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Private sector raises its game in approach to diversity, says survey

The number of UK businesses with diversity policies that go beyond legislation has risen by almost a fifth during the past twelve months, according to the annual Recruitment, retention and turnover survey 2004, carried out by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

While all sectors have improved their take-up of diversity practices, the private sector has shown the highest rate of improvement over the past twelve months. With over 60% of UK businesses now training interviewers in diversity issues, up from 45% in the 2003 survey. However, the public sector continues to lead the way in encouraging diversity, despite businesses raising their game.

The report suggests that more needs to be done to increase diversity and help solve the recruitment crisis. Findings show:

• Only 28% advertise vacancies beyond traditional media to target under-represented groups and currently evaluate the effectiveness of methods they use to encourage equal opportunities
• A third of employers fail to train interviewers in equal opportunities/diversity issues
• Less than a fifth of all organisations are able to provide recruitment documents in other formats (large print disk etc)
• Only 25% try use specific images/words in recruitment advertising to target under-represented groups.

Rebecca Clake, CIPD Organisation and Resourcing adviser says, "It's encouraging to see the private sector increasing their efforts to promote diversity. However more action could be taken. Employers could benefit from training their recruitment professionals to ensure they have a thorough of diversity issues, from ensuring they have a legally sound advertisement through to fair interview techniques.

"For organisations to compete effectively, they should tap into and employ as diverse a group of candidates as possible," adds Clake.

Other key diversity related findings:

Sexual orientation, religion and belief

• Awareness of the new employment equality regulations on sexual orientation, religion and belief is very high (99%)
• Only 15% of respondents have made changes to their recruitment practices but a larger proportion carried out reviews of their recruitment and diversity policies

Age

• The vast majority (97.2%) of organisations were aware of the forthcoming legislation on age
• More than 6 in 10 organisations felt that they would need to make further changes before 2006

About the survey

Survey responses were received from 976 employers (868 from the UK and 108 from Ireland) and relate to the period 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2003.

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