SCW and assessment partner Neurosight were proud to win this prestigious award with ISE (Institute for Student Employers) for the progress that SCW has made to improving diversity through our annual graduate scheme. Our graduate scheme is highly regarded internally and externally and provides a fast-track route into management and leadership roles.
The recognition for this award highlights our dedication to fostering an inclusive environment and promoting equal opportunities within the healthcare industry.
Up against some incredible competition including HSBC, Civil Service Fast Track and Grant Thornton, we’re thrilled to be the winner of the awards on 13th June 2023 at the ISE awards dinner in Manchester.
The awards were judged by a panel of industry experts, their comments on why we won are incredible "This was genuinely innovative and unique, and the impact was standout. We were excited at the potential this approach may have to inspire similar progress across the industry."
Jamie Betts, Founder of Neurosight and over a decade of experience in student resourcing noted “This is the most highly coveted award in the early careers space and reflects the incredible outcomes attained by SCW. The potential for other employers to implement similar strategies and achieve equally remarkable results is huge. When a genuine commitment to diversity meets genuinely ground-breaking innovation, extraordinary outcomes are possible.”
We want to take this opportunity to congratulate all the finalists for reaching this stage and for the contribution that you are making to student resourcing, we had a fantastic couple of days at the ISE Awards and keen to continue our journey in creating inclusive recruitment across all our future talent schemes within SCW.
Our objective
In the previous hiring cycle 21/22 we achieved commendable results in terms of diversity. However, we fell significantly short of our goals for ethnic diversity, as only 15% of offers went to BME candidates. Census 2021 data in England comprises 19% of the population being BME. Our objective for this year was to widen participation and support to ensure that we provided opportunities for a more ethnically diverse cohort in 2023.
The approaches we took for the 2023 cohort
The Early Careers Team in SCW worked collaboratively with various stakeholders in our organisation to review and propose ideas for reform to support our objective, this included working with teams including our people directorate; EDIW, Recruitment and HR. Our vision was to create a completely unbiased selection process.
We approached through 2 main areas of focus:
1. Investing in our outreach and engagement. SCW invested in targeted outreach and engagement initiatives to attract diverse candidates. This enabled us to have a more diverse applicant pool. This included various channels such as Race Equalities Matters and Inclusive Futures online careers fair.
2. Creating an inclusive recruitment process: ensuring our process was fair and inclusive. For our 2023 cohort, some of the measures we took included our partnership with Neurosight, through a short behavioural assessment based on our job description which was part of the score for the assessment process. Additionally, bias training delivered by our EDIW team, diverse assessors, and further support during the assessment process; including application support and increased sampling across various assessment stages.
Throughout the assessment stage, underpinning everything was our communication to the candidates to ensure they were fully supported and engaged. Our Early Careers Team provided a range of sessions via MS Teams including our introduction to SCW to provide clear guidance before applicants applied, right-to-work sessions, insights into our service lines, and so on.
In total, we had 880 applicants, to those not successful. Our team ensured we provided the opportunity for feedback and signposting at the initial stage and then specific feedback at the following steps for those that requested. We understand how much time and effort goes into applying for our scheme and wanted to provide constructive feedback to as many of those that wanted it.
The big question is, did we increase BME diversity?
We’re pleased to announce we saw a vast increase in BME diversity in the offers made. In total, we offered to 15 candidates of which 47% are BME.
Thank you
A massive thank you goes to everyone that has helped shape the 2023 graduate scheme, through their input, investment of time and the resources we have received to achieve our objective. This includes our organisation and our external partner Neurosight, who submitted the nomination in joint partnership with us. Lastly, all the candidates that applied – thank you for taking the time to apply for our scheme, we hope for those not successful, that you enjoyed the process as much as possible and that you’ll consider SCW for future roles, or even our graduate scheme next year which will be open for applications this Autumn 2023. Visit here for further information on our graduate scheme
