0:00:03 - Sarah
Hello everyone and welcome to the first episode of SEEdPOD. I'm Sarah. You might recognise my voice from SEE's other podcast, The HR Edit. SEEdPOD is our new thought leadership podcast. Our thinking behind SEEdPOD is that authentic thought leadership comes not from one big idea although it often starts with something significant or profound but rather it evolves over time with many thousands of small seeds that help shape and define an opinion, an understanding and an approach to a particular area or subject. Expertise, insight and experience are all essential requirements of being a thought leader. Insight and experience are all essential requirements of being a thought leader and over the next few months we aim to bring you a range of thought leadership podcasts with original views and engaging perspectives. In this episode, ruth discusses local government recruitment and specifically diversity with Kate Wilson from Osborne Thomas. 

Over to you, Ruth.

0:01:02 - Ruth
One of the areas that we are asked about a lot in various different forums about diversity and the significance and importance of diversities to our councils In terms of how councils serve their communities, which are broad and diverse communities of people. The service offers they need to deliver and their people and their staff, whatever it is, whether it's that externally facing service delivery or internally to the people, to the nature of the service, just dramatically improves the quality of decision making and the options and the perspectives that are brought forward. One area that is particularly significant in terms of the diversity agenda is with recruitment, and going back decades this has been important, whether it's in having particular occupations or sectors that are the preserve of one gender. 

Certainly, my work in fire service was very much loads of attempts to try and broaden out the appeal of that organisation to women, but in a day and age where councils are really struggling to recruit, thinking about how they appeal to a broader spectrum of their population or people that might be interested in working with them and having a career in a council is really really important. 

So we're delighted that I've been able to explore some of the issues about diversity and recruitment and some of the challenges and some of the tools and to explore some of the issues about diversity and recruitment and some of the challenges and some of the tools and techniques and some of the detail behind getting this right and, conversely, not getting it right with Kate Wilson, who recently led our workforce session with our member councils on what it means to really appeal to a broader perspective of people when you're getting a job out to market. Kate, do you want to just start by just giving us a little overview of your sort of work in recruitment and the work you've done with local councils in trying to diversify their workforce? 

0:03:19 - Kate
Yeah, sure so, Osborne Thomas, we're executive recruiters, we do both permanent and interim recruitment and we offer HR consultancy. So whether we're handling recruitment on behalf of local authorities or whether we are handling an HR consultancy project, the key is, I think, diversity needs to be at the centre of any of those pieces of work, needs to be at the centre of any of those pieces of work. It's a really hot topic at the moment and that's pan sector, it's not just within local governments. There's sorts of things that we do when it's recruitment. We reach out to minority audiences through specific networks, groups, et cetera, that you can find on LinkedIn. There are media options that you can make use of, but in our view, we find more traction, if you like, and engagement through the direct targeting of individuals. 

0:04:14 - Ruth
It's interesting you say that, Kate, because many, many years ago I did a dissertation and I was studying positive action in the fire service, trying to engage more women. And at the time and I say it is many years ago the London Fire Service, who were one of my sort of research interviews, said well, we wanted more women in the fire service and so we advertised in Cosmopolitan cosmopolitan. And their experience of that was that lots of females passed it to their male partner or husband to apply for a job, so that even though they'd used what they thought was a gender positive media, the impact of that campaign didn't have the desired results. And it's intriguing that you say as well that the direct approach works better sometimes than just a blanket media approach. But what would be great to get your insights in is about what would you recommend to recruiters in terms of selling a role so that they appeal to a diverse audience? 

0:05:26 - Kate
I think there's a number of ways that you can do that. For me, when a lot of organisations go out to advertise, the content is lacking. You then click through to a job description. Few are compelling, let's face it, and they can be excessively long with endless lists of essential requirements, which effectively rules a lot of people out. You know, are there not development areas for people? And I think when it comes to diversity, that's particularly important. The supporting collateral, I think, also is key to diversity. So, whether that's attaching elements to your job posting or whether that's through elements to your job posting, or whether that's through your careers pages on your website, is to have content that is minority-friendly and to have use language that's minority-friendly. It's not about simply putting a statement on your careers pages to say that you are an ED&I supportive organisation. That doesn't do it. What you want is to have case studies, profiles of people within the organisation that perhaps reflect those audiences, so that people can actually feel they're not just making a statement, they are actually living and breathing being a diverse employer. 

0:06:42 - Ruth
That's interesting as well, because when we did the recruitment conference that you workshopped with us after we'd gone through, as a region, the launch, the imminent launch of the national campaign, you gave us an opportunity to look through different websites and one of the things that struck me there was how many job pages say we're a disability confident employer but there was nothing else. There was nothing really in the imagery, in the language or really in the self to the candidates that said, if you've got a disability, if you've got limited mobility, if you've got perhaps other sort of barriers to recruitment, this is what it's like working for us. I mean, you must see some really good examples as well. So what do you think in that respect, makes an organisation stand out in terms of reaching out to diverse groups? 

0:07:40 - Kate
Again, I think it's back to that the language that you use, the content, the imagery. We've been working with East Midlands Combined County Authority recently and we've gone out with a big advertising campaign and careers pages and the imagery that we've used. We've been very sure to include people from all walks of life, if you like, in terms of minority and their background, that sort of thing, and actually that's been received really well in the sense of it's been sort of highlighted as a campaign that has been diversity friendly and equally, what we've then done is supporting candidates through the process to ensure that they are equally treated throughout the process and that the process is fair and that they are enabled to speak up and speak openly about what help and support they might need within EMCA. 

0:08:39 - Ruth
So thinking about that's the upfront, I suppose, advertising part we've spoken about, let's move on to talking about the process. So once you've advertised assuming you've got all of that right what would you recommend is really good practice in terms of running a recruitment process or a selection process that gets the best out of candidates and then appeals to a more diverse pool of potential employees? 

0:09:08 - Kate
Yeah, there's a number of things I think that organisations can do right from the start in the sense of offering some support and perhaps coaching in the sense of how to fulfill an application form or writing a covering letter to support a CV. 

Other organisations do it differently, but I think, beyond that, it is about meeting key individuals, perhaps within an organisation, understanding that there are internal groups of people that can meet on a regular basis and perhaps offer some interaction with those groups so that those groups can share what their own experiences are when it comes to diversity and working within that organisation. 

Other things that you can do is be very high touch in terms of helping them through the process and explaining what the process is going to be. If you think about it, when you're going through an interview process, or if assessment is involved, that can be really quite daunting for a lot of people, and particularly for younger people. They're not used to necessarily going through that process and they're not sure what to expect. So to coach them through, I think, is really important. One of the other areas that we've been quite heavily involved with recently is the handling of those people who are neurodiverse, and so those people we offer the interview questions or some of the interview questions to them in advance of the interview, maybe 24 hours ahead, so that they've got some time to prepare and be able to offer the response that they want and sell themselves to the best as they possibly can. 

0:10:48 - Ruth
Now that's interesting because you're right, you know, the very traditional form of selection can be quite daunting and all of those things that make the organisation seem like a really warm and welcoming place to work sometimes are forgotten in that process. Because, just historically, how we've done it, just before we conclude, it'd be good to sort of think about what this looks like for young people. I'm always struck when I see data on the demography of the workforce of local government, just how aging it is, or how higher percentage is 50 plus, and so there is. You know, whilst technology probably is meaning that you know workforces are shrinking and financial challenges might mean workforces are shrinking, nevertheless the sort of demographics of the workforce are a sort of risk that most councils will have on their risk register. Is there anything that you think, particularly with the younger people, younger generation are really important to think about in the context of recruiting a diverse workforce? 

0:11:59 - Kate
Yeah, definitely. An interesting stat for you is that 60% of young people who are considering a role within local government actually don't understand what the role is all about. And I get that when I see these endless lengths of job description and specification. They're not clear. What young people need, I think, is comprehensive, concise, easy to understand information. What is it that they're actually going to be doing? 

Young people also don't realise the plethora of roles that are available within local government. They can have a great career within local government, but these things aren't promoted on local government careers pages not often anyway. And another big important aspect for young people in this day and age is about the commitment to social value and the environment. Young people are well into that at the moment. So, as an organisation, naturally local government is there to significantly contribute to social value and the environment. A lot of organisations don't take the opportunity to sell that within their collateral in terms of what they do within their local communities, what they're doing with their carbon footprint. You just don't see that on the careers pages. And those are the things that are going to make a role for a young person compelling to want to join local government. 

0:13:21 - Ruth
Thanks, Kate, and just your final, final observation. If there were three big things that you would say any council who's struggling with recruitment or concerned that they're not getting applicants from a diverse background, if there were three bits of advice, given your experience in this area, what would your top three be? 

0:13:48 - Kate
Okay. So I think the first thing to do is, if you're not achieving the goals that you want to achieve, is to actually undertake an audit of your recruitment process, and that can be quite eye-opening, I think, for some organisations, because they will see not only how clunky it potentially might be, but also how non-friendly it can be. So I think that's the first thing that I would suggest, and then, having done that, I think, take those sort of key elements from that audit, that process, in the sense of well, we need to improve our collateral on our careers pages, we need people profiles on the career pages, we need to demonstrate that we have these young people or these people from minority audiences working for our organisation and developing their careers. So those are two. What would be the third thing is to actually look at your channel strategy. Harping back to the comment I made earlier about direct targeting is how can you directly target those people from minority audiences or those younger people? And a lot of that is about using social media. It's all about social these days. 

0:14:51 - Ruth
Thanks, Kate. Thanks ever so much for sharing your insights with us. 

0:14:53 - Kate 
Thank you for having me. 

0:14:57 - Sarah
Thank you, Ruth and Kate, for that interesting discussion, especially as we come to the end of the National Make a Difference campaign. Don't forget to visit our website, seemp.co.uk, where our member councils and organisations have access to all sorts of resources on our partner hub, and look out for the next episode of SEEdPOD, where Ruth is joined by Mark Palmer to discuss devolution and the challenges ahead for councils. If you can't wait for that one, then why not catch up on our other podcasts, governance Matters or the HR Edit, which, by the way, is not just for HR professionals? SEEdPOD, the HR Edit and Governance Matters are podcasts from South East Employers and can be found wherever you get your podcasts.