The Brokerage The Overlooked Advantage - Flipbook - Page 23
“I had a positive experience of recruitment. At the interview I wasn’t concerned by the
background of people who interviewed me, as they viewed me for who I am. But the industry
didn’t catch up to where the company was. When I looked across the floor in the underwriting
space, there was a lack of [visible] diversity. If I had to spend 60-80% of my time in that sphere
– I wouldn’t want to be there. That was the key reason I didn’t feel the insurance sector was for
me: I didn’t want to be the only black person who works in this company or this sector.”
- Former Brokerage Candidate
Turnover of new hires due to a lack of fit should be a concern for employers from the start - else
their efforts to attract and hire underrepresented young people will not result in an increased
organisational diversity. But the same lack of diversity makes it difficult to help those from
underrepresented communities feel they belong in the workplace. The Brokerage’s young people
described how the ‘code switching’ continues after the interview - in changing their appearance,
using a different ‘workplace voice’, or eating lunch alone to avoid questions about their traditional
foods; effectively behaving in the image of a typical employee of organisations they worked in.
These differences and everyday habits contribute to underrepresented young people feeling like
imposters in the workplace - a theme that resonated across many interviews. And, they reinforce
the distance between different groups of staff, limiting opportunities for knowledge exchange and
mutual learning, for harnessing the strengths that underrepresented young people bring.
Recommendations
Organisations should take care to not stop at the point of offering young people jobs, and
consider ways to facilitate their transition into the workplace, helping them build meaningful
and mutually beneficial connections with the rest of staff.
Employers working with the Brokerage have been successfully using reverse mentoring as a
way to help staff understand different perspectives. This approach helps young people develop
networks and clarify career opportunities, and find professional sponsors. Meanwhile, senior
leaders benefit from learning about and empathising with lived experience, having a better
understanding of how organisation-wide decisions might impact underrepresented groups of
staff, perspective employees and customers.
Another emerging practice is inviting young people to speak at corporate events about their
lived experience, as well as reflections on going through recruitment with the company to
raise awareness of good practice among hiring and line managers.
At the same time, there is a need to adopt a strategy for wider culture change, including
through establishing clear diversity and inclusion goals and accountability for achieving those,
specifying what good looks like at all stages of the recruitment and onboarding process.
Regular and representative staff surveys can be used to complement objective metrics (such
as strength of applicant pipeline and retention), providing insight on barriers and challenges
experienced by specific groups in the workplace.
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