How good are your Early Careers programmes when it comes to DE&I?

Why now is the time for an Early Careers DE&I audit.

Around this time of the year in the UK (timescales differ in other countries yet the principle is the same), most organisations, large and small, public, and private, are scrambling to get their accounts signed off and approved to close out the tax year.?Organisations nationwide bring in the auditors to tap into their expertise to help us make sure our companies are legally and financially sound and things are reported accurately.

So, the question is, if we do this with finances, why aren’t we doing it with our one true real competitive advantage – people? Especially, given the importance talent pipelines will play in the next 2-5 years of your organisational evolution in building a future-ready and diverse workforce. Not only that, but the risk in not reviewing your approach to hiring talent, means that it is likely that others will - and will then win the ‘war on talent’.

Evaluating your Early Careers Programme

Placing DE&I at the heart of your audit is essential - ?we all know that.

“More diverse companies perform better financially in comparison to non-diverse firms” Wall Street Journal

?A good place to start is with your Early Careers programme – often a stable and highly effective source of diverse talent. An Early Careers programme allows you to build a future talent pipeline, that you can develop, shape and mould to best perform and succeed in your unique organisational culture.?It can also be very cost-effective when thinking about the costs of buying this talent post-programme two-three years later vs growing it yourself, so it is a long term pay off. From an ESG point of view, Early Careers programmes can have massive benefits to individuals, society, and your wider organisation when you embed DE&I and do it right. All stakeholders want to see how and what you are doing differently and what action is being taken to advance this - and rightly so.

“Inclusive companies are 1.7 times more likely to be innovation leaders in their market” ?Bersin .

Many organisations have moved away from hiring from a redbrick university only and requiring a 2:1 degree, the best offer other routes for school leavers and socially diverse talent to enter their ranks.?Therefore, programmes are becoming more inclusive, more open and more reflective of wider society – big tick.?Yet, we are not there, and we are still on a journey and there is more to do.?Biases still exist, and there are still plenty of lessons to be learnt on how to do things better and adopt more DE&I best practices.?Furthermore, the opportunity to continually improve always exists.

?Why data is the key to looking at DE&I?

?Using data to assess the DE&I in your workforce is key to success. But there are many challenges and gaps to find out:

• ?How do you benchmark this with externally available data and compare it against your competitors??
• How do you decide what to adjust, iterate or tweak based on this data-driven insight??
• What do your internal stakeholders want? Are they aligned on what good looks like from the participants to the executive leaders and all in-between?
• Are you taking a client-centric, data-driven approach to this type of review?

?DE&I audits aren’t easy, yet it is critical you do it, bias-free and open-minded.?From my own experience managing Early Careers programmes, you become so invested in them, so it’s important to be open to feedback.?By being reflective, constructive, empowering improvements by being data-centric and getting expert insights, you can know where/how/why to improve your programme and embrace more DE&I best practices to drive better DE&I and organisational outcomes.

Case Study: National House Building Organisation – DE&I Audit in practice

?Aon worked with a national firm to review their early careers programme, reviewing their end-to-end offering holistically, looking at key challenges and pain points. We analysed key metrics using Aon’s robust benchmark data. These are some of the points we evaluated and you have to bride the pre-hire and post-hire stakeholders to make this work:

Pre-Hire:

• Attraction – with today’s candidate-driven market it’s important to look at the bigger picture - where does your brand's ESG strategy fit in??How does DE&I get embedded into the programme and wider organisation? How are you approaching and engaging neurodiverse talent?
• Rewards – how do you differentiate your brand, whilst also being competitive against your peers? In today’s market, it is also vital there is equal pay in all its forms.
• Recruitment process and Candidate Experience – It’s important to ensure you have a DE&I driven, fair, scientific, objective, and unbiased processes. Whilst providing candidates with a fun, engaging and immersive experience reflective of your brand.
• Assessment and selection – By assessing based on potential rather than experience opens our talent pool to new and unexpected places.

Post Hire:

• Pre-boarding and On-boarding – Organisations are struggling with their offer acceptance rates so how good are you at engaging talent before it walks through the door upon acceptance of an offer. Ask yourself, do you have a plan for the first 30-60-90 days?
• Rotation Programmes vs non-Rotation – there are pros and cons for both – but what’s best for your organisation and talent these days? How does this impact DE&I?
• Development Opportunities and Developmental feedback – structured, unstructured, formal, and informal, how should it come together and why in the most inclusive way? How is this consistently delivered, free of bias and how is it empowering talent to improve?
• Managers coaching Early Careers talent – How are you ensuring managers are good role models for early careers talent??Are they trained and empowered to understand DE&I and have challenging, open and human conversations - or are they just given the manager role for the first time in their careers with incoming Early Careers talent?
• Off-boarding – What happens after 12-18-24 months post programme completion? How are you going to retain this talent? What DE&I data do you have here, as at this stage, things change, and people typically leave a programme and its framework.

Aon took a traffic light approach to each part of the process using Aon’s robust data to benchmark:

The results? More clarity on how the firm could improve at each stage of the process with Aon recommending actionable advice and improvement points.

Are you thinking about improving your Early Careers programme?

To find out more on what you can do to maximise DE&I and improve your Early Careers programmes, or to share your own experiences here - please reach out to me on LinkedIn or at [email protected] , or of course, keep following and read what I share next. I, like us all am always learning!

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