Searching for a new job or switching careers can be a daunting prospect. The stress can be even more compounded if you identify as having some form of a disability. Luckily, there are now inclusive recruitment firms who can help guide you through the process. We recently spoke to Lisa Holberton, Head of Marketing at Investigo Recruitment, to get her thoughts on how employers can become more inclusive to all candidates.
Investigo recently implemented Recite Me onto its website with the aim of “making this disabling world accessible to all”. Now, when candidates visit Investigo’s website, they can choose whether to enable the accessibilty options on the website.
As a global recruitment firm with offices in the UK and one in New York, Investigo recruits across a number of different industries that includes finance, procurement, strategy, technology and many more. With over 200 employees and rated as one of Glassdoor’s top 20 companies for leadership and culture in the UK, Investigo evidently know a thing or two about retaining the best workforce talent.
Nevertheless, even Lisa admits that the recruitment industry still has a way to go to become more inclusive. She explains, “I’ve worked in recruitment for a number of years now and I’ve always been really aware of how inaccessible most recruitment websites are. We shouldn’t be creating barriers for those with disabilities looking for a career; we should be reducing them, and by making a website accessible to all is a great first step to doing this.”
Although plenty of accommodations are usually made for people with a physical disability, it seems that these privileges don’t always extend to online, or for those with an “invisible” condition such as dyslexia, vision loss, or a mental disability.
In fact, recent statistics from Scope UK estimate that non-disabled people are “twice as likely to be employed as disabled people”, and that “58% of disabled people have felt at risk of losing their job because of their impairment”. Clearly, more progress needs to be made, particularly now that the modern world of work is moving into a more virtual, online environment.
Thanks to Recite Me, Lisa and her team managed to forego a timely and expensive website overhaul when she heard about Recite Me through a new colleague who had seen the software in action on another company’s website. Lisa explains, “We’d spoken at length about how we could make our website more accessible. Before I’d heard about Recite Me, to my knowledge the only way to accessibility was to redesign the whole website. We did some research about what else was available on the market but, as soon as we saw what Recite Me could offer, we knew it was the right solution for what we wanted to achieve in a short span of time.”
As well as improving online accessibility, Investigo is committed to becoming a Disability Confident employer, an employment scheme set up by the government to promote disabled recruitment and help employers recognise the skills and talent that disabled employees have. As a recruitment firm and also as a business, Lisa explains that Investigo’s goals were twofold: from an internal perspective for bringing talent to work for Investigo, but also on an external basis on how Investigo can support their clients with regards to accessibility as well.
When it comes to advice for disability recruitment, Lisa points out, “We need to be more confident [as employers] in how we talk about disability and not shy away from the subject. Through encouraging dialogue within the workplace, it will help to make employees and potential recruits more comfortable in speaking about it. In addition, we also need to think about alternative routes of how to reach out to people, look for job boards or network groups that will encourage a more diverse range of applications, particularly those with disabilities.”
To find out more about Investigo, visit https://www.investigo.co.uk/
To learn more about Recite Me, including how to book your free demo, visit www.reciteme.com
