Courtenay HR

Mirror Image?

Diversity. The word has been used with increased frequency over the past year, bringing with it new jobs for HR professionals - and new challenges for those who understand that simply recruiting in their own image is passé and possibly illegal.

Over recent years there has been a stream of employment legislation relating to diversity. The two most recent amendments outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and religion, and changes to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 will also come into force later this year. Against this background, there is little doubt that legislation has been the driving force behind the changes made by many employers.

But, according to Fiona Sellers, director of HR recruitment specialists Courtenay, however careful HR departments are to ensure that they adhere to the letter of the law, organisations will not reap the full benefits unless they truly embrace diversity at a cultural level. “HR has a responsibility to make sure that policies - particularly recruitment and development - are approached from the point of view of diversity,” she says. “But the whole issue of diversity has to be much broader than that. It requires a shift in thinking in many organisations, which has to start with senior management. Where organisations are failing is where they see diversity as simply another HR initiative.”

Diversity, she maintains, goes far beyond what is prescribed by legislation. An organisation’s willingness to look further than the usual suspects when it comes to recruitment should extend beyond ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and age. It should include open mindedness and bringing in people from different sectors and social classes. This view is reinforced by Mary Gray, publisher of The Diversity Directory, who has worked in the field for 20 years. Organisations recruiting in their own image, she believes, become entrenched in old attitudes, whereby everyone “wears the same clothes and has the same thoughts. A diverse workforce,” she says, “is a dynamic workforce.”

Age, notes Gray, is still a major issue and she wonders why more companies have not seen the light in the way that DIY chain B&Q did years ago. “B&Q were the original champions for disability and age. They got it right from the very beginning. They understood that there was something in it for them. If they practised this they would increase their customer base.” Call it enlightened self-interest if you will, but what is clear is that everyone wins. As recruitment consultants take a more advisory role on issues such as diversity, they will need to challenge clients’ thinking. “We have to get them to move away from the stereotypes and focus on the core capabilities and attributes that candidates need to do the job; they need to move away from thinking that the packaging people come in somehow affects those core competencies,” says Andrew Burke of HR specialists, Consult.

To be able to put a diverse pool of candidates forward for selection, recruiters have had to rethink how they present opportunities to the marketplace. Burke says that while ads should still appear in mainstream media, such as People Management, the key is to drive traffic to those ads through devices such as targeted web site banners and sites such as jobability.com, which specialises in finding jobs for people with disabilities.

At the same time, organisations need to ensure that their own web sites project the right image, explains Andy Randall, chief executive of online recruitment specialists, i-GRasp. “There are very simple things that can help, such as photographs of people on the career section of organisations’ web sites - are they representative of different communities?” While people of different ethnic origins are increasingly shown as role models, Randall believes there’s still a lot of work to be done on disability.

The internet, he adds, has become a much more powerful recruitment tool than anticipated. “It is being used to attract plumbers and gas fitters - roles that people thought e-recruitment would never get close to. It is very successful in attracting a diverse range of candidates.” It is not only in attracting applicants that technology can help break down barriers. To know whether diversity policies are working, they need to be measured and i-GRasp offers clients a tool that identifies patterns of discrimination in any part of an organisation.

One fundamental shift in mindset that is needed if organisations are to become truly diverse is to recognise people’s potential rather than their experience. Hilary Hurt, director of HR recruitment consultants Ashley Kate Associates, explains: “You have to be creative, not only in where you look for your candidates but in the job details that you put out. “If you are too precise with your job description, then you are going to exclude people who may not have had the opportunity, for whatever reasons, to access that level of academic qualification or experience.” In Hurt’s experience, clients are becoming much more open to suggestion when it comes to considering candidates with potential. Just as well, says Sellers, as there is a shortage of good candidates. If clients recognise candidates’ potential to grow and do well, they will have a wider pool from which to attract good people.

It would be naive to deny that some organisations still only pay lip service to the law when it comes to diversity. Kit Thacker heads up the diversity and employment law teams at learning and development consultancy, MaST. Has he ever been pleasantly surprised or shocked by people’s attitudes towards this issue? “Both,” says Thacker. “And you can’t make assumptions about which organisation is going to pleasantly surprise you and which is going to shock you. For example, we have worked with a couple of major charities that you would think would have a very liberal, enlightened attitude and have been shocked by how entrenched some of those organisations are. Likewise, you can come across the most hard-nosed, bottom-line-driven organisation that is actually realising the business benefits of diversity.”

One example of a company that has changed its approach to diversity and is reaping the rewards is Ford. Despite a long history of promoting equal opportunities - it had an equal opportunities committee as long ago as the early 1980s - its more recent image has been tarnished by a number of incidents pointing to a less enlightened organisation. In 1996 there was an outcry when Ford was found to have superimposed white faces over four black employees in a group photograph taken for an advertising campaign. A year later, substantial compensation was awarded to black and Asian workers denied jobs on the company’s truck fleet. Towards the end of the decade, Ford faced the prospect of a formal investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality, following allegations of abuse and harassment from an Asian employee at the company’s Dagenham site.

But the investigation was suspended when Ford gave assurances that it would take sweeping measures to ensure there was a change of culture in the organisation. A direct result of this incident was the appointment of Kamaljeet Jandu, Ford’s first UK diversity manager, who believes that Ford’s use of these negative events as a catalyst for positive change is something to be celebrated.

For Jandu, one of the major challenges has been to get the buy-in of the entire organisation - from the eight salaried functions to the 10 manufacturing plants across the UK. “We could have gone for a racial harassment policy or a sexual harassment policy, but the issue is about the treatment of all employees,” he says. To get the universal buy-in from a workforce that Jandu admits is predominantly white and male, everyone needed to have a stake in the reforms.

The result is “Dignity at work”, a policy that ensures all employees are treated fairly. Jandu’s enthusiasm about how successfully it has been received is palpable. And at Ford, the business benefits are clear. If the company’s policies, practices and profiles relate to its customer base, it will sell more cars and avoid the negative publicity that plagued it during the 1990s.

In spite of the laggards, experts agree that we have come a long way. Hurt is particularly encouraged by clients who ask about her own firm’s diversity policies before engaging them. Thacker thinks the old equal opportunities mentality of sticking everybody into categories and carrying out a box-ticking exercise is disappearing fast. Although most people start from simply trying to meet the legal requirements, they soon become aware of the benefits, Randall says.

Meanwhile, Sellers is working on three assignments to find diversity managers for her clients. And Jandu, it seems, has started something of a trend.