But while more than half (55%) of respondents rate their recruitment and selection practices as effective or very effective in terms of making a positive contribution to the organisation’s diversity and inclusion agenda/strategy, the remaining 45% do not. This disparity highlights the need to develop and implement more effective measures to create more inclusive recruitment practices.  

Michael Carty, Benchmarking Editor at XpertHR commented: “Businesses are facing ever higher levels of scrutiny over the actions they take to improve diversity and inclusion, with employees and potential employees bringing increased attention to whether or not these actions - including recruitment practices - are meaningful and bring about genuine positive change. While actions to boost diversity and inclusion are widespread, our research suggests that more needs to be done to make these actions truly effective.”  

The most common action to boost diversity and inclusion in recruitment and selection processes is to review job descriptions to check for potential bias against people with protected characteristics (64%). This is followed by ensuring the organisation’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is a core part of corporate branding (54%), and training employees conducting job interviews to avoid types of questions that can be perceived as discriminatory (52%).   

One organisation in four (25%) uses "blind recruitment". Among respondents providing details of blind recruitment arrangements, most remove all identifying information and/or replace the candidate's name with a number before passing job applications to managers for initial sifting.  

Outreach to diverse populations is a key priority. Just over half of organisations (52.4%) surveyed use a mix of candidate-attraction channels to reach a broad and diverse talent pool, while 50% communicate their diversity and inclusion policy/strategy to recruitment agencies. 46% collect and use diversity data to assess and improve their reach to diverse populations, and half this number (23%) talk to diverse communities when deciding on candidate-attraction methods.  

Carty continued: “Diversity and inclusion is a top priority for HR professionals, and recruitment practices make an important contribution. How and whom organisations recruit and retain provides a direct and visible demonstration of how seriously the organisation takes diversity and inclusion. 

“While it is promising that almost all organisations surveyed are taking action to boost diversity and inclusion throughout their recruitment and selection processes, questions remain over the efficiency of the measures taken. Not only could a failure to boost diversity and inclusion in recruitment processes lock out top talent from being selected, it could also affect the organisation’s reputation, as clear commitments to diversity and inclusion are an increasingly important factor for many job candidates.”