Tag Archive for: recruitment

How to Embrace Neurodiversity at Work and Maximise Your Talent Pool

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There is a vast pool of neurodiverse candidates seeking employment in the UK. However, many organisations are missing out on talented individuals due to stigma, or by not maximising opportunities with their recruitment strategy.

There is a long history of negative stigma around employing neurodiverse people, as many employers fear that those with neurological differences, such as Autism and Dyslexia, would not be able to do the job as well as other neurotypical employees.

This stigma can leave neurodivergent colleagues feeling misjudged. According to recent research, 6 out of 10 neurodivergent individuals have experienced stigma or felt misunderstood during their careers. This could be due to feeling unsupported at work, or feeling judged by their diagnosis and any accommodations they have in the workplace.

Thankfully, this is changing. Today, many organisations now understand that this isn’t the case and there has been an uptake of training in the topic and increasing engagement to learn more. However, we’ve still got a long way to go to reduce the impact of these negative misconceptions.

Why Is It Important to Attract Neurodiverse Talent?

By identifying ideal roles for neurodivergent staff and limiting potential barriers, organisations can create a neurodiverse workplace with increased creativity, new ideas and fresh perspectives.

As well as their individual strengths, neurodivergent employees often possess highly desirable skills and attributes, such as:

  • reliability, conscientiousness and persistence
  • high levels of concentration
  • detailed factual knowledge and an excellent memory
  • attention to detail and the ability to identify errors
  • strong technical abilities in their specialist areas
  • creativity, especially in visual or spatial or process activities
  • high levels of intellect
  • the ability to look at the bigger picture and think laterally

Top Tips for Attracting Neurodiverse Talent

When considering your recruitment strategy for attracting a more neurodiverse workforce we suggest you implement these top tips:

Promote Disclosure

Make sure you offer candidates the opportunity to disclose any conditions that they may have, throughout the recruitment process. This may be by using open questions in your application forms for example. Ensure any disclosures are met with a supportive response, with a discussion around adjustments and support they would need in order to give the best account of themselves.

Make an Informed Recruitment Decision

By offering multiple opportunities for candidates to demonstrate their competence and being flexible in the ways you gather information you can make an informed recruitment decision.

Be Objective 

Ensure you have a panel of interviewers or have multiple stages in the recruitment process to reduce any unconscious bias and ensure decision making is fair and objective. 

Consider Language

Questions asked during interviews may be interpreted differently between candidates. Ensure that your questions are clear and re-phrase them if there is any confusion to ensure a level playing field. You may need to adapt your communication style for candidates, as a manager would in any team environment. 

Increase Knowledge

Training is helpful for all staff, but particularly for those involved in recruitment, neurodiversity awareness training we can highlight the strengths that come from different thinking, and reduce the impact of stigma in the workplace. It also helps those with line management responsibilities to understand how to better support neurodivergent staff, and what support they can offer to make the workplace more inclusive for all.

If you would like to discuss neurodiversity awareness training for your organisation feel free to contact Helen Couchman in our team on 07799 901669. 

Are You Ready for National Inclusion Week 2022?

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This year National Inclusion Week 2022 is from 26 September to 2 October. What are you doing to champion inclusion and diversity in your workplace?

National Inclusion Week (NIW) is a week dedicated to celebrating inclusion and taking action to create inclusive workplaces and to celebrate, share and inspire inclusion practices.

Founded by Inclusive Employers and celebrated annually, National Inclusion Week is now in its tenth year and this year’s theme is ‘Time to Act: The Power of Now’.

Building on from last year’s them #UnitedForInclusion, which connected 60 million employers and employees to celebrate diversity and inclusion, this year’s theme is about maintaining momentum and moving that unity into action.

Why Is It Important?

Annual events such as NIW are timely reminders that creating an inclusive workplace that values diversity remains a continuing priority for all organisations. There are financial benefits too. Research by Deloitte found that diverse companies enjoy 2.3 times higher cash flow per employee.

People want to work for employers with good employment practice, with open and inclusive workplace cultures where everyone feels valued, respects colleagues, and where their contribution is recognised.

To maintain a competitive edge, businesses need everyone who works for them to give their best contribution and that means ensuring recruitment and retention practices prioritise inclusion and diversity so employers have the skills and talent they need.

What Positive Actions Can You Take?

Celebrating an annual event is a great start and can provide a real focus for your activities, but it’s important to turn that commitment and celebration into ongoing action.

Conduct an Audit

Do you know how diverse your organisation is? Conducting an audit of your employees’ demographics will identify underrepresented groups of people and highlight potential unconscious bias within your business practices.

Review Your Recruitment Process

If your audit has highlighted underrepresented groups, review your hiring processes to remove any opportunities for bias in selection.

Create an Employee Diversity and Inclusion Forum

Engaging with your employees to both inform and direct actions for change can be really powerful. Use this group to sense check actions for change to ensure they are tangible and meaningful for your company. Employees will feel involved in subjects that are important for them and it reinforces a commitment for ongoing dialogue with your workforce.

Organise Inclusion Training

Inclusion is not a quantifiable achievement, but an ongoing commitment to equality. It underpins all employment practices so that means it’s important to educate all employees so they understand what it means for them and their own responsibilities to achieving it.

Document Your Approach

Building on any training, it is important to document your approach via policy documents, such as a code of conduct and ensure these can be accessed by employees easily.

Volunteering or Fundraising for an Inclusion Charity

Volunteering is a powerful way to give back to your community. It allows organisations to continue supporting people most at risk, and pioneer inclusivity within society.

Volunteering and fundraising often encourages open, productive conversation surrounding a sensitive topic in a relaxed environment, with employees united under a common goal. To encourage your employees to take part, consider offering paid volunteering days.

Create an Inclusive Annual Calendar

Your workplace may celebrate Christmas and Easter, but what about Diwali and Hanukkah? Do you recognise International Women’s Day, LGBTQ+ Pride Month and Black History Month? Each of these celebrations is equally important and should be recognised in your business.

By creating an inclusive calendar, this will allow your team to easily identify any upcoming dates that you should acknowledge both publicly and within your company, to ensure all employees feel a sense of belonging.

Lead by Example

A business is only as progressive as its senior figures, so if you do not pioneer inclusivity, neither will your company. Along with your policies, it is critical that your senior managers reflect the commitment you’ve made to valuing diversity and inclusion in how they engage with and manage their people.

Consider Your working Environment

It is important to recognise that your staff each require different environments to succeed, so while some thrive in a busy open office, others would benefit from a calmer room where they can focus. Consider what opportunities you have for creating a workplace that is an inclusive place for all employees to belong.

Narrow Quay HR have a wealth of experience to support in this areas – from running training on unconscious bias to helping with your policy documents.

For specialist HR support with any of these issues, please contact Sue Meehan Boyes in our team on 07384 468797.

Job Adverts – Why Does Wording Matter?

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Could certain words in your job adverts be preventing people from applying for your vacancy? We consider what to look out for when writing a job advert to ensure you’re attracting a wide and diverse range of applicants.

Considering Word Choice

The Phoenix Group, which owns Standard Life, is reported to have dropped the word ‘energetic’ from its job adverts because it was concerned that it may put off older people from applying. It is also apparently planning to replace the word ‘innovative’ and replace it with ‘contributing new ideas’ or ‘problem solving’.

Why Has It Made That Decision?

There are two reasons, both related to the pandemic. The first is that there are a substantial number of employers seeking to fill vacancies, the number of job vacancies is currently at a record high as employers are trying to keep up with increased demand as the economy re-opens.

The other reason is explained by Phoenix Group chief executive Andy Briggs, who is the Government’s ‘business champion’ for older workers. He warned in February 2021 that older workers had been disproportionately hit by the pandemic. It was felt that words such as ‘innovative’ may put off older applicants.

What About The Effect on the Gender of Applicants?

A survey conducted in 2019 on behalf of LinkedIn found that 52% of UK women would be put off applying for a job if the workplace was described as ‘aggressive’, compared to just 32% of men. 24% of women surveyed also said they would be put off by the term ‘born leader’ being used in a job advert, compared to just 17% of men.

Despite this, the survey, which polled 1,008 employees and more than 250 hiring managers in the UK, found that two in five (40%) employers never considered gender when writing job adverts, and 44% do not track or measure the gender of those registering interest in job postings.

What Do Your Job Adverts Say?

Reflect very carefully on the wording in your job adverts. You need to be deliberate with the words you are using in job adverts, interviews, social media and in the workplace itself if you wish to attract, build and retain a diverse team.

You could consider testing the job advert wording you propose to use on a range of current staff as a focus group. Also consider whether you are just using your job advert wording because you have used it previously – is that a good enough reason?  

It’s also worth getting help from outside your organisation. We have recently run some very well received training courses on recruitment which cover, amongst other things, unconscious bias. Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss that training with us, or how else we can assist you.  

If you would like to discuss any way that we can help you with any questions you have about recruitment, please contact Sarah Martin in our team on 07799 136091.

GP Recruitment and Retention – Top Tips For Getting It Right For Your Healthcare Practice

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Many healthcare practices are facing challenges around recruitment and retention. In particular, we are seeing an increase in the number of experienced GPs retiring early leading to an increase in recruiting less experienced salaried GPs.

Getting the recruitment process right is crucial and will undoubtedly be an important part of any Practice Manager’s role. However, how best to undertake this exercise still remains something of a challenge. In this article, we provide our five top tips for getting it right:

1. Define the Role

Having a clearly defined role is an essential starting point for a good recruitment process. The first step is to analyse the job. Consider what tasks the jobholder will be required to do and think about how the role fits into the overall healthcare practice. Once you have done this, you can draft the job description and person specification documents. Try to remain focussed on the requirements of the role and the specific competencies you want from the individual. And remember your job description and person specification should be realistic and not a wish list.

2. Attracting Applications

Review the techniques you use to you attract applicants and think creatively to maximise your chances of getting the best applicants. The local Facebook groups for example could be a good source of advertising for some roles. Consider whether an employee referral scheme which incentives staff to refer candidates might be worth considering. Research has shown that the wording of some adverts appeals more to men than women. Perhaps think about testing differently worded adverts to see what gets the best response.

3. Managing Applications

We all have unconscious biases which we are unaware of and may not want to admit to. These can reveal themselves in any number of ways, from unconsciously favouring someone who went to the same University as you or being put off  someone because of their accent. The recruitment process can be a fertile ground for these biases to come to the fore and can mean your healthcare practice misses out on the best candidates. Worse still, it could expose your practice to risks of discrimination claims.

Think carefully about how your practice deals with applications. There are a number of easy changes that a practice can make. For example, try, as far as possible, to remove any information that might illicit a bias, such as name, address and age and have more than one person undertake the shortlisting and potentially use a third as a final check.

4. Effective Interviews

Most recruitment processes involve an interview. Structured interviews where the interviewer or panel agree the questions in advance will help to keep the questions on track and avoid the risk of going off track into areas that could cause difficulties, such as discussions around health or childcare. Try to reframe the interview as a fact finding process rather than a decision making one to take some of the pressure off and think about the time of day you hold interviews – research has shown that those interviewed later in the day after a string of earlier interviews are at a disadvantage.

5. The Offer Letter and Contract

Think carefully about the wording of your offer letters. Take specialist legal advice to ensure that your offer letter and any contractual documentation are up to scratch and fit for purpose. These documents are designed to set out clearly the basis of the employment relationship but also to protect the practice, so it is important that you have well drafted and user friendly documents in place that are regularly reviewed.

Our Narrow Quay HR consultants work together with you and your practice, providing you with a flexible range of HR advice and solutions to assist your day to day business which includes recruitment and retention challenges.

For more information, please contact Sarah Martin on 07799 136 091 or Caitlin Anniss on 07909 683 938 at Narrow Quay HR.