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Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

What does Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Mean to Us?

“Diversity and Inclusion enriches our people, business and communities. It enables us to learn and grow, to be creative and have the freedom to be ourselves. It starts with each of us. We all belong.”

We partnered with Diversity Scotland to help us better understand where we are currently and to help us learn and develop our knowledge. We opened up to a survey led by Diversity Scotland and it found us to be:

“We welcome difference, regardless of any personal characteristic, identity or background”

“We want to be genuinely representative of communities across the locations we operate”

“We’re determined to listen and learn, making sure people feel heard so we can take action required to make our business truly inclusive”

“Whilst we’ve made some progress, we know this is continuous work”

What we’re working with our clients on:

  • Continuously looking at how we and our clients’ can build diverse candidate pools across all disciplines and levels

  • Reviewing recruitment processes

  • Mitigating bias, building confidence in their knowledge and understanding of D,E&I

  • Connecting our D,E&I goals with the Purpose of our business

  • Ensure advertising is accessible/appealing to a wide range of diverse candidates and recruitment practices are fair and free from unconscious bias or stereotyping.

  • Ensure nobody receives less favourable treatment (directly/indirectly) on the grounds of a protected characteristic or education, socio-economic background, veteran status or neurodiversity (staff have received training from Auticon to understand and support neurodivergent candidates).

  • Assisting Clients to become Disability Confident Committed Employers and actively seek to establish if adjustments are needed to allow our interims to perform at their best.

  • Using a broad range of sourcing channels including Diversity in Tech, LGBT Jobs, EvenBreak, Diversityjobsite, DiverseJobsMatter, Black Professionals Scotland, Equate Scotland Careerhub, Jobserve, CW Jobs and S1Jobs maximise exposure of opportunities. Print media is also used e.g. Pink News Futures, The Voice, Big Issue, The Asian Times and The Jewish Chronicle.

  • Ensuring adverts use simple, gender neutral language and diverse imagery, using online tools to identify and remove potentially discriminatory language. We also ensure adverts contain 4-5 “must have” criteria as the more flexible the requirement is, the more diverse applications will be achieved.

  • Making a public commitment to DEI in all marketing advertising/communications (including website/social media posts) to encourage diverse applications.

  • Ensuring our website is accessible.

  • Engaging/networking with DEI social media groups (e.g. Diversity & Disability at Work, Diversity & Cross Functional Professionals etc on LinkedIn).

  • Promoting our process as diverse and showcasing our DEI accreditations.

DIVERSITY PARTNERSHIPS

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DIVERSITY SCOTLAND

We invest in and partner with Diversity Scotland to support development including:

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AUTICON

A partnership which provides staff with deeper insight into neurodiversity, so increasing confidence to support neurodivergent technology professionals and raise awareness amongst clients.

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EMPOWERING YOU

(in association with ScotlandIS and Scottish Government)

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CAREER READY

A charity that supports young people from lower income families to gain confidence/skills/networks to achieve their potential

MORE PARTNERSHIPS/INITIATIVES

Scottish Digital Skills Programme: Contributing to the gender workstream of this programme, focussing on interventions to remove challenges/barriers to females at each stage of the pipeline from studying computer science at school to helping them progress in the workplace.

Celebrating Women in STEM: Six interviews with high-profile women across STEM sectors to explore their experiences; celebrating advancements in equality and identifying where challenges remain. Also partnering with the Ada Scotland Festival to provide online resources for young girls, helping them understand careers across STEM sectors.

Developing Young Workforce, Scotland’s Youth Employment Strategy: our Director, sits on the board of this collaboration, whose mission is “to ensure a positive destination for each young person and transform the relationship between business and education.” To support this, we volunteer at Edinburgh and Lothian Roadshows, supporting young people with CV writing, applications and interview skills.

LGBT Youth Scotland: We raise funds and awareness of this charity’s work to support the young people in LGBTQ+ communities and access LGBTQ+ candidates.