Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Sewell Wallis
At Sewell Wallis, diversity, equity and inclusion isn't a box ticking exercise - we've worked hard to weave it through everything we do. As a recruitment business, we sit between candidates and clients every day, which means the way we operate has a direct impact on who gets a fair chance at opportunity, and we take that responsibility seriously.
We want our team, and the candidates we represent, to be treated fairly, with dignity and respect, regardless of who they are. We've built a workplace and a recruitment process that welcomes people from different ethnicities, genders, religions, ages, backgrounds, abilities and sexual orientations, and gives everyone a genuine, equal chance to contribute and succeed at work.
We Recruit Inclusively & Ethically
Diverse candidate shorlists
We provide diverse shortlists as standard, and put candidates forward based on their merit and ability to do the job.
Blind CV screening
We use blind CV screening where requested, removing identifying details so candidates are assessed on skills and experience, rather than assumptions.
Unbiased job adverts
We draft our job adverts with neutral language based around essential skills, encouraging all suitable applicants to apply.
Consultant training
We train our consultants on inclusive hiring practices, ensuring they understand how to recruit inclusively and are kept up to date with current best practice.
Transparent Recruitment Processes
We're committed to ensuring our shortlists are diverse and inclusive. We combine specialist market knowledge and search techniques to deliver the best talent to our clients whilst supporting their DEI objectives, and are transparent about our processes, which are detailed below.
Briefing
Our process starts with a thorough briefing call with the hiring manager. This lets us understand both the technical needs of the role, and the wider organisational culture from the word go. It also gives us a chance to challenge any unnecessary criteria that could shrink the talent pool. From there, we work with the hiring manager to build a realistic role profile focusing on the vital skills and behaviours required to find the best fit.
Sourcing
Our approach to sourcing is multi-channel, rather than relying on a single recruitment method.
We have multiple talent pools to draw candidates from:
- Established candidate database
- Targeted headhunting
- Referrals from our network
- Advertising across multiple job boards and platforms, including Reed, Indeed and LinkedIn
- Passive candidate engagement via social media and networking
By using a wide search strategy, we capture both active and passive candidates in our search, and we can reach individuals from a wider range of backgrounds, industries and career paths.
Advertising
Our adverts are set up to appeal to the widest possible audience. We've worked to make sure all of our advertising and candidate communications use clear and inclusive language. The platform we use to post our adverts has a built-in gender-bias checker, which helps us ensure the language we use is gender-neutral. We also train our consultants to focus on experience and capabilities, and to assess a candidate's potential, which helps reduce the influence of unconscious bias during the process.
Client Support
We work closely with our clients to understand their objectives when it comes to diversity and inclusion and their recruitment processes. Where it's appropriate, we can tailor our approach to support these priorities whilst maintaining a merit-based recruitment process. We also provide our clients with honest market insight on talent availability and can share advice on any adjustments that could be made to help attract a broader and more representative pool of candidates.
Employee Wellbeing
We know that inclusion isn't just about who we hire, it's about how supported people feel once they're here. We're committed to ensuring the wellbeing of our team and have multiple ways we can support our employees.
Flexible Working
Mental Health Support
Learning & Development
Career Progression
Looking to the Future
We don't believe our work towards inclusive recruitment is finished, and we don't think any recruitment business can honestly say it is.
We currently monitor our shortlists and processes to ensure gender balance, diversity, disability representation and hiring outcomes already, but looking forward, we have more planned to ensure we remain on top when it comes to ED&I.
We have plans to:
- Utilise external ED&I expertise to review our policies and practices against current legislation and best practice
- Carry out regular audits of our candidate data, so we can track our successes and spot where we need to improve
- Continue to develop our ED&I reporting which helps us support our client's own diversity goals with data
We believe this is the responsibility of everyone in business, and will continue to champion ED&I approaches to recruitment across the industry.