UK 
United States
Diversity, Equality and Inclusion are becoming more critical in today's workplace; however, many businesses still find it challenging to foster DE&I during recruitment. Building a diverse and inclusive workforce remains the second most cited challenge, according to the UK Candidate Attraction Report 2024. In this insight, we look at how to foster DE&I in the recruitment process.
How can you improve DE&I in your recruitment process?
Diversity, Equality and Inclusion are becoming more critical in today's workplace; however, many businesses still find it challenging to foster DE&I during recruitment. Building a diverse and inclusive workforce remains the second most cited challenge, according to the UK Candidate Attraction Report 2024. In this insight, we look at how to foster DE&I in the recruitment process.
DE&I is a challenge for around a third of the report's respondents, and we note significant differences across industries. The top 3 industries that find DE&I to be the biggest candidate sourcing challenge in 2024:
Marketing / Advertising / PR 53%
FMCG / Food / Drinks 50%
Charity / Not-for-Profit 46%
Source: *UK Candidate Attraction Survey 2024
Why is inclusivity important in the workplace?
Supporting inclusivity and diversity in the workplace enhances the perception of an employer's brand and helps to attract high-quality talent.
It creates a sense of belonging that is reflective of the company's culture. Fostering inclusivity and diversity has great benefits when it comes to employee referrals, as happy employees are more likely to recommend you to others. Employee Referrals remain the top sourcing channel for candidate quality.
An inclusive company culture highly improves the employee experience. According to Inclusive Employers, enabling employees to do things differently, such as working in ways that suit them, including flexible working patterns for better work-life balance, can enhance team productivity.
How can you foster diversity and inclusivity as part of the recruitment process?
Careers sites/Websites are the most used channel by in-house recruiters to source candidates*. The use of career sites has remained consistent over the years, as have the results for the quality and quantity of candidates generated.
A great example of DE&I efforts is from the UK's leading home furnishings retailer, Dunelm.
Dunelm utilises accessibility tools on its career site to provide a great candidate experience for all by allowing visitors to customise certain parts of the site. This provides configurability for candidates to customise the careers site experience to suit their accessibility needs, providing a more inclusive experience online.
Having an accessible careers site ensures that you are engaging with a diverse talent pool that can alleviate the issue of candidate scarcity, which remains the number one challenge for in-house recruitment teams.
The right types of careers sites content are key to engaging with candidates. Sharing candidate-centric content related to diversity and inclusivity on your careers pages has also become a commonly leveraged way to encourage DE&I. The 2024 UK Candidate Attraction Report has seen an increase in this type of content used by respondents, 47% compared to 41% in 2022. It is important to consider how candidate-centric content related to diversity and inclusivity is used throughout the recruitment process. As a candidate progresses through the recruitment process or engages further with you, considering you as an employer, relevant content that focuses on your approach to ED&I plays a big part.
Lastly, utilising an Applicant Tracking System that helps you provide a non-biased candidate experience helps foster inclusivity and diversity. In Eploy's case, hiring managers can utilise features such as anonymisation to help recruitment teams remove non-intentional biases from the recruitment process.
At Eploy, we offer a highly configurable Applicant Tracking System designed to help you attract, hire, and speed up the recruitment process while helping you build a more diverse and inclusive team. Get in touch with our specialist team at Eploy to find out how we can help you meet your recruitment goals or schedule a personalised demo. No hard sell, no strings attached - just some winning ideas to help you with your recruitment process.
Want more ideas?
The UK Candidate Attraction Report is a free 78-page report that aims to discover how in-house recruiters attract talent and which promotional activities, channels and sources are helping to fill their roles. The report analyses the relevant strengths, weaknesses, and usage of core recruitment sourcing channels and compares the experience of talent acquisition professionals within different industries and company sizes.
You can download the free report here.
