We met with Alicia Richardson, Founder of her very own brand, Black, Create, Connect, to discuss the importance of an inclusive hiring process and her top tips on implementing a DEI strategy.

Alicia has 5+ years of diverse hiring experience, workshop facilitation and public speaking experience. Alicia has created and executed diverse hiring strategies by conducting detailed audits, research, and data analysis. This has resulted in her impacting who companies attract, and how they successfully retain diverse talent.

Why is inclusive hiring so important?

The reason we need to actively hire inclusively is because that allows for more candidates from different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences to enter the process and be given an equal opportunity to be hired in an organisation.

Ultimately, if a business hires more diversely, then they're able to reach more customers and widen their service range. On top of that, when a business is diverse, it opens up more room for collaboration, more room for perspective and more room for companies to have a more inclusive culture altogether.

What's the biggest challenge when implementing DEI?

Senior leadership buy-in. If the leadership are not bought into your DEI strategy, don't forget about it, but start again because they need to be involved. You need to bring the leadership team on that journey with you. How you do that comes by involving them in the conversation when building your strategy. What are their wider objectives and how can you tie what they do into your DEI initiatives?

A problem with companies is that they might do one DEI initiative and give up easily with it. Do you know why you did it in the first place? Is it part of a wider strategy and how are you measuring the impact?

How can the hiring process be more accessible?

Candidates don't always like to say straight away that they require adjustments, so it's something that needs to be embedded in the entire communication process. This might be on the first screening call, the email, or the candidate communication document. Whatever part of the process, just remind them, is there anything you need? When you jump on the interview, ask if there is anything that you can do.

Ensure that your system, such as the ATS that you're using, includes different ways for the candidate to apply. I know Teamtailor is fantastic for accessibility because you can apply in many different ways that are personal to each candidate, which is so key. If you take myself as an example, I'm dyslexic, so I present much better by video. If there were more application processes that were done via video versus written, I would've had so many jobs by now! I've probably been rejected by every job that I've applied via written. This doesn't mean that I'm incapable. It means that the application process wasn't accessible enough for me to showcase my best self.

How can DEI training be implemented more efficiently?

It's not about those long two or three-hour sessions where you're just overloaded with information and you go away to continue to do what you were doing. What I work on with clients are longer-term, bitesized training sessions, so that could be 30 minutes every two weeks or once a month, whatever works best. That way your employees don't feel like it's a large chunk of their schedule and they're more receptive to the information in making sure it's practical. They feel much more motivated to practise those conversations or practise speaking to a certain type of candidate.

I've seen people feel more encouraged to provide live feedback to each other. Some have also used real case studies and when we've come back together, we've talked about their recent experiences and the improvements and learnings that have been applied. People are then encouraged by what we're teaching and they feel more empowered.

The problem is that a lot of individuals do not feel confident enough to carry out an inclusive hiring process. They need that confidence, so having those regular sessions is also another way to do those affirmations and confidence boosting, reminding them that they're doing great.