Diversity, equality and inclusion at CK Group: Giving the best talent a fair chance, and creating an environment where all individuals feel valued, respected and empowered.
CK Group is an influential element of the life science recruitment chain, sourcing the best talent for our clients, from all across the globe. People can be the most important assets to a successful business, and by putting in place measures that give everyone a fair chance we increase the odds of finding the perfect fit for an organisation.
What is diversity, equality and inclusion?
Diversity: Covers differences in race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, socio-economic backgrounds and more. Embracing diversity means recognising and appreciating these differences rather than merely tolerating them. A diverse workforce brings together a variety of perspectives, experiences and talents, which can lead to enhanced creativity, problem-solving and decision-making amongst staff.
Equality: In the workplace this involves treating all individuals fairly and providing equal opportunities for growth, advancement and development regardless of their backgrounds. This means implementing policies and practices that eliminate biases and barriers, ensuring that everyone has an equal chance to thrive based purely on their abilities.
Inclusion: The active and intentional effort to create an environment where everyone feels welcomed, respected and supported. It goes beyond just having diverse representation, it is to actively involve and value each individual’s contributions. Inclusive workplaces promote collaboration, open communication and create a sense of belonging among employees, leading to higher employee engagement and retention.
Read our full ‘CK Group Equality and Diversity Policy’.
What does embracing diversity, equality and inclusion involve?
Education and Training: Implementing diversity training programs can help raise awareness about biases, promote cultural understanding and improve empathy among employees.
Policies and Practices: Reviewing and updating policies to ensure they are inclusive is essential. This may involve revisiting recruitment strategies, pay equity, flexible work arrangements and providing accommodations for diverse needs.
Creating Safe Spaces: Establishing safe spaces where employees can openly discuss concerns, share experiences and offer suggestions without fear of discrimination, help to create that trusting relationship between employer and employee.
Leadership Commitment: Management teams play a key role in driving these initiatives. When leaders demonstrate a genuine commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion, it sets the tone for the entire company.
Measuring Progress: Regularly assessing and measuring progress, be that through metrics or employee feedback, it allows companies to track their efforts and make any necessary adjustments.
Unbiased hiring with CK Group
Applicant Accessibility: The first place of reference for candidates when researching your company or applying for jobs is your company website. You can take lots of steps to improve website accessibility, including incorporating a screen-reader, making sure text can be enlarged on any device, ensuring job adverts are more accessible and mobile friendly. If it’s not feasible for your business to integrate a screen reader, you can create videos to sell your company and current vacancies to your candidates. There are a range of products out there at various price points.
Job Advert Review: If you’re confident in how physically accessible your job advertisement will be to candidates, it’s also worth looking at the wording of these adverts to ensure that the language and phrasing being used are not unwittingly excluding any skilled candidates. At CK Group we review all of our job descriptions and adverts for gendered or racial language or phrasing. We will do the same for your business, but there are also lots of resources online discussing this topic and giving examples and advice.
Anonymous Applications: CK Group will provide you with a selection of qualified candidate applications from a wide range of backgrounds. To help our clients shortlist based purely on the skills candidates have to do the job, we can anonymise applications. We anonymise candidate CVs to various degrees depending on the circumstances and your preferences. This can include the removal of; candidate names and age, personal pronouns, specific details of their entitlement to work, university institutions and locations, or other location data unrelated to the role. This gives you the freedom to know you are selecting the best candidates for the job regardless of unrelated factors.
Diversity in the Supply Chain: Taking a proactive approach to diversity and inclusion does not have to be limited to what your business does. It also includes the type of suppliers and other businesses you engage with. At CK Group we are critical of our of practices. We run a quarterly D&I employee working group to review our practices, annual training in identifying unconscious bias in the recruitment process, and send employee feedback surveys. We also take the diversity and inclusion of our suppliers seriously, and consciously support suppliers and other businesses taking an active approach by choosing to do business with them.
By choosing to do business with CK Group, you will also be taking the decision to consciously support ethical suppliers who believe in the positive benefits of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Contact us
What do you think of these ideas? Do you have feedback on what we can do better, or suggestions of your own?
If you want to learn more about how we can support your diversity & inclusion initiatives, or just want to chat further about any of these suggestions, you can start the conversation with us today by emailing info@ckgroup.co.uk or calling 01246 457700.
