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Success Stories
Altogether Better Inclusive Recruitment Grant - Crohn's & Colitis UK
About Crohn's & Colitis UK
Crohn's and Colitis are the two main forms of inflammatory bowel disease. Since 1979, Crohn's & Colitis UK has been supporting everyone affected by these conditions. The charity's vision is to improve lives today and create a world free from Crohn's and Colitis tomorrow. They are experts in their field and are always striving for improvement.
Why Crohn's & Colitis UK applied for the grant
Crohn’s & Colitis UK recognised that their recruitment processes were not attracting a diverse selection of candidates. They wanted to better reflect the broader community and improve their workforce diversity with the aim of using their employees diverse lived experiences to potentially have a wider reach for their Education Program. This initiative aimed to inform a wider pool of potential service users about the support and services available, ensuring that no one with Crohn’s and Colitis missed out on essential support and advice. They understood that achieving this goal required a focus on attracting and retaining diverse staff.
They understood that this required reevaluating their recruitment strategies. By implementing an inclusive recruitment process, they aimed to remove barriers and attract a broader range of potential candidates. Crohn’s & Colitis UK were committed to learning and adopting more inclusive recruitment practices to eliminate any potential biases.
Having looked internally they acknowledged the need for more diverse candidates, and wanted to emphasise their dedication to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) throughout the recruitment process. To achieve meaningful changes, Crohn’s & Colitis UK understood the need for support and advice of an external inclusive recruiter to assess their EDI journey and enhance their recruitment processes.
What Crohn's & Colitis UK wanted to achieve
Crohn’s & Colitis UK applied to the TPP Altogether Better Inclusive Recruitment Grant to gain support in improving diversity within their recruitment processes and to understand how to project their brand to attract applicants that reflect the wider community. They had made some changes to their recruitment process but felt there was more they could do to make it more accessible and inclusive at every stage.
They were looking to recruit a Patient Education Officer. This was an exciting new role for the organisation to work alongside their new Patient Education Manager.
They wanted a candidate that could demonstrate that they could help develop an education program that would reach underrepresented groups.
What TPP did
TPP supported Crohn’s & Colitis UK through the recruitment process by providing the following:
- Reviewed the job description and provided advice on how to make it more inclusive
- Provided advice on language, essential and desirable skills, removing where these were not necessary
- Provided advice on how to make the job description more inclusive/gender neutral and wrote a gender neutral job advert
- Provided advice on the internal competency framework
- Provided advice on the interview questions and interview panel
- Provided candidate support through the process
- We liaised with Crohn’s & Colitis UK to ensure the interview process was inclusive including ensuring any reasonable adjustments were offered through the recruitment process
- We worked with Crohn’s & Colitis UK to set a clear timeline for the recruitment campaign and were on hand to offer any additional support
- We worked with recruiting manager to manage the offer and acceptance process, including negotiating flexible working and salary
Additional support offered throughout the process
TPP advised Crohn’s & Colitis UK on an inclusive recruitment process including looking through an intersectional lens and removing barriers for everyone so they could reach the widest pool of candidates as well as encouraging candidates with lived experience
TPP also looked at the interview questions to ensure inclusive language and remove any barriers, interview questions were sent to all candidates before their interview, and we provided advice on interview assessments. Reasonable adjustments were offered to all candidates from application to onboarding so candidates did not consider this to be a barrier.
Crohn’s & Colitis UK will be looking internally at what they have learned and how as an organisation they can implement this across the recruitment process and ways in which all employees can become an ally when it comes to diversity and eliminating bias.
What TPP achieved
The successful candidate had proven experience of working within the health sector and a passion for empowering people facing health challenges through support and education.
The candidate chosen was able to demonstrate their ability to develop an education program that would reach a wider audience and further develop their program to underrepresented people with Crohn’s and Colitis.
A debrief meeting was held to discuss the campaign to ensure that we had exceeded their expectations and to offer continued advice and support.
They were very pleased with the outcome of the Altogether Better Inclusive Recruitment Grant and will be looking internally on how they can implement what they have learned across the rest of the business and future recruitment requirements.
Diversity data
As part of the process, TPP gathered data to monitor the diversity of applicants to the role. Below are some of our key findings.
Gender
Ethnicity
Age
Testimonial
“The guidance notes that came as part of the grant application process were really clear and I knew TPP were there to help if and when needed. The learning around writing a truly neutral JD was very useful along with the conversations we had around the suitability of the language use in our competency frameworks. This process has given us learning points that I would hope we can share and learn from as a whole organisation.”
Crohn's & Colitis UK
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