Recruitment practice: is your door really open to talent?

 

Introduction

 

How can employers attract the widest range of talents? And how does this link to diversity goals and best practice within organisations? This briefing paper considers how the way an organisation thinks about work, and the way it goes about finding and matching employees to the work that needs doing, can affect the diversity and talent mix within a business. More specifically, it considers how reduced hours arrangements can be a planned way of working from the outset, rather than an accommodation for previously full-time employees. The origins of this briefing lie in research Working Families carried out into job advertisements in the Civil Service[1], but we believe that within it there are important lessons for other employers too.

Background

Reduced hours work “plays a significant part in women’s lifetime pattern of employment”. In 2004, 42% of women in employment worked reduced hours[i]. Working reduced hours as a way of combining caring and employment responsibilities is more common for women than men, and is a highly significant source of potential employment for women with children. But it comes at a cost. A 2004 survey of reduced hours workers showed that just over half had had previous jobs in which they used higher qualifications or skills or had more management/supervisory responsibility. Callers to Working Families’ employee helpline support the body of evidence that there is a particular problem about availability of ‘good quality’ reduced hours jobs. Not only is the lack of good quality reduced hours roles frustrating for the individual (and costly with a part-time pay gap of 36%) but it is also not using the full potential of the workforce and represents an under-use of experience and skills for the economy. Reduced hours working for men remains relatively rare in comparison, and the prevailing employment culture means that it is often difficult for men to work on a reduced hours basis at all. At Working Families we wanted to examine what it was like for parents and carers who are attempting to enter the job market or are changing jobs and who want work on a reduced hours basis.  

Working Families research

Working Families carried out research We need to talk about hours: Job advertising in the Civil Service in late 2008. The Civil Service was chosen to test recruitment practices because it is a major employer; and because we had already identified through other research some pockets of good practice, offering posts at senior level on a reduced hours or job-share basis. The Civil Service has a Public Sector Duty to demonstrate a commitment to promoting equality of opportunity between men and women in its policies and practices. Therefore, we would expect that as women are more likely than men to want to work reduced hours or as a job-share, support for equality of opportunity would translate into good availability of reduced hours roles. The findings are not representative of the UK employment scene as a whole but we hoped that the research would uncover good practice that could be shared with other employers when they advertise posts.

The findings

Working Families looked on the Civil Service Gateway (where jobs at all levels of responsibility are advertised) for posts advertised between 13-18 September 2008. 70 jobs were advertised across 28 departments. The first impression was that the Civil Service has a predominantly full-time hours culture for new recruits. Of interest is the range of jobs that fell into this category. The jobs advertised as full-time ranged widely from administrative to managerial roles.

 

Of the 70 posts:

• 50  were exclusively full-time;
• 18 were available full-time, but open to flexible workers, most commonly job-sharing;
• 2 were exclusively reduced hours posts.

 

Using  a secret shopper exercise, Working Families enquired about the 50 vacancies advertised as full-time to see whether there were opportunities to apply for these roles on a reduced hours basis or as a job-share. The second part of our exercise was to look at those Departments that advertised posts as open to job-share to find out more about job-sharing  in the Civil Service. How does this work for an outside recruit?

 

Following enquiries we found that, of the 50 full-time jobs:

• 33 were either confirmed as full-time roles or it remained unclear whether a reduced hours application would be accepted, and how such a role would work in practice;
• 12 were in fact open to reduced hours working or jobsharing, although not advertised as such;
• We did not have a response to our enquiry from the other 5 posts.

 

Analysis Highlights

 

Lack of Clarity

There was a lack of clarity about whether people who wished to work reduced hours could apply for jobs advertised as full-time. Confusing information clouded the issue – for example some jobs adverts stated they were full-time posts, and the conditions of employment confirmed this. Yet the advert itself also claimed that flexible working was a possibility, subject to business need.  This lack of clarity and consistency may discourage reduced hours applicants who want to apply for a post from doing so even where the employer might be content to have a person with the right skills and experience to work reduced hours in the role. It is worth remembering that the right to request flexible working is only available when an employee has been in work for 26 weeks, so openness to flexible working at recruitment needs to be made very clear in advertisements and job descriptions.

 

Business Needs

There was a general caveat around business need when considering applications and flexible working patterns. An external candidate applying to a department would have little idea what the business needs might be. In responses from Departments there was a poor explanation of business needs, and how they might influence whether a job could be open to a reduced hours or job-share applicant. This may be an unnecessary discouragement for those people wanting to apply for a post, and would also make it very difficult for an outside applicant to make a case for reduced hours working at interview or in a written application. An external candidate would rarely be in the position to know the business needs, providing an easy out for employers who do not really wish to consider flexible working requests. Making clear in the application pack any special business needs which might constrain particular working patterns would be a good practice.

 

Difficulty in contacting Departments

From the start we encountered difficulties contacting departments or finding the right person to ask about the possibility of working reduced hours, or with whom we could talk about any flexibility over working hours. This was a particular issue where an external agency was dealing with an application and there was not a named person who could answer queries about a post.

 

Job-sharing

Knowledge about the practicalities of job-sharing was patchy. Only one department had a job-share register, and there was no insight into how this would assist a potential job-sharer applying from outside the Civil Service. From the point of view of an individual job -sharer applying the responses were confusing and inconsistent, ranging from advice that job sharers could only apply in pairs, to accepting one job-sharer and then re-advertising to find a partner for them. There was no indication from job advertisements as to the expectation for applicants who wanted to job-share.

 

But this is just about the Civil Service, isn’t it?

This research was conducted on the Civil Service, but there are lessons which can be learned from this exercise which have relevance for many other employers, including those outside the public sector. Many employers will have contracts and relationships with the public sector which require them to demonstrate a commitment to equality policies. Recruitment policy may well fall under this. But even without legislative or contractual compliance as a driver, there are a number of good reasons why employers can look at the findings here to develop their own recruitment policies. Chief amongst these is maximising the chances of getting the best candidate by careful consideration of designing jobs, and advertising them.

 

The right hours for the job

When considering advertising a post, it is worth having a look at the job itself. If you are replacing an employee, the likelihood is that, over time, they have adapted the role in some ways which make it unlikely that it adheres to the original job description. It is worth re-appraising the job to see just what it needs now – does it still need someone 9-5, five days a week? Or have there been changes, either in the nature of the job, or perhaps in the client relationships, which mean that the job doesn’t really look like it used to. Even where a job really does need to be full-time, it may be worth considering jobshare as an additional option. The default position might not have to be full-time, all the time.

 

Don’t exclude skilled people

By advertising in inflexible ways, you run the risk of excluding the flexible talent. Although this is an old argument, it bears repeating. Dissuading flexible working can be as much about omission as commission. Sending out signals about the organisation when recruiting can be a powerful factor in the way you attract or repel talent. Even if you have nurtured a flexible culture internally, a public face which only wants full-time people, or does not offer any information about reduced hours or flexible working will not be an attractive proposition to potential employees who are evaluating the job market.

 

Have policy, will use

The research showed that there was some confusion and doubt when it came to considering requests for reduced hours working in posts advertised as full-time. Avoiding this means thoroughly thinking through policies on recruitment, and then ensuring that there is no disconnect with practice. Clear thinking around reduced hours work and job-share has the potential to open up new pools of talent.

 

Do the right thing – for your organisation

Is there a responsibility incumbent on those employers who aren’t bound by legislation to do anything around gender equality? Aligning equality goals with business performance and organisational aspirations is more likely to prove a persuasive argument. Encouraging the participation of women in your workforce through an enlightened recruitment policy, coupled with really focussed monitoring of their career paths should soon start to build a concrete evidence base.

 

Conclusion

The way that organisations recruit can affect more than just the people they attract. It also reflects on how work organisation is handled, on how employees are able to work, and the organisation’s own attitudes to non traditional work patterns. To have the greatest success in widening the talent pool from which you recruit, and reminding existing employees that your commitment to alternative working patterns is real, our research leads us to recommend taking action under two headings.

 

Job design

Clarity around what the job really needs must come first, to be supported by an appropriate business case and delivered via appropriate job design. 

 

Recruitment advertising

The language of how you recruit should be kept under review, and you should consider initiatives like including the rationale for the design of the role with application packs, and providing robust and consistent back-up information where necessary about reduced hours or job sharing for prospective candidates. If you are committed to flexible working, say so. If the job doesn’t need to be worked standard hours, say so. If you are open to negotiating hours, say so.

 

Ideally, the way you recruit should:

• accurately reflect an openness to alternative working arrangements if appropriate;
• accurately reflect any organisational initiatives and commitments and the positive organisational culture if it exists, and;
• attract more of the kind of people you are looking for.

 

Although the same Public Sector Equality Duties do not exist for private sector employers, the facts of being an employer mean that there are reasons why this research should resonate in all sectors. The idealised, always available employee is a myth: employees (including prospective ones) have to reconcile work and ‘life’ commitments in different ways throughout their working lives, regardless of the sector in which they work. Recognising this, and adapting the way you recruit and employ these employees will increase the range of talents available. Demographic, economic and social changes are likely to make more people flexible workers than ever before. Organisations that can respond to these changing aspirations and expectations will be the best placed to succeed.

 

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