU Directive will require national legislation in each country to be introduced by June 2026. So there’s plenty of time.

However, if your company has operations in other countries across Europe, it will help to be prepared early – there are considerations such as the different legislations in each country, your mechanisms to gather the data, considering reporting obligations and data protection legislation etc. You might also want to conduct an internal gender pay audit now to identify any gaps and take steps to close it before the first report has to be made.

So, if your company is getting close to 250 employees, or if you have overseas operations, it pays to be prepared.

And if you have 250 employees already, you’re probably already preparing your submission for this year’s reporting deadline!

But if you’re not, please grab some time in my calendar or give me a call!

When I introduce myself to people I say I’m a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion specialist and I support growing organisations. I’m passionate about fairness and equity (and have been for years! See the About Us page on my website if you don’t believe me… ) but I’m serious
about business.

I’ve been a senior HR and DEI person in large global organisations for many years too. In those roles I really enjoyed understanding the challenges for the business and considering how my HR and DEI toolkit could help to solve the problem.

In my role as a DEI specialist, supporting organisations from the outside, I help them by applying the combination of the two – my passion for fairness, and ensuring everyone that everyone is able to contribute and thrive – and my understanding of business: the processes, the metrics, the pressures…

So in an organisation that was struggling to grow because they couldn’t hire enough employees, we looked at how they could diversify their workforce. Find new sources of talent!

I recommended them to look at organisations who support women who’ve taken a career break back into the workplace, and who support ex-forces personnel into civilian roles. We looked at outreach sites and early careers, setting up an internship through 10,000 Black Interns.

And then we looked at the hiring process. How did they advertise themselves? We looked at their “employer brand” – how they were showing their company values to the world (and therefore to their potential new employees).

How did they describe their roles? We used an online tool to ensure that the language in their job adverts wasn’t inadvertently turning some candidates away. We looked at where they were advertising, to make sure their roles were being seen by a wider audience than in the past.

And then we looked at their internal processes for recruitment – interview structures and scoring, who were the interviewers etc. to make sure there weren’t any opportunities for unconscious bias to creep in. Yes, we all have those unconscious biases, including me! So
the secret is to engineer the processes to minimise the impact of those biases that we’re not even aware of, on the decisions being made.

We created a suite of standard questions to enable their interviewers to be consistent across interviews, ensuring the questions were designed for candidates to demonstrate the attributes required for the job – the skills, the competencies. And a standard scoring method.

Initial CVs were shared with the hiring managers without names. According to Harvard Business Review, bias in hiring has been extensively documented. In one study, “Jamal” needed eight more years of experience than “Greg” to be seen as equally qualified. Other studies have found that women, LGBT+ candidates, people with disabilities, women in headscarves, and older people are less likely to be hired than their peers. So by taking away the names, we at least reduced the likelihood of this issue.

We looked at who would be the interviewers, making sure that the candidates would actually see a cross-section of the real people they’d be working with, aiming to ensure that for the candidates, one or more of the people they met during the recruitment process would look
like them.

We insisted that managers had more diverse pools of candidates to consider. Research shows that the odds of hiring a woman are 79 times as great if at least two women are in the finalist pool.

Result? A 30% increase in applications. One happy company. And some great new recruits.

About Us.

Inclusion means making sure that everyone – no matter who they are, or how they’re different – feels like they belong and are treated fairly.

In the workplace, an inclusive environment is one where every employee feels valued and respected.

It starts with policy. Making sure that everyone is clear on the organization’s values. But it’s then about how you take actions that create a culture of fairness and equal opportunities, ensuring everyone can contribute their best.

In an inclusive workplace, there’s a sense of belonging, collaboration thrives, and individuals are empowered to reach their full potential, using their skills and talents. Companies championing inclusion recognize that diverse teams drive innovation and success. It’s not just about ticking boxes; it’s about cultivating a supportive atmosphere where individuals, regardless of their background, can thrive and succeed collectively.

Inclusion is like a big welcome sign that says, “You’re important, and we want you here.”

It means listening to and respecting each other. Inclusion means not leaving anyone out.

A key driver of business success is when employees can thrive, develop, and contribute to the full extent of their ability: allowing them to innovate, to collaborate, to find solutions.

It helps us all to learn from each other, making our teams stronger and happier by celebrating what makes each person unique.
So employees are happy, and the business is happy too.

 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a critical factor in an organisation’s ability to attract talent (especially young talent). Job seekers – your potential new employees – are considering organisational culture more than ever before. 83% of Gen Z candidates state that a company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is important when they are choosing an employer, even before they apply, according to research by McKinsey.

DEI is also on the radar of investors as part of their Sustainability or ESG focus. So, whether your business is on the growth curve and looking for funding, or is a mature organisation with existing stakeholders, or even listed on the stock exchange, you’re probably recognising that investor focus for your own organisation.
However, often companies launch DEI initiatives piecemeal. As a result, the positive sentiment is recognised by all, but there isn’t real progress. There are nice slogans for the external world but this is accompanied by internal “initiative-itis” with the organisation bouncing from one DEI initiative to the next like a pinball machine, and not making real progress.

Some companies do succeed in really moving the needle on DEI, so that it’s not just a slogan used externally. There’s a lot of research out there that shows it helps those companies to drive growth for the organisation through improved reputation, access to a wider talent pool, and more innovation and better decision-making internally, as well as higher employee engagement and lower employee turnover.

Companies that have succeeded in their DEI approach have established a clear baseline: Where has the company come from and where is it now, where is it going, and how will it know that its DEI strategy has succeeded?

According to research by McKinsey, the companies that succeed have followed some very clear steps.
• The leaders and HR teams in those organisations set a bold but achievable DEI aspiration linked to the company’s overall mission and strategy.
• They use quantitative and qualitative analytics to establish a baseline and determine what DEI interventions are the priority.
• They develop a plan for which DEI-related initiatives will be rolled out and when, based on the company’s overarching strategic objectives.
• And they establish routines for monitoring progress over time.

However, not all organisations have the internal resources to be able to drive those activities: insufficient people, time, or focus.
That’s where I come in. If you’d like to follow those four steps and would like some help, please contact me.