To develop diversity within an organisation, you need to make your company treat people with respect and recognise that the history of discrimination has led to a lack of certain skills within discriminated groups. For example, women are less likely to have technical engineering skills than men.
Rather than accepting or ignoring this fact, we need to take notice, take action and ensure recruitment feeds diversity in at entry levels, and that organisations focus on mentoring and retaining people who are then able to develop those skills internally.
The trouble with language
This is where language can cause issues that are far greater than the odd bias word in a job advert and where the accepted corporate ‘speak’ of most companies forms a barrier to this.
When we de-humanise our workers by referring to them as a “resource” (a commodity), we develop a management mindset where people are simply another stock item whose levels are maintained according to market demand.
Which brings me to my next language block, “talent”.
Talent is a word that usually implies an intrinsic skill, quite often used with “gifted”. If we believe skills are talents, we demean learning and mentoring, which means we will naturally seek out “talented” people rather than unskilled people that can become “talented”.
There’s a commonplace tendency to ‘fish’ for talent outside our organisation rather than putting the hard work in to pass on learning. The “talented” people are those that have had the privilege to learn the necessary skills and where we bake in bias.
The two words that harm diversity most for me are “resource” and “talent”.
Focusing on solutions, I feel that mentoring is crucial to improving diverse candidates. In fact, this aspect of management should be the main skill associated with that role, viewing all mentees as people that can, and will, be able to develop the skills needed to advance their careers.
Finally, it is important to recruit at entry level based on capability and desire to learn new skills. If we have the mindset that all our people can develop and progress to the top, we will go a long way to removing bias.
I know we can’t change the world in a day, but I think we need to always look towards operational management and away from HR.
Tech Nation, the UK network for ambitious tech entrepreneurs, has selected RoleMapper as one of its early-stage scaleup winners of its nationwide competition, Rising Stars.
The Rising Stars competition is the only of its kind in the UK and is designed to showcase the most exciting companies at Seed to pre-Series A from all areas of the country. The ten winners in total have been selected as Rising Stars through a rigorous competition process, with more than 330 applications received.
Sara Hill, Founder & CEO, Role Mapper Technologies, says: "This is great news for RoleMapper. Our goal is to transform workplaces through inclusive job descriptions and reducing bias in the hiring process. To be seen as an innovator in the HRTech space is exactly what we want.”The virtual nature of the competition this year has also made it accessible to founders from every corner of the UK."
The virtual nature of the competition has also been credited with increasing access for women founders.
The 2020 Rising Stars winners are the most diverse cohort yet, with 50% of the winning companies having women founders and co-founders - up from 40% in 2019
Esme Caulfield, Competitions Lead, Tech Nation, comments: “The Tech Nation Rising Stars competition highlights the best-in-class companies in the UK at the seed and pre-Series A stages and shows the amazing tech companies that make-up the UK’s pipeline."It's incredibly exciting to see the 2020 Rising Stars winners across a broad mix of sectors, as well as representing the most diverse Rising Stars cohort yet, with 50% of the winning companies having women founders, while 80% of the winners are from outside London.”
Rising Stars Judges Quotes:
Stephen Kelly, Chair, Tech Nation comments: “The Rising Stars announced today are great examples of the strength of the UK tech ecosystem. The winners highlight that innovation, determination and ambition in this fast-growing sector can be found right across the UK. What the Rising Stars competition, and indeed Tech Nation, does is provide a platform to showcase these exciting and innovative companies.”
Mary McKenna, Tech Entrepreneur & Angel Investor, comments: "It's fantastic to see so many brilliant companies among this year's Rising Stars. As well as being an incredible representation of the innovation and talent we have here in the UK this year's Winners represent great diversity in terms of gender, location and sector. "
Anika Henry, Operations Lead & EMEA Partner Manager, Google for Startups UK, comments: “At Google for Startups UK, we’re always looking out for the country’s great, new emerging tech start-ups, so it’s been a great honour to be on the judging panel of the Tech Nation Rising Stars. The high calibre and diversity of companies and out-of-the-box approach shown by the nominees has been really inspiring to see and I wish them all well in their journeys and development over the next year.”
Rob Kniaz, Partner, Hoxton Ventures, comments: “As an investor, being part of the Rising Stars 3.0 judging process was a truly inspiring experience. It's fantastic to see highly investable scaling companies with diverse founders from every corner of the UK. I will be following the winners’ growth with interest.”
About Tech Nation
Tech Nation is the growth platform for tech companies and leaders. Tech Nation fuels the growth of game-changing founders, leaders, and scaling companies so they can positively transform societies and economies. We provide them with the coaching, content, and community they need for their journey in designing the future. Tech Nation has years of experience facilitating and helping UK tech companies scale, both at home and abroad. Over 20 cohorts and 600 companies have successfully graduated from Tech Nation’s growth programmes. Alumni include Skyscanner, Darktrace, and Monzo.
From January 1, 2021, the Colorado Equal Pay Act (SB19-085) prohibits all employers from discriminating because of sex (including gender identity) — alone or with another protected status — by paying less for substantially similar work in terms of skill, effort and responsibility.
In summary, the Colorado Equal Pay Act prohibits an employer from:
We’re now seeing an uptick in organizations looking to utilize RoleMapper to help meet compliance requirements, and the great news is that we’ve configured RoleMapper to help our customers fix this in a matter of minutes.
As an intelligent job design platform, RoleMapper creates job profiles, descriptions and ads that are debiased and neutral in minutes, removing the common pain points of removing discrimination from the source of the role and not a copy tweak in a job ad.
To find out more about how RoleMapper supports compliance, you can book a demo here
According to research from LinkedIn carried out during and just after lockdown 1, women were 10% less confident in their ability to get, or hold on to a job than men.
Similarly, 67% of women were less confident in their ability to progress their career than men, and 133% less confident about their ability to improve their financial situation in the next 6 months. To date, the hardest hit has been women in the 30+ age bracket.
However, out of this news, there is a spark of positivity. During the course of the first lockdown, RoleMapper users saw a continued uptick in female hiring, especially in traditionally male dominated professions, such as engineering.
It's clear that we will be facing a recession once normal business resumes. In fact, the IMF believes 30 years of gains for women could be erased as recession deepens, so it’s more critical than ever to ensure that organisations put solid frameworks in place to attract and retain more female and diverse hires.
However, moving the dial on diversity is not a quick-fix solution or something to be added at the end of the job creation process. It needs to start at the beginning and not an insertion at the instruction of D&I teams.
Intelligent inclusive job design
Inclusion starts at the point when a role is created. Not after. It is the process of designing a job in a way that ensures it will appeal to the widest and most diverse pool of potential job holders.
It gives conscious consideration to designing the job in a way that opens it up to the widest pool of talent and is also about removing any bias or barriers that might put off - or unfairly exclude - talented people from applying or excelling in a role.
During the course of the first lockdown, RoleMapper users saw a continued uptick in female applications
This means addressing a whole range of areas to help attract female candidates, such as responsibilities and requirements, which need to be clearly defined and presented in a way that encourages them to apply for a role.
To use a recent example, the RoleMapper platform has helped one global tech company achieve a 47% change in responsibilities, in one case simplifying a role with 18 responsibilities down to four, and a 91% change in requirements from an average of 16 to just 6.
Soft skills
Not only are soft skills crucial for inclusive hiring, they are also becoming vital for new ways of working, such as remote, hybrid working and tech automation.
Focusing on technical skills tends to favour more male applicants, whereas women are more likely to showcase soft skills and favour jobs ads that bring these to the fore. In fact, 92% of hiring managers say soft skills are more important than hard skills.
Technical skills give a level of control for managers and recruiters to screen candidates
in or out of the process - and actually make the job of screening candidates a lot easier.
However, by focusing on pure technical skills we are baking bias into the process and possibly missing out on talent.
Flexible or hybrid working
Research by the UK government found that jobs promoted with flexibility had a 30% uplift in applications.
However, despite all the changes happening as a result of COVID, the Timewise Flexible Jobs Index saw only a minimal increase in jobs open to flexibility from 17% – 22%, which is hardly moving the dial.
Our own studies with companies on the RoleMapper platform found that jobs designed and promoted with flexibility generate a 125% increase in female candidates and an 80% increase in quality of hiring (based on the CV-to-hire ratio).
We’re living in exceptional times right now, but once normal working patterns resume more people will want and need flexible working and why it is so important for organisations need to bake-in flex for long term inclusion.
There may well be a school of thought around letting this next wave of flexibility naturally take a more organic path; let managers work with it and have ‘tailored’ conversations at employee level.
It is absolutely right that these conversations happen between employees and managers, but you need to beware the pitfalls of letting this pan out without a systematic approach.
Embedding a systematic approach to assessing job and team flexibility will take into account all the variables that have an operational impact on varying ways to work flexibly in the role.
Mapping inclusion
The Role Mapper platform enables organisations to create job profiles, descriptions and ads that opens you up to a far wider and inclusive talent pool, and it’s why our user base has had continued success over such a challenging period of time.
At such a pivotal time for women and diverse ethnic backgrounds, don’t you think it’s time your organisation started to drive systemic change?
It’s been a busy few months for the team at RoleMapper, which has been topped-off with the announcement that we've won Best Tech Startup at the UK Business Tech Awards.
The Awards celebrate the UK’s finest tech businesses and its aim is to recognise innovation and the exceptional application of technology to transform and grow businesses.
With a judging panel made up of leading tech experts from a range of businesses and organisations - including booking.com and North West at Tech Nation - this is a great achievement for RoleMapper.
The RoleMapper platform has delivered some outstanding results for our clients, including an increase in female hiring by 125% and a 50% increase in ethnic diverse hiring ratios in the US.
Since our launch 12 months ago, we have seen exponential growth and great success helping large organisations debias roles to unlock talent and diversity.
We see job design as key to creating more inclusive cultures, and as testament to that fact, the platform has delivered some outstanding results for our clients, including an increase in female hiring by 125% and a 50% increase in ethnic diverse hiring ratios in the US.
It’s great to be recognised by the UK Business Tech Awards for all our efforts, but it doesn’t stop there either. In other news, we are now on the UK Government’s directory of Cloud hosting, G-Cloud 12, and have expanded our team with the appointment of Frank Fernandes as Customer Operations Manager.
Here’s to another year of exceptional growth!
When designing flex into roles, make sure you make the viable options fair, consistent, and open to all. People want increased systemic flexibility for a whole range of reasons. If there is one thing this pandemic is revealing, it's that people are reflecting on what is important in their lives. Many employees have reassessed their priorities, leading to a significant shift in their work preferences.
By now, many employees working from home during the lockdown will have made quite firm decisions around how they wish to operate going forward. Some will have decided that nothing in their lives is quite like their family, and for that reason, they wish to extend remote working indefinitely or move to a more flexible working arrangement. This moment of reflection offers an opportunity for organizations to rethink how they approach work-life balance.
Making Flex Work As it stands today, over 90% of jobs are designed to fit office-based 9-5pm working patterns. However, COVID-19 has helped shift preconceived notions and traditions about work schedules. This change is not just temporary; it signifies a long-term trend in how we view work.
As a Victorian premise based around factory working hours, the 9-5 is massively outdated. Modern work demands a more flexible framework. Productivity profiles are more personal; for any organization, productivity and doing a job well are key, so a job should bring out the best in an employee. For example, some people work better in the morning, while others thrive at night. By breaking these time constraints, businesses can create a more engaging environment that fosters productivity and job satisfaction. Flexibility can also lead to improved mental health and reduced burnout, which ultimately benefits the organization.
There may well be a school of thought around letting this next wave of flexibility naturally take a more organic path; however, let managers work with it and have ‘tailored’ conversations at the employee level. It is absolutely right that these conversations happen between employees and managers, but you need to beware the pitfalls of letting this pan out without a systematic approach. Plan, Tools, and Guidance are essential.
Flexible Job Design
Seize the Opportunity As we come out of lockdown, there will be a significant change in how the workplace looks and operates in the future. For example, some companies will trial moves to a smaller set of core hours so they can manage meetings and interactions while still offering flexibility for employees. Others will use technology to enhance the working-from-home experience, ensuring all employees have access to the tools and resources needed to thrive in a remote setting.
The workplace we return to will be very different. Business leaders need to develop a vision of what their workplace should look like and design systemic, sustainable flexibility into their workforce. This vision should include a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, ensuring that all employees feel valued and supported in their work environments.
The opportunity is now. But the question is, how will you challenge the traditional thinking that still exists in your organizations? How will you challenge this systematically at scale? Engaging employees in these conversations, gathering their feedback, and implementing changes based on their insights will be crucial to the success of any new flexible work strategy. Ultimately, adapting to this new way of working is not just a trend; it is a necessary evolution for businesses aiming to thrive in an unpredictable future.
Moreover, consider the role of leadership in this transition. Leaders must model the flexibility they expect from their teams, demonstrating that work-life integration is a priority. Providing ongoing training and support for managers will be essential in navigating this shift. The benefits of a flexible work model not only enhance employee satisfaction but can also lead to increased retention rates and a more robust organizational culture.
As organizations embrace systemic flexibility, it’s vital to regularly revisit and assess these policies. Are they meeting the needs of employees? Are they contributing to business objectives? By maintaining an open dialogue with employees and being willing to make adjustments, organizations can ensure that they are adapting effectively to a rapidly changing work environment.
In conclusion, designing systemic flexibility into roles is not merely a response to the pandemic; it’s an opportunity to innovate and redefine how work is perceived and conducted. By prioritizing employee well-being, fostering open communication, and embracing technology, businesses can create a resilient workforce ready to face future challenges.
Recent research by the UK government found that jobs promoted with flexibility had a 30% uplift in applications. Our own studies with companies on the RoleMapper platform found that jobs designed and promoted with flexibility generate a 125% increase in female candidates and an 80% increase in quality of hiring (based on the CV-to-hire ratio).
And flexible job design for some organisations has help achieve 30% women in senior roles and reduced employee turnover 80%+.
Our 5 dimensions of flexible job design help determine the feasibility of whether certain flexible working patterns will work or not.
Dimension one: Location Dependency
This determines how dependent the role is on a particular physical location, or the importance of face to face communications at a physical location in order to receive and/or conduct the role effectively. This helps us to understand the impact of the role holder not being present in the workplace.
However, if you could ask managers; ‘can this role be available to work remotely going forward?’ they will give you their view, but Managers often have biases or personal preferences around how jobs and teams need to work.
So, to really understand if the role can be worked on this basis there are some specific questions that we could ask around the job itself that takes it away from personal preference or any bias that might exist.
Dimension two: Control over Workflow & Predictability
The second dimension determines what the flow of work look like for this role and how predictable it is. This helps us to understand the dynamics of the peaks and troughs, and also gives an idea of the level of control the individual might have over the flow of work, as well as whether there is any scope to flex the time in the role. Dimension three: Availability & Responsiveness How available and responsive does the role holder need to be when work comes in? What are the expectations of stakeholders and colleagues in terms of availability and responsiveness of the role holder? This helps understand the impact on absence from the role for any period of time.
Dimension four: Capability & Expertise
Here we are looking at what extent other people in the team have the capability and expertise required to deliver the role. Is it a completely unique role with only one person with the specific expertise to do it, or is it a role carried out by many people?
Looking at this dimension helps us to understand if there could be any option to consider other people to replace, cover or share or step up as a development opportunity if the role holder is absent for any period of time.
Dimension five: Segments of Work
Finally, the last dimension is looking at the segments of work in the role. All jobs should be able to be segmented into 4-5 key high level segments of work responsibilities.
Determining what the work segments are gives us a sense of how the job might be divided up and possibly split or shared between one or more people that might enable part-time working in say a job share or shift pattern working arrangement.
Setting-up a mechanism to help your managers assess the flexible job design dimensions for their roles. Embed a systematic approach to assessing job and team flexibility that takes into account all the variables that have an operational impact on varying ways to work flexibly in the role.
Helping identify, a systematic and consistent view of the viable working patterns that not only work for the employee but also work for the business and the team.
It also provides managers, teams and individuals with a roadmap of what flexible working patterns will work and which ones will be more challenging.
By applying the 5 dimensions to every role, every flexible working request, every job you design, you will be able to have a systematic, consistent approach to designing flexible working patterns.
In this article, we'll discuss some common flexible working pitfalls, and the steps organisations can take to avoid them.
The workplace we've gone, or are going back to, will now be very different. Business leaders now need to develop a vision of what their workplace should look like and design systemic, sustainable flexibility into their workforce.
The time to make that flexible working change is now. But the question is; how will you challenge the traditional thinking that still exist in organisations? How will you challenge this systematically at scale?
Now, there may well be a school of thought around letting this next wave of flexibility naturally take a more organic path. Let managers work with it and have ‘tailored’ conversations at employee level.
It is absolutely right that these conversations happen between employees and managers, but you need to beware the pitfalls of letting this pan out without a systematic approach.
Without question, the pandemic has hit parents with young children very hard indeed. However, many people who aren't parents also want increased flexibility for a whole range of reasons. If there is one thing this pandemic is revealing is that people are reflecting on what is important in their lives.
Despite this – and the right-to-request flexible working in the UK and other countries - there is still a tendency to view the need for flexible working as being exclusively for parents, or in some cases as a privilege for senior staff.
An inconsistent approach to how we respond to flexible working requests or the conversations we have around increased flexibility, can breed unhealthy friction in the workplace. It can also get you in a lot of hot water in how you justify one arrangement for one person but not for another. Access to commercially viable flexible working patterns should be open to all. Those with kids, those with elderly parents, those with a situation that requires them to take time away from work at short notice, and those who simply perform better when they have the freedom to manage their own time.
Flexible Working Pitfall #2: Diving in without a plan A key challenge for managers working with teams who have different variations of flexibility is how to manage individuals, workloads and communications across varying schedules and locations.
Different working patterns do require advanced planning and coordination of schedules, as well as team communications and collaboration.
Doing a bit of upfront planning around how to manage, and accommodate, varying work schedules and locations will pay dividends.
To help manage this, many employers put in place a model of core days and core hours during which everyone knows that the whole team will be available.
Co-located teams, where some might be working in the office and some working from home can also lead to challenges – be these perceived or real - about how the team communicates and collaborates effectively together.
If the manager is in the office, it will invariably be the case those working in the office will get more airtime and find it easier to collaborate and share information. Those at home risk missing out on the watercooler chats or informal corridor conversations. If you are not careful, this can also lead to more deep-rooted bias around perceived performance. Research has shown that where teams have co-located staff, it is often the case that homeworkers are more likely to be over-looked for the strategic projects and promotions than those more visible in the office.
Flexible Working Pitfall # 3: Increased flex without design Pitfall number three is a theme that really runs through pitfall 1 and 2 but needs to be pulled out separately as it’s a ‘biggie’.
Flexibility means different things to different people – you will have employees who want:
Pitfall 3 is what a lot of well-intentioned managers fall into it – that is agreeing to flexible working patterns without consideration for the job, its workload and deliverables or how the team needs to collaborate to get work done.
Agreeing to flex without considering the job design can do more damage than good
Where the flex has been agreed to help the individual but has been designed for and around the individual and not the role can lead to all sorts of issues.
But here is the big takeaway - not all flexible working options work for all roles. It has to work for the role, the team and the business as well as the employee. When flexible only goes one way – if there are too many boundaries or restrictions in place, flexible working can’t be what it’s supposed to be, flexible.
We have seen how this has tipped some managers over the edge and shifted them from the camp of being supportive of flexible working arrangements into the camp of it’s a nightmare and too difficult to manage.
It’s essential that as you start to increase the flexibility in your jobs, teams and workforce, you design and agree to viable working patterns that not only work for the employee but also work for the business and the team. By being aware of the flexible working pitfalls, you can make it work for everyone.
Interview bias has been a problem for some time. The interview process, if not managed correctly, leaves you wide open to biases that impact how you conduct the interview and the hiring decisions you make.
In the world of bias-academia, the “Halo or Horns” effect is a terms often used to describe specifically how “confirmatory bias” can manifest itself in the recruitment process - when an interviewer allows one strong point about the candidate to overshadow or have an effect on everything else.
For instance, knowing they used to work at a particular company might be looked upon favourably. Everything the applicant says during the interview is seen in this light: "well, she left out an important part of the answer to that question, but, she must know it, she used to work at X company”.
The "horns" effect is just the opposite - allowing one weak point to influence everything else. And then there is the “mini-me” bias, where we have an unconscious tendency to favour those who remind us of ourselves. This can result in managers favouring a candidate because they are similar to themselves rather than because they are the best person for the job.
Structured interviews help debias decision making
So how do you stop this happening? Bias training? Yes, good idea, it at least makes you aware. But training alone will not make a systemic shift - it is very difficult to be consciously conscious of our unconscious biases every single minute of the interview.
There has been lots of research into interviewing and in particular what types of interview best reduce interview bias. Structured interviews have been found to be considerably more effective than unstructured interviews.
Clarity on requirements is the key to structured interviewing; what you are assessing – the requirements - and ensuring the criteria you are assessing for are inclusive and have been reviewed for bias.
Ultimately, to ensure your structured interview is inclusive you only want to be assessing the absolute essential criteria required to perform well in the job, desirable criteria are not discussed.
"Structured interviews are one of the best tools we have to identify the strongest job candidates." Dr Melissa Harrell, People Analytics Team, Google.
In summary, without a structured interview process, managers may well fall foul to their unconscious biases in their interpretation, assessment and selection of talent. But if the requirements you are assessing have not been rigorously assessed for interview bias, or potential to exclude talent, then all your efforts may well be in vain.
The biases unconsciously baked into the job requirements in your job descriptions could potentially be helping you to screen out the best, most creative and diverse people in the market.
Break interview bias with intelligent job design
So, how do you ensure requirements are inclusive? At the point when we define these requirements. It’s when we design our jobs and create our job descriptions. It is the process of designing a job and creating a job description where you determine the screening and assessment criteria for prospective candidates.
By adopting an intelligent job design approach you connect the dots with your inclusive job description, your inclusive requirements and your inclusive structured interview process.
At the point of when you are creating your jobs – whether for job profiling, job description creation, job advert creation – you design your requirements inclusively and ensure that they feed into a structured interview, closing the loop and debiasing the process.
By focusing on pure technical vs soft skills we are baking bias into the process and possibly missing out on talent.
From our experience, when managers are asked: “what screening criteria is important for this role?” they, more often than not, do a quick shortcut and tend to emphasise the “technical skills” required in the role.
Technical skills give a level of control for managers and recruiters to screen candidates in or out of the process. They actually make the job of screening candidates a lot easier.
Focusing on technical vs soft skills favours men over women
LinkedIn found that Men, on average, tend to list three more skills on their LinkedIn profiles than women, and are more likely to list the “in-demand” skills on their profile than women.
The research found that, women are more likely to actively showcase their soft skills on their LinkedIn profile, whereas men tend to showcase their tech skills. And given that people with 5+ skills on their LinkedIn profile are messaged up to 31 x more by hirers, it’s no wonder why more men are identified for shortlists than women.
In general, women favour job adverts that bring out the soft skills requirements in a role, such as team-work, collaboration, communications.
Many roles only emphasise the technical vs soft skills, but 92% of hiring managers say they believe soft skills to be more important than hard skills. When asked the question: “what does high performance look like in this role? What does good look like?” more often that not they tend to emphasise the soft skills
However, when pressed for time - and to help shortcut the process - technical bias kicks in and managers resort back to focusing on the technical skills on their job description.
Break technical bias with intelligent job design
In summary, technical skills may well be essential requirements for role but it’s the soft skills that will determine high performance and attract a wider pool of diverse talent.
So, how do we make a shift in these biases?
We need to look at where we define these technical and soft skills requirements in the first place. It’s when we design our jobs and create our job descriptions.
By adopting an intelligent job design approach you can challenge the essential skills requirements.
Wherever this process may happen in the business – job profiling, job description creation, job advert creation, screening and interviewing – you can ensure a good balance of technical and soft skills are designed, promoted, screened and hired for.
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