Inclusive employment
Graduate Engineering Engagement Programme (GEEP) - Our award-winning programme to increase the transition of engineering graduates from diverse backgrounds into engineering employment.
Inclusive recruitment toolkit
A practical toolkit to support more inclusive recruitment practices with a focus on culture, foundations, attraction and talent sourcing, selection and assessment, and retention.
We collaborated with engineering employers to gather top tips and best practice across engineering to help improve the diversity of people who are being recruited into engineering.
“Any organisation that believes creating a more inclusive and diverse workforce is a business imperative will recognise recruitment as a key enabler. Our aim was to create a tool kit that is particularly relevant to the engineering sector and that is as useful to SMEs as the larger organisations. Whether you wish to overhaul your complete process or are looking for ideas about tackling specific challenges we hope you will find this of practical help.”
Paul Oatham, Global Talent Acquisition Manager, Bechtel
Top tips
Culture
- Develop a business case for inclusive recruitment.
- Develop and communicate an inclusive culture.
- Develop leadership awareness of how D&I impacts leadership style, behaviour and responsibilities.
- Provide training on conscious and/or unconscious bias or other training for interviewers and selectors.
- Implement an induction/on boarding process that supports the inclusion of all new starters.
Foundations
- Make the case to applicants to provide their diversity data.
- Gather diversity data from applicants.
- Analyse applicant data at the point of application, shortlisting and appointment.
- Use applicant data to assess the impact of inclusive recruitment practice on workforce diversity.
- Analyse the experience of candidates/applicants.
- Use recruitment diversity data to inform inclusive recruitment strategy.
- Use language, tone and content that specifies jobs in an inclusive manner (ie in a way that does not exclude applicants unnecessarily).
- Proactively encourage applicants to request reasonable adjustments, and plan to respond to requests.
Attraction and talent sourcing
- Use applicant data to assess the impact of inclusive recruitment practice on workforce diversity.
- Analyse the experience of candidates/applicants.
- Ensure external recruitment partners actively support D&I aims.
- Communicate inclusive recruitment commitment to applicants.
- Use wording and imagery that communicates a diverse and inclusive culture.
- Analyse applicant data at the point of application, shortlisting and appointment.
- Review job design and description to ensure relevance of essential and desirable criteria.
- Openly advertise all internal opportunities.
- Review entry requirements to ensure relevance of essential and desirable criteria.
- Implement inclusive attraction strategies.
- Find opportunities to take positive action to level the playing field between different groups.
Selection and assessment
- Ensure those involved in recruitment and selection demonstrate inclusive practice in drafting role descriptions, sifting, screening, short listing and interviewing.
- Reduce bias in selection (for example by removing personal and educational identifiers).
- Draw assessors and interviewers from diverse backgrounds.
- Capture an objective audit trail of assessment process and how selection decisions are made
- Choose and calibrate tests and exercises that do not have adverse impact on the ability of under-represented groups to perform.
Retention
- Implement an induction/on boarding process that supports the inclusion of all new starters.
- Analyse the experience of candidates/applicants.