Businesses with a diverse workforce are more likely to financially outperform their industry’s national average. For recruitment companies, being inclusive is key to accessing a large pool of relatively untapped talent.
Everyone should have an equal opportunity when searching for their new job and its often recruiters who are the gatekeepers. They can open the door to the world of work for people with disabilities.
Rullion has partnered with Recite Me to provide assistive technology across its website to support the recruitment process for people who are disabled. Providing the right accessibility tools allows people to search and apply for jobs with ease. The disability employment gap (the difference between the employment rates of disabled and non-disabled people) is over 30 percent. However, many more disabled people are facing barriers that are stopping them from finding their dream jobs. Evidence shows inaccessible online and digital communications are preventing disabled jobseekers from flourishing in the recruitment process.
The Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative (RIDI) worked in conjunction with online diversity and recruitment resourcing platform VERCIDA to produce the 2017 RIDI candidate survey of 200 disabled jobseekers. The results showed:
- 75% of the disabled jobseekers surveyed find their condition has an impact on job hunting
- 54% find hurdles at multiple stages of the recruitment process
- 28% find online assessments challenging
The 16th largest recruitment company in the UK, Rullion have taken a positive step forward in their journey to become more inclusive by recognising the need for assistive technology.
To continue Rullion’s commitment to evolving with clients and being a trusted partner of some of the UK’s best-known brands, they needed to be at the forefront of inclusion.
Rullion has partnered up with Recite Me to provide assistive technology across their websites to support the recruitment process for people who are disabled. Providing the right accessibility tools allows people to search and apply for a job with ease.
Candidates are able to customise the styling of the website so they can perceive and understand the content in a way that better suits them. There are also reading support tools such as a ruler and a screen mask to shut out any distractions or a user can enable text-only mode.
As well as removing barriers for disabled candidates, Recite Me makes the recruitment process more inclusive for people who may speak English as a second language by translating the website on demand into over 100 different languages.
Melanie Forbes, Group Managing Director at Rullion says, “We’re really pleased to have integrated Recite Me across our website as well as our careers site, making sure everyone has an equal opportunity in their job search. It’s essential for us to provide our candidates with the information they need in a way that is specific to their needs. I’m a huge advocate of improving opportunities for disabled people and I’m proud of the steps we’ve taken this year to becoming a disability-inclusive company.”
