Recruitment Inclusivity Audit Case Study

King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of London’s largest and busiest teaching hospitals, with a strong profile of local services primarily serving the boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Bromley. The Trust is proud of their diverse workforce and how an eclectic mix of backgrounds enables them to provide compassionate care to all their patients.

Challenge

As an NHS Hospital Trust, it’s essential that they accurately reflect the communities they represent. The Trust was keen to find a credible partner with a deep knowledge of diverse hiring, recruitment best-practice and bias minimisation, so they selected Robert Walters Group as their partner for auditing their end-to-end recruitment and hiring process.

Solution

Robert Walters Group’s Recruitment Inclusivity Audit applied a proprietary academically informed, research and data-led framework to assess the end-to-end recruitment and hiring process, identifying and assessing bias.

This pioneering audit referenced research from over 60 peer-reviewed academic papers and studies, to ‘hold up a mirror’ and parse out aspects of King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s current hiring processes and career content that had the potential perpetuate bias. The Inclusivity Audit analysed 257 data touchpoints for bias, to provide immediate, actionable, research-informed recommendations that provide an actionable roadmap of meaningful change.

“The inclusivity audit provides a recognised standard in the world of diversity and inclusion for organisations to reach and then build upon. There can be no doubt that in order to thrive and offer a place where people truly belong, it is essential that NHS trusts have inclusive recruitment practices. We are very pleased for what this process has given us - the ability to grow." - Funmi Onamusi, Director of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Findings

The audit findings were played back to senior stakeholders and included 49 bespoke, actionable recommendations to minimise bias including: 

• 8 recommendations to minimise gender bias including changing the way pay information is collected and rewording job descriptions.
• 10 recommendations to enable Ethnicity inclusion including the rewording of how ethnicity data is captured as part of the application process and best practice
• 11 recommendations to further improve accessibility for neurodiverse talent or candidates with a disability including tailored interview adjustments and interviewer training. 
• 16 recommendations relating to LGBTQ+, Age and Faith including re-engineering hiring processes and updating careers content.

Robert Walters Group and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust continue to work together to enable meaningful change.

See the full case study.