OUR COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY
At Goodman Masson we recognise power in diversity, and with our services being the gateway to employment, we are committed to advancing inclusion within recruitment.
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OUR APPROACH
With the desire for greater diversity and inclusion (D&I) within organisations growing, our approach to D&I is constantly evolving to support our employees, clients and communities with inclusive growth. The key features of our approach include:
Enlisting expertise support
Setting a clear D&I strategy and vision
Ensuring continuous improvement
Training all employees
Creating inclusive initiatives
Measuring our efforts and benchmarking
Sharing best practice
ENLISTING EXPERT SUPPORT...
We know that diversity enriches any organisation, including our own. In 2020, we appointed Non-Executive board member, Lenna Cumberbatch, to help us embed an inclusive approach to everything we do. She provides the expertise that is required when considering our D&I initiatives and advises on our processes to ensure they are accessible, fair, and inclusive
DIVERSITY ENRICHES AN ORGANISATION.
SETTING A CLEAR D&I STRATEGY & VISION...
We have taken time to assess our processes, policies and initiatives and ensured we have a strategy in place to support these. D&I needs to be considered in everything we do; from the language we use, through to which supplier we engage with, or to asking our interviewee “why D&I in the workplace is important to them?”. Our strategy helps us, keep us on track, hold ourself accountable and provides clear messaging on what we are working towards.
ENSURING CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT...
To achieve our aim of advancing inclusion in recruitment we created an internal D&I working group, with representatives from all areas of our business. With internal and external objectives, the group work together to create and implement our ideas.
TRAINING ALL EMPLOYEES...
All Goodman Masson employees receive training on the following topics:
Understanding the nine characteristics protected by the Equalities Act (2010)
Identifying our unconscious bias (through participation in Harvard’s Project Implicit)
Diversity, inclusion, and respect best practice in the recruitment process
The use of positive action in the recruitment process
Becoming consciously inclusive
CREATING INCLUSIVE INITIATIVES...
Goodman Masson understand that we need to work to remove the barriers that exist in our industry and organisation. Some key examples of our inclusive initiatives that help us drive fundamental change include:
CREATING EXTERNAL NETWORKS
Programme One – Recruitment Network
We have seen first-hand the under-representation of Black recruiters within the industry and are committed to changing this. That’s why in 2020, we teamed up with eight leading recruitment agencies to launch Programme One
Building Balance- Social Housing Development Network
Building Balance focuses on addressing the gender imbalance across the social housing development profession. We want to see a better gender balance at more senior levels, and we believe that the best way to achieve this is by bringing together those in senior-level positions with those at a junior level, to develop a pipeline of women with a pathway to senior-level role models
WE NEED TO WORK TO REMOVE THE BARRIERS.
RUNNING INTERNAL NETWORKS AT GOODMAN MASSON:
Balance@GM Pride@GM Access@GM Unity@GM
Our internal networks were created to support, celebrate and embrace our people. Click here to find out more.
REVISING
OUR POLICIES AND OFFICIAL
DOCUMENTATION
The outcomes of this include:
Embedding our agile working approach
Updating our Parental Leave policy to support new parents more during this time
Creation of a Transitioning at Work policy
Updating all forms to include inclusive options
Ensuring we ask all people what reasonable adjustments is needed
Reviewing all images and language used to ensure it is always inclusive
Added Recite Me accessibility tool to our website to create an inclusive experience for all visitors
CREATION OF A TRANSITIONING AT WORK POLICY.
REVIEWING HOW WE USE OUR SPACE AND OUR TIME
This has led to Goodman Masson:
Introducing a Multifaith and Wellbeing room
Creating a space to ask confidential questions about D&I
Arranging Drop-in sessions with senior leadership
Reviewing our social activities in our employee experience survey
Time provided for people to work on D&I initiatives
Ensuring D&I stays on the leadership agenda
MEASURING OUR EFFORTS AND BENCHMARKING...
Internally we aim to ensure we are representative of the locations we operate in. Benchmarking against useful datasets, such as ONS, Scope, Stonewall and other specialist organisations, allows us to measure our progress. For example, when looking at our London office we benchmark against the ONS / Stonewall statistics:
Gender (London: 54% male, 46% female*)
Ethnicity (London: Arab 1%, Asian/Asian British 19%, Black/African/Caribbean/Black British 13%, Other 2%, Mixed ethnic groups 5%, White 60% **)
Sexual Orientation (London: 94% Heterosexual, 6% LGBTQ+ ***)
Externally we aim to register candidates and present representative talent pools to our clients. In line with GDPR, we track the diversity data of our talent pools at each stage of the process and can share reports with our clients so they can see where bias enters the process and attention is needed. Last year we published our first D&I recruitment report and will be holding ourselves accountable by publishing this report regularly.
Sources
*https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/KS601EW/view/2013265927?rows=c sex&cols=cell **https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/KS201EW/view/2013265927?cols=measures ***https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/06/number-people-identify-lesbian-gaybisexual-uk-high
***https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/dec/11/gayrights.immigrationpolicy
***We are using recent treasury statistics about sexual orientation rather than ONS statistics, as we believe they are more aspirational.
SHARING BEST PRACTICE...
Through looking at ourselves, investing, and learning, we ’ ve been able to share and embed knowledge when supporting our clients with their recruitment. We recently hosted three separate Diversity focussed events on the following topics:
Diversity & Inclusion recruitment best practice
Diversity and Inclusion Strategy
Diversity & Inclusion Data
Click to view these webinars. We also took part in the TALiNT recruitment event to share the lessons we have learned with senior leaders in recruitment. See Page 12 of the TALiNT publication for our input.
WE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO EMBED KNOWLEDGE WHEN SUPPORTING OUR CLIENTS.
Summary
As we continue on our path of learning and driving change, our focus is to advance inclusion in recruitment – both for Goodman Masson and for the clients we partner with.
Goodman Masson will be transparent with our progress, share our learnings and implement changes to support our progression with diversity and inclusion.
If you would like to discuss this more, please contact your consultant, Catherine Kellaway or Lenna Cumberbatch.
OUR FOCUS IS TO ADVANCE INCLUSION IN RECRUITMENT