Promoting equality in recruitment, promotion and pay

The following are some designs an organisation can put in place to strengthen processes around recruitment, promotion and pay.

Accessing the talent pool

When using third-party providers:

-        make sure they are aware of your commitment to receiving a diverse candidate list.  Discuss with them where they will source their candidates from and how.

-        Consider including at least one organisation that specialises in sourcing diverse candidates.

-        Make sure your provider is committed to helping candidates prepare for interview

-        Make sure they are aware of your focus on D&I and can give your credentials to the candidates e.g. improvement in Bloomberg Gender Equality Index and Gender Pay Gap

-        Ask the providers for evidence of their inclusive programmes including D&I training

-        Regularly assess the diversity composition of candidates on your books

-        Ensure the shortlist for every role include a representation of men and women as well as candidates from diverse backgrounds.

When advertising, check wording to ensure the message of equal opportunity and commitment to diversity and creation of an inclusive workplace are included.

For online applications, make sure your website is fully accessible to people with a range of disabilities.  Make sure your online selection techniques are not arbitrary or not appropriate for the role such that trivial reasons can cause an application to be rejected.

Effective Assessment of the talent pool

Remove all demographic information including names, age, gender, nationality, address and picture from CVs before reviewers see them.

Variety is more likely to emerge when people make multiple decisions simultaneously rather than sequentially.  Hire and promote in batches e.g. recruiting graduate trainees at the same time or if a department has several roles available, try and make the evaluation at the same time.

Use structured interviews that involves drawing up a checklist/list of items to cover with each interviewer and include a scoring system for each item and consider how much weight to give to each item. Pair it with a formal assessment of intelligence or general cognitive ability and, if possible, a work sample test that directly measure the skill required to perform the job.

Consider using strength-based assessment rather than competency-based assessment to find the most suitable person for the job based on what that person enjoys doing and is therefore good at.

Consider how certain academic criteria is set as a requirement (e.g. at least a 2.1 in university degree) and whether this could automatically cut off a good pool of candidates from certain socio-economic or ethnic background which may have other strengths.

When a candidate is interviewed by several interviewers, do not compare notes until the very end. This avoids “groupthink” which tend towards uniformity.  The ideal is independent, uncorrelated assessments, uninfluenced by what other interviewers think.

Be careful if you are concluding that a candidate is a good cultural fit.  Considering someone favourably because they have the same backgrounds, hobbies and self-presentation similar to those of the existing employees is evidence of affinity bias.

Explicit comparisons of different candidates together give better focus on individual performance instead of stereotypes. When comparing candidates, compare their responses to each checklist item horizontally.

For important appointments or promotions, have two rounds of discussions among the decision makers, with the first round splitting the discussion between two sub-groups and the last round bring everyone together. This helps to minimise “groupthink”.

Performance Management

Whilst it is difficult to have performance management process that is entirely bias free, there is a lot that can be done to counterbalance human influence and subjectivity within the performance management process.

Set clear role description for individuals in writing so that what is expected of them is clear. This should include the key objectives and how they will be assessed and any areas for development. Having clear goals achievable by making small steps is also more comprehensible than articulating the difficult sweeping goal.

The SMART model could be helpful:

-Specific- target a specific area for improvement

- Measurable – quantify or suggest an indicator of progress

- Assignable – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources

- Time-related – specify when the results can be achieved.

More regular feedback on how employees are doing rather than wait for semi-annual or annual reviews. Comparison to others can be helpful to allow a more correct self-assessment.  It helps to equalise the playing field among people with different degrees of self-confidence and competitiveness.

Focus on outcome over style during discussions and decision-making process.

Progression and promotion

Collect, track and analyse data to understand patterns and trends e.g. look at how many years it takes on average for each of your people to get promoted to the next level and provide timely intervention and support to build leadership capability.

Consider whether all candidates have been given similar opportunities, same feedback and same level of sponsorship and if not, assess the impact.

In important promotion meetings, provide opportunity for independent reviewers to observe discussions and assess possible bias in the promotion discussions.

Whilst D&I and bias training may not be effective when rolled out sporadically, such training given and refreshed closed to the time of promotion discussions could be useful.

Reward – pay and benefits

Making diversity data transparent is a highly effective step towards creating meaningful change. Disclosure tends to have the effect of turning a commitment into action and strengthen the accountability necessary to bring about changes.

Gender pay gap reporting

The gender pay gap is the difference between the average (mean or median) earnings of men and women across a workforce.

In 2017, the UK introduced the requirement for any employer with a headcount of 250 or more to report on gender pay gap. Ordinary pay, bonus pay (including securities) and benefits in kind must all be included.  This requirement was suspended for the financial year 2019/20 as a result of Covid 19. As part of such disclosure, companies have also provided a narrative as to the reasons why such gender pay gap exists.  The most common reason for the gender pay gap is the smaller proportion of women in senior roles and the greater proportion of women in more junior roles and this in turn may be caused by many factors e.g. women’s work are undervalued, traditions and stereotypes like the low representation of women in STEM, balancing work and private life, direct discrimination, unconscious bias and women tend to negotiate less than men and settle for a lower sum.  Some companies that are keen to reduce the pay gap are also disclosing methods they are using to address the gap.  Some notable ones include:

-        Collecting data to identify causes of inequality e.g. check whether men are entering organisation on higher grades; check whether the pay structure is based on objective evaluation; and check rates of progression within and through the grades. 

-        Use data insights to review HR processes to identify obstacles that might prevent women from progressing; hire from a wider range of backgrounds; have a range of flexible working options that are accessible to all; limit local managerial total discretion over all elements of pay package; implement digital toolkit that employs strength-based talent assessment to remove bias from hiring and talent-development decisions. 

-        Holding senior leaders to account: with executive committee members’ pay being linked to improvement in diversity indices e.g. Bloomberg Gender Equality Index. 

-        Regular reviews by executive committee of Culture, Inclusion & Diversity Dashboard which monitors and assesses gender and ethnicity data across the employee lifecycle.

Shining a light on gender pay gap is a very useful way to highlight any systemic inequality and closing the gap will take consistent, well-considered, data-driven and comprehensive action which drives incremental improvements to the conditions that cause the inequality.  However, those companies which succeed in making such improvement will be able to prove their genuine commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Ethnicity pay gap reporting

Although the UK Government closed its consultation on the introduction of mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting in early 2019, it has not yet issued a response to that consultation. In a survey conducted by PWC in September 2020 involving 100 companies and 1 million employees, the survey found that 10% of those companies voluntarily disclose their ethnicity pay gap and 40% have committed to disclose in the next 1 to 3 years. 23% of companies surveyed have calculated their ethnicity pay gap for 2020 compared to just 5% in 2018, and an additional 33% of companies in 2020 are planning to calculate their ethnicity pay gap.