Pre-employment screening
Developing an inclusive and accessible onboarding experience tailored for your business
Every time some of us sit at our laptop or look on our phones for information, we take the ease of our experience for granted. We open a browser, instantly expecting to read an article or view a video in a language that we understand and a format that works for us. But this isn’t the reality for a huge proportion of people. A staggering one billion people worldwide face barriers when it comes to trying to read and understand content online. These can be, for example, due to disabilities, learning difficulties such as dyslexia, visual impairments, or because the language used is not their first choice or one they’re fluent in.
In this article, we unpack the issues surrounding accessible and inclusion within the current onboarding landscape and the importance of businesses adopting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) practices to develop the hiring process.
For those of us with who have no problems reading content online, we can consider ourselves very lucky. But moving the focus to the recruitment sector and internal recruitment and HR teams across all industries, how can we ensure that the ability of job candidates and employees to succeed is not a matter of inherent luck or bias that’s built into hiring systems? After all, with businesses across the globe increasingly recognising the value of diversity and inclusion within their workforces, the demand for accessible hiring processes is growing at a great rate.
This suggests the need to create seamless and inclusive candidate experiences should feature prominently on the agendas of all business leaders. And nowhere more so than for the all-important ‘welcome mat’ stage: the onboarding process.
The importance of diversity and inclusion onboarding measures
Why is DE&I so important to this part of candidate journeys in particular? Apart from the fact that early impressions count for so much, it helps to look at it from the perspectives of the different parties involved.
Here’s a look at the type of views all parties are likely to hold when no DE&I strategy exists, set against the kind of positive opinions they gain when a good one has been put in place.
Perhaps the single most pertinent factor in all this is the value that DE&I investment can bring to your business, because if it’s good for your candidates, it’s good for your bottom line. As recent research conducted by Access and Staffing Industry Analysts discovered, getting it right on DE&I can mean 2.3 x higher fill rates and make it twice as likely that you’re able to access skilled talent.
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The barriers that stop candidates from completing onboarding
Let’s look now at some of the main obstacles that candidates encounter during the onboarding phase.
- Disabilities and learning difficulties: around 15% of the world’s population is neurodivergent and over 750 million people cannot read or write.
- Visual impairments: hundreds of millions of people around the world have a visual impairment, which affects their ability to absorb content easily.
- Language barriers: one in ten people don’t speak English as their first language.
- Candidature delays: it’s been established that 73% of workers have abandoned a job opportunity because it took too long.
- ID problems: painful experiences with identity proofing and affirmation make 28% of candidates drop out of the running.
- Information overkill: 27% of candidates throw the towel in because too much information is required.
- Outdated technology: close to half of companies (44%) have only partially automated their onboarding processes, which can slow things down.
As you can see, there are lots of reasons why jobseekers and prospective employees fall by the wayside through no fault of their own, or decide to stand aside as a result of their needs not being met. Many of these factors have knock-on effects as well. For example, only 29% of candidates see themselves with a company in the long-term if they experience low onboarding satisfaction – so even successful hires can be ‘tainted’ by a poor candidate kick-off stage.
Break down barriers for the best onboarding experiences with Access Screening and Recite Me
When it comes to inclusive onboarding, best practices and the most accessible experiences possible, Recite Me has been making waves in the recruitment industry. Access recently partnered with the pioneering firm so we can offer products like its Assistive Toolbar; the first candidate screening tool in the industry to offer such capabilities. This addresses various accessibility needs thanks to its customisable text options and language translation, screen reader compatibility and dyslexia-friendly formatting. It’s the kind of technology that brings Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) compliance within reach of all businesses looking to enhance their DE&I onboarding processes.
For candidates, this kind of embedded DE&I assistance means content that can be consumed in ways that work best for them, enabling them to navigate the hiring process with ease and acquire a positive impression of the experience. For hiring managers, it’s the difference between slim pickings when the resumes roll in and a refreshingly diverse and capable field of talent to appraise (not to mention the boost it gives to brand-building with a DE&I sheen). And for business leaders, it should herald the broadening of hiring pools and see drop-out rates reduce significantly.
To make the best employee onboarding experiences a reality, have a chat with our team, or book a demo to see our innovative tools in action.
Conclusion
There has never been a better time to start enhancing your DE&I offering within your onboarding process – the need for your business and the want from your candidates in clear as day. With an incredible one billion people worldwide facing barriers when it comes to trying to read and understand content online, adopting an accessible and inclusive hiring approach is a no brainer.
With the introduction of the first assistive toolbar now available in the market with Access Screening, the ball is well and truly rolling with DE&I tech to help with enhancing your candidate screening and widening the breadth of your talent pool.
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Resources
A Guide to Evidencing the ROI from Screening Software
If you're thinking of making the switch from a manual or partially automated process to reap the benefits of an integrated screening solution, then you will likely need a documented business case to sell the advantages of screening software to your internal stakeholders.
'5 Steps to digitising your candidate compliance strategy’ eBook
A helpful guide to evolving your onboarding process and delivering a reliable compliance strategy through automation.
'The Need for Speed!’ Whitepaper: Unlocking successful candidate onboarding through digitisation
Discover Access Screening’s 2022 research in conjunction with In-House Recruitment, displaying the potential for screening opportunities.