Accessible recruitment is the process of making the recruitment process and the workplace accessible to individuals with disabilities and neurodiversity. This includes ensuring that job postings, application materials, and other recruitment materials are accessible to all individuals, regardless of their abilities. It also includes providing accommodations for job interviews, such as sign language interpreters, closed captioning, or alternative formats for materials.
In accessible recruitment, the employer should also make sure that the recruitment process and the selection criteria are not discriminatory and that they do not put individuals with disabilities at a disadvantage. This means that the employer should consider alternative ways of measuring candidates’ qualifications, abilities, and skills that are not dependent on physical abilities or specific forms of communication.
Accessible recruitment is not:
❌ Saying you hire disabled and neurodiverse people but not adapting your processes.
❌ Signing up for a pledge or charter that requires you to do nothing to improve your support of disabled and neurodiverse people.
❌ Hiring disabled and neurodiverse people into short-term work experience placements only
❌ Promoting opportunities in disabled-community forums or job boards that lead to inaccessible websites.
❌ Waiting until after someone has applied to communicate whether you can or can't accommodate a person's adjustments.
Accessible recruitment is:
✅ Thoughtfully creating job specs and considering barriers for people with different types of health conditions and actively seeking to remove those barriers where possible
✅ Being transparent around barriers or limitations that exist for specific roles and if you can support adjustments or have alternative versions of jobs available
✅ Ensuring that all qualified candidates have an equitable opportunity to be considered for a job, regardless of whether they are disabled or not. (Not every disabled person has advanced additional needs, and many of us have loads of valuable skills FYI)
✅ Clearly stating your current accessibility standards and available adaptations on your websites (and even job ads if you're using specialist services) - people really appreciate this.
✅ Making your website, careers site and hiring process accessible and neuro-inclusive!
✅ Offering flexible scheduling, remote work options, and accommodations for job interviews and other aspects of the recruitment process.
✅ Providing training for managers and human resources personnel on how not to treat every disabled person they meet like a Make-a-Wish kid (very that!)
✅ Making use of tools and methods to assess candidates that are not dependent on a specific form of communication or way of interacting.
✅ APPOINTING A DESIGNATED SAFEGUARDING LEAD (DSL) FOR YOUR ORGANISATION IF YOU ARE ENGAGING VULNERABLE PEOPLE!!!!
Interested in getting finding out how your processes are stacking up for access and inclusion? Get a free inclusive hiring audit on us.
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For more information on how Clu uses machine learning to improve hiring channel performance and shatter barriers to the job market for systemically underutilised talent, get in touch with our team today.