ISE’s EDI Conference explored how employers can change cultures and practices to improve outcomes for diverse students and employees. Jayne Cullen, freelance consultant and co-chair of ISE’s social mobility sub-committee, shares her top takeaways.

1. Refreshed ISE EDI strategy
ISE is refreshing its approach to EDI to include a focus on shared insights, resources and case studies between members. Feedback suggested this was the most powerful way of sharing best practice and mobilising change. Watch this space.

2. AI for good?
A theme running throughout the event was the use of AI and its impact on inclusive hiring. Thanks to Neurosight, Arctic Shores, HR Biscuit and Eli Onboarding for their invaluable insights.

Here are some of my key takeaways:

• Assessing neurodivergent candidates should be more than a right or wrong answer – it’s more about the cognitive journey that we need to measure and how AI can positively support.
• Are you using AI to make decisions or are you using AI to automate decision execution? Organisations may fall foul of the former, especially in regulated industries where there is lack of transparency around how the decision was arrived at. AI supported by human oversight will give organisations greater protection around decision making.
• The market seems divided in its position regarding the use of generative AI such as ChatGPT. While some employers embrace its use in job applications, offering guidance for candidates, others feel in a state of limbo or advocate a ban.
• Ensuring that processes are AI aware may help counter arguments around bias, for example:

                o Make assessment tasks more topical (harder to detect)
                o Ask for individual input or interpretation around a task
                o Avoid using right or wrong answer questions
                o Leverage alternative forms to text-based questions (e.g. video)

3. Better support for neurodivergent talent to succeed in recruitment
We explored ways to better support neurodivergent candidates in early careers hiring:

• Avoid unnecessary selection criterion – if it’s not aligned closely to the role then be brutal and remove the requirement.
• Be aware of using SJTs in light of the BT v Meier test case from 2019, which found BT guilty of discrimination based on the organisation not offering a disabled candidate an alternative to an SJT.
• Consider using paired exercises in assessment centres as an alternative to group exercises to reduce social anxiety for neurodiverse candidates.

4. Ask questions to provoke
Nicola Rollock, author of The Racial Code, offered some great advice around racial justice and how recruiters can help bring about positive change – ‘not being there yet’ isn’t good enough!

She posed some very direct questions that we might ask ourselves in our work to eliminate the difference in experiences and outcomes for racially minoritised groups:

• What is the racial maturity of our organisation and team?
•  What are the priorities of our organisation and who is making the decisions? The answers to this are likely at the route of lack of progress.
• How do we currently deal with intersectionality without minimising each group’s needs? Are early careers leaders focussed too much on understanding social class at the expense of understanding race for example?
• What do we define by success when it comes to changing the diversity landscape?

5. Cost-of-living impact on students
The cost-of-living crisis continues to impact students and financial inclusion needs to be addressed by employers.

Some examples that were discussed include:

• Reimbursing travel costs for assessment centres.Offering options such as virtual credit card systems (eg. Conferma), so candidates don’t have to pay anything upfront.
• Before their first pay day, suggest managers and/or buddies pay for any team social costs to ensure no one is financially excluded.

Read how Enterprise Mobility is relieving financial pressure on students

6. Collaboration
Collaboration came out as a key theme throughout the conference. It is a potential solution to organisations having to do more with less in the current economic climate to the detriment of implementing wide-reaching inclusive practices.

Examples of current and potential future collaboration activities are:

• Industry sector collaboration to agree the social mobility indicators to use in the future to enable useful industry benchmarks
• Assessment and education collaboration to look at the negative impact of cognitive tests on black heritage audiences
• ISE member collaboration to reach cold spot regions by spreading the load to drive greater awareness in lower participation regions
• ISE facilitates a gathering of senior leaders to address the lack of senior support for inclusive practices at entry level

EDI themes run through many ISE events. Find out what is coming up in 2024 and 2025.