Matchtech's EDI best practice for your hiring community.
Introduction.
Recruitment is difficult, so having a positive and active approach to EDI (Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) can be the difference between securing or losing the best candidates. By opening up your business to a more inclusive and diverse workforce, you will be able to utilise the skills of candidates that would have otherwise been unavailable to you. We understand that there is a lack of diversity and inclusion within the STEM industry and this is a subject that we feel it is important to discuss.
Throughout this presentation, we aim to address some of the areas that generally require greater focus, based on our experience, in order to work towards becoming a more inclusive employer. We have included some great tips for the hiring community on how to further your candidate reach and discussed some tools to assist you in becoming a more inclusive employer.
What Matchtech are doing.
Our vision is "To be the STEM talent partner of choice", meaning we should take responsibility and drive discussions around EDI best practice within the industry, in order to see any real change.
Our purpose is to "To provide the skills needed to build a better future - one job at a time" and we feel that a better future, means a more inclusive one.
Through our constant monitoring of our specialist industry, we can see that there is a STEM skill shortage and a lack of diversity and we believe that these two problems should cancel each other out.
We have appointed our own Head of EDI, Annabel Honour, in order to ensure that diversity & inclusion continues to be a huge focal point of our business. We find that having Annabel in this position ensures that EDI is ingrained into everything we do.
We appreciate that we can't be experts in every field, so we currently partner with the carefully selected organisations below in order to create a more inclusive working environment for both ourselves and our clients.
Collaborating with AFBE-UK, we are working to improve inclusion and accessibility into STEM fields for people from black and minority ethnicity (BME) backgrounds.
We're working with Foothold to improve mental health support for engineers across the globe. We've raised over £20,000 and helped to build a wellbeing hub online.
With The Talent Tap, we help underrepresented youths access work placements, helping them gain vital connections and experience to build their STEM careers.
We're working towards the Inclusive Employers standard in partnership with Inclusive Employers, guided by our very own Head of EDI, Annabel Honour.
We've also partnered recently with Women in Defence, who focus on accelerating gender equity in the defence sector who challenge senior leaders on their gender equity plans.
The reality.
Although Matchtech have taken great strides in ED&I in recent years, there are still areas to improve. Below are some of the issues we and many other organisations face when it comes to hiring a diverse and inclusive workforce.
This will only change when we change our approach and mindset.
What candidates are looking for.
When dealing with STEM talent, it is important to consider what candidates are looking for in order to attract them to your business. Candidates will be knowledgeable of their chosen industry and know that their niche skillsets are in high demand. This means that employers need to consider what they are offering within their workplace in order to attract the best talent.
• Flexible and remote working has gone mainstream – a positive movement
• Diverse and inclusive policies have been become more important to Employers and Employees
• Mental health, both in and out of the workplace, has been given weightier prominence
• Movement for greater pay transparency, especially the gender pay gap
Did you know - 48% of women in tech and STEM jobs report some form of discrimination in the recruitment or hiring process.
of the STEM workforce is female, compared to 52% of the wider workforce
of STEM workers have a disability, compared to 14% of the wider workforce
of the STEM workforce are from ethnic minorities - a similar proportion to that in the rest of the workforce
How do you increase focus on EDI.
As a Hiring Manager, how can you make EDI part of your recruitment strategy?
There are many ways in which this can be done. Below are a few ideas, or things that have worked well for us in the past.
- Embed EDI into your culture
- Be inclusive of mental health and wellbeing
- Offer flexible roles where possible (part-time/remote/hybrid)
- Work to prevent unconscious bias
- Focus on skills
- Be mindful of the language you use - write inclusive job descriptions
- Ensure there's a diverse screening and interview panel
- Think of 'team add', not 'team fit'
Embed EDI into your culture
The first step to embedding EDI culture into your workforce is to simply make yourselves aware. By learning more about EDI and teaching employees the benefits a diverse workforce brings, you will inherently begin to focus more on what you can do to improve. You could consider joining some employee networking groups, or speaking to some partnerships such as Inclusive Employers, AFBE etc. to see what you can do to help.
Be inclusive of mental health and wellbeing
Mental health and wellbeing is being discussed much more openly in recent years and employers should be willing to support their employees and offer assistance where needed. At Matchtech, we have appointed mental health first aiders and made employees aware of free online resources to help with their mental health, whether they are struggling with their work or personal life. Foothold are an excellent resource for information on mental health and wellbeing for engineers.
Offer flexible roles where possible
Since the COVID pandemic, a large proportion of employers have already seen the benefits of offering flexibility within their workforce. More and more candidates are now requesting roles with flexible/hybrid options as they feel it offers many benefits, such as a better work/life balance, less travel to and from work and increased productivity. Employers can also benefit from hybrid/home working positions because of the positive effects on environmental goals due to reduced emissions from employee travel. One possibility would be to consider offering part time roles, which would appeal to expecting mothers and/or mothers of young children.
Work to prevent unconscious bias
Unconscious bias is difficult to tackle due to the fact that it is 'unconscious'. It will, however, get easier once you start embedding EDI into your culture. After having discussions around diversity with your employees and making EDI a focus, you will naturally learn to prevent unconscious bias in your hiring decisions. We have included a section below which shows a few examples of unconscious bias.
Focus on skills
Rather than focusing on demographic characteristics contained within a CV such as age, gender, race or ethnicity, instead focus on the skills that person could bring to the table. One way in which this can be easily implemented is to anonymise CVs, which omits these characteristics and leaves only the sections that are relevant to the position. This is also a good way to eliminate unconscious bias as it will ensure that potential candidates are evaluated solely on their skills, qualifications and experience.
Be mindful of the language you use
Being mindful of the language you use is an important step towards building a diverse workforce. When creating a job advert, some phrases can exclude candidates from certain backgrounds, so it's important to consider this when publishing it. On our group website, we have a tool that allows you to copy and paste text to check it for gender bias before posting it. Click on this tile to visit the Diversity & Inclusion section of our Matchtech website.
Ensure there's a diverse screening and interview panel
When interviewing a candidate, it's always important to empathise with their experience during the interview. They're almost certainly nervous and likely to feel intimidated in a 2-2-1 or 3-2-1 scenario. By having a diverse screening and interview panel, it will likely allay some of that fear and intimidation by showing that you are an equal opportunity employer that will value them as an individual, rather than basing it on their ethnicity/gender/sex/religion etc.
Think of 'team add', not 'team fit'
During the recruitment process, a lot of businesses spend time focusing on who would 'fit in' well with their current team. We instead, would ask you to focus on who would 'add' to your team. With a more diverse and inclusive range of talent, you will be more likely to create an innovative workplace.
Remember to consider:
"What can this individual bring to the team?"
Unconscious bias.
Unconscious bias is when we make judgments or decisions based on our prior experience. Typical examples when recruiting, but not limited to:
• Ageism
• Name bias
• Gender bias
• Sexism/sexuality bias
• Accent bias
• Ethnicity bias
• Disability bias
• Religious bias
• Conformity & appearance bias
• Beauty bias
• The halo & horns effect
• Nonverbal/characteristics bias
• Affinity bias
• Body type/weight bias
• Anchor bias
• Overconfidence Bias
When considering any candidate, it is important to consider potential unconscious bias in order to ensure that each candidate is getting a fair appraisal in terms of the things that really matter - their skills and ability to fill the job role. There are plenty of resources online that go into greater detail on unconscious bias, what to look out for and how to avoid it. We would definitely recommend researching more into this in order to know what to look out for and how to avoid applying unconscious bias to any potential candidates.
Protected characteristics.
Under the Equality Act, there are nine protected characteristics in the UK, but in order to stay ahead of the curve, we would suggest considering a further two, as below:
• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Marriage & civil partnership
• Being pregnant or on maternity/paternity leave
• Race including colour, nationality, ethnicity or national origin
• Religion or belief
• Sex
• Sexual orientation
Plus:
• Socioeconomic background
• Working pattern
The Equality Act was published in 2010 and included the nine protected characteristics, making it illegal to discriminate against the workforce based on the above, however, as it has been over a decade since this piece of legislation was published, we believe the world has changed drastically and the subject of ED&I is ever-evolving. This is why we would propose hiring managers to be aware of the socioeconomic background and working pattern of any potential candidate in order to be fully inclusive.
Disclaimer: This presentation has been prepped for awareness and information only and should not be relied on to meet EDI legislation.
