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2012 Benchmarking Trends Analysis Report

Executive Summary

Recruitment

Proven steps to attracting and recruiting ethnic minority candidates The following actions are more closely correlated with a greater intake of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) candidates:

• Running ‘pre-application’ events or similar for diverse groups to further prospective candidates’ understanding of the application and recruitment process (75% of the top two quartiles do this, only 56% and 50% of the bottom two quartiles do this).

• Employers with a policy for interview panels to have ethnic minority representation when possible (50% of the top quartile do this, only 22% of the bottom quartile do this).

• Employers that are able to track the progress of all job applicants throughout the recruitment process by ethnicity and use this data to help them identify any potential barriers to recruitment and changes that need to be made (100% of top quartile do this, only 56% of bottom quartile do this).

• Employers that have clear and current objectives for recruitment of BAME talent (this is less likely in the bottom quartile than in every other quartile).

• Employers that have a set of key performance indicators that they use to

check and demonstrate their success in attracting and recruiting BAME candidates of both sexes (63% of the top quartile do this, only 33% of the bottom quartile do this)

• Employers that mandate unconscious bias training to those with interviewing and recruitment responsibilities (50% of organisations with higher recruitment rates do this, only 5% of organisations with lower recruitment rates do this).

Methods of eliminating bias and increasing the intake of female candidates into the workforce

Organisations in the benchmark who had no significant difference between the rate of women and men being hired after shortlisting (i.e. no bias displayed in their recruitment processes), were more likely to have implemented the following actions:

• Set targets for the recruitment of women.

• Recruitment partners were made aware of the organisation’s policies and objectives on gender diversity.

• Recruitment partners were tasked with providing shortlists containing women.

• Implemented mandatory unconscious bias training for employees responsible for recruitment.

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Progression

Actions that correlate with increased promotion rates and greater representation at management level for BAME employees

• We found that organisations with higher turnover of ethnic minority employees have lower rates of promotion for this group, except in the organisations with the lowest rate of turnover, which also have some of the lowest rates of progression. Our interpretation is that for organisations with hardly any staff turnover, there are fewer chances for progression as there are fewer jobs to move into.

• Specific actions correlated with increased rates of BAME progression. We found that the following three actions were more commonly found in organisations with higher BAME progression rates and far less likely to be found in organisations with low rates of progression:

1. Leadership and development

programmes are actively promoted to eligible BAME employees (organisations in the top quartile for high BAME promotion rates were twice as likely to promote programmes as organisations in the bottom quartile).

2. Talent pipelines are actively monitored and the progression rate of BAME employees is known (67% of the top quartile do this, only 44% of the bottom quartile do this).

3. Use selection criteria that is transparent and can be viewed by all employees (89% of organisations in the top quartile

do this, which is significantly higher than the average of 57%).

Actions that correlated with increased female representation at management levels

• Organisations with greater representation of

women in management positions were more likely to have more flexible workers (the top quartile of organisations in terms of flexible working had 47.50% female managers, compared to the bottom quartile, which had an average of 38% female managers).

• Organisations that define a greater proportion of their women in their top performance categories also have faster promotion rates for women. These organisations do not necessarily have more talented women than other organisations, but are perhaps more effective at evaluating talent. These organisations were also more likely to define acceptable levels of variance in promotion rates and take steps to address areas where they were under-performing.

• We found a positive correlation between organisations with higher levels of women at senior management and management levels and taking the following actions in relation to their promotion practices.

1. Using a selection criteria that is

transparent and can be viewed by all employees.

2. Selection criteria based on a set of core competencies that have been ‘equality proofed’ to ensure they do not disadvantage any one group.

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3. Defining acceptable levels of variance for promotion rates and taking steps to address areas of underperformance.

• Women are better represented at senior levels in organisations that carry out equal pay audits with an average representation of 25.6% when carrying out pay audits, compared to an average of 19.5% in organisations that do not conduct pay audits.

Leadership

Accountability of senior leaders • 79% and 72% of organisations ensure that

heads of functions and other senior managers are personally accountable for delivery, respectively.

• A similar majority also ensure that diversity and inclusion behaviours and objectives are part of performance assessment for Board members (74%), heads of functions (70%) and other senior managers (68%).

Business case and strategy • Most organisations had a business case that

rationalised their diversity work (88%). 61% of organisations have a business case that examines the specific benefits women employees and customers can bring to the organisation, and 57% of organisations had a business case that looked at the benefits of diversity from a race perspective.

• A strong correlation was found between organisations with a specific gender strategy and a good representation of women managers – this suggests that a targeted

strategy with a strong business case on gender has an impact on proportion of women progressing through the organisation.

Board and board feeder pools • 22% have set targets for the board feeder

pool, which are known internally, and have ensured recruitment panels have at least one woman on them. 1 in 5 organisations ensure nomination committees have at least one woman on them and all recruitment panels have received unconscious bias training.

• We found that organisations are taking similar actions to combat the lack of ethnic minority representation at the top, with 11% stating that they put targets for recruitment of senior managers and board members in the public domain, but even more actually have internally known targets (23%).

Managers and Inclusive Leadership

• We asked a series of questions on inclusive leadership and found that organisations with the ability to be inclusive as part of the leadership framework generally had lower absence rates for women than organisations that didn’t. The same trend was not true for ethnic minority employees and we encourage organisations to actively ensure that they are extending inclusive leadership behaviours to all diverse groups within their workforce, including BAME employees.

For further information and to download the

Benchmark Trends Analysis Report in full, visit: www.bitcdiversity.org.uk/trends2012