Diversity & Inclusion
The Better Placed Group is at the start of its journey in creating a truly Diverse and Inclusive environment within our own business and making sure that our attitudes, systems and procedures enable us to place the most suitable and talented people with our clients – regardless of ethnicity, gender, language, age, sexual orientation, religion, socio-economic status, political persuasion, experience, and education.
We might be early in our journey, but small changes have already made big differences. We have changed and are continuing to evolve the way we register our candidates and how we confidentially capture both personal and professional data; how we understand ALL our candidates attributes and doing so completely clear of any unconscious bias to arrive at the BEST shortlists and ultimately the BEST candidates for the job; how we are presenting our shortlists to our clients and sharing all necessary data to drive and measure progress effectively.
To make these changes permanent, we need to make sure the behaviours of everyone at Better Placed become ingrained in our DNA and culture. Initiatives are in process to ensure all our employees are mindful of the language that they use and the influence it has. We are determined to create an Inclusive approach to the way we interview our candidates but also challenging our own hiring model to recognise bias and then challenge it.
We know that change doesn’t happen overnight, but one of our key initiatives as we move into 2024 is a commitment to do the following before the end of June:
An “Inclusion Taskforce” has been set up, initially to drive stages 2 and 3, but ultimately to ensure our D&I agenda quickly becomes embedded in the culture of the business;
Discovery – to bring groups of people together in workshops to discuss D&I, to feel confident talking about it, to hear different ideas and perspectives and ultimately to start to include ALL of our employees in the conversation.
Training – the Taskforce will devise a training plan for ALL employees to cover a) internal factors, for example - developing our lead team to become more inclusive leaders and guidance in how to conduct an inclusive interview and b) how to confidently advise our clients on the many different questions they are asking us around D&I and how we can help support their goals and objectives of sourcing a wide range of diverse talent.
Our feeling is that if we can engage all our staff and begin to change their behaviours, then we can play our part in effecting change more broadly. As Sue Unerman, Chief Transformation Officer at Mediacom and Co-Author of the critically acclaimed “Belonging” nicely put it in a recent podcast – “Everybody needs to Lead from every seat”
Our Partners
We are delighted to say that we have partnered with Catherine Garrod – Founder of Compelling Culture:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinegarrod/
https://compellingculture.co.uk/
We will be regularly updating this page to show our progress in relation to our D&I pledge as we move through 2024.
