Instead of a more linear approach to recruiting – education, degree by proxy and specific industry experience – organisations are now focusing more on transferable skills and capabilities to widen the talent pool and make hiring more inclusive.
We're delighted to say that we're not alone when we say you need to throw out the hiring conventions rule book, Linkedin has recently launched its Skills Path programme and has seen a 21% increase in skills-based job ads. The team at Gusto also believe unconventional hiring is the key to driving inclusion.
Instead of a more linear approach to recruiting, organisations are now focusing more on transferable skills and capabilities
The main point in all of this is to challenge the old-school ways of designing jobs based on qualifications, years of experience, industry experience.
Instead, we believe the way to filling critical roles with the best talent is to break these entrenched biases and be positively disruptive in how you define talent.
We have another trophy to add to the cabinet, Best Tech Startup from the Global Business Tech Awards.
This is another great win on the back of a really successful year so far. We were awarded Best Tech Startup at the UK Business Tech awards, selected as a Rising Star by Tech Nation and made it to the final of the Think Global awards.
The Global Business Tech Awards judging panel described the RoleMapper platform as a ‘really innovative piece of technology’ and felt that, as a startup, we were ‘impressive and gutsy’ to deliver such a technically advanced platform at such an early stage of our journey.
Sara Hill, CEO and Founder, RoleMapper says: “Winning this award really highlights our position as a truly global organisation. Working with scaleups and large organisations, RoleMapper has the ability to create inclusive workplaces regardless of where you are located or where you plan to be in the future as you scaleup.”
If you’re an organisation looking to hire more inclusively, why not take a look at our resources and learn more about debiasing job descriptions and creating inclusive job adverts.
We frequently come across organisations who are trying to solve the job description conundrum. Those organisations who know, or have heard, that job descriptions have the potential to unlock talent and diversity.
However, when we ask them; “tell me about how job descriptions are created in your organisation? Who owns this process” We are often met with a laugh and a comment along the lines of “Ha, well now that’s a question!”
More often than not, the process of creating job descriptions is a bit all over the place with no one clear owner. In many organisations it is a process that crosses multiple functions - with each group wanting different outcomes from the job description.
For example, some companies have a reward function who use job descriptions for grading and benchmarking. Managers create job descriptions to help them define and build out their teams.
At the end of the process is recruitment who try to do their best at translating hundreds of different versions of job descriptions into content that will be appealing to the outside world.
Understanding definitions is the first step to making the change
So, these organisations are correct in thinking that job descriptions are important. We at RoleMapper say that they sit at the epicentre of an organisations ability to attract, recruit and retain talent. But if you attempt to embed and scale a change to your job descriptions, without systematically changing how the process works, you will be left chasing your tail.
The start of any change initiative, no matter how big or small, should always starts with a vision of the future, defining the change and a view of the current state.
We thought it would be helpful to clarify a few definitions around the whole area of job descriptions. We hope these will help you articulate and identify the change you need to make in your organisation to write great job descriptions.
The process of designing a role
Job design is the process of actually designing a role. It is the process by which organisations define and divide the tasks that need to be done to carry out the work or service that needs to be delivered.
The job design process helps determine responsibilities, accountabilities, deliverables, and decision-making within the role. It also helps define inputs, outputs and interactions of the role, the key factors that influence the role, as well as how, where and when it must be performed.
Job design brings all these elements together to configure and create roles that motivate an employee to deliver the job successfully. It also helps attract the best candidates to the role.
The output of the job design process
A job description is a document that provides all the detail about a role. It is a critical tool that describes the purpose, responsibilities and outputs of a role. It helps us define the knowledge, skills, experience, and capabilities that a person will need to enable successful delivery. It might also include reporting lines, where the role sits in the hierarchy, grading etc.
To create an effective job description, it’s important to go through the ‘job design’ process. You might not know it – you might just think you are putting your ideas down on a page - but that’s what it is, you are designing a job.
A job description is a feeder into a job advert. It is where we define the content that can be translated into a job advert for the external marketplace. It also helps define the screening and assessment criteria for prospective candidates.
A job description describes what the candidate does for you; a job advert should focus on what you can do for them.
A job description tells, a job advert sells!
A job advert is another output of the job design process. It is a re-scripted shorter, copy-written sales version of the job description to sell the role and company to prospective candidates.
A job advert translates the essential elements of a job description, along with any additional unique selling points that can be used to sell the role through various advertising channels.
The objective of a job advert is to be a sales tool to attract the widest possible pool of appropriate candidates. A job advert needs to market the organisation and the position in a positive way. It must grab a potential candidate’s interest to encourage them to find out more.
Many organisations struggle to translate their job descriptions into job adverts. Failing to distinguish between a job description and a job advert can cause all sorts of challenges because the aim of each is different.
A consistent approach to job design is the key to creating great job descriptions and job adverts.
A high-level summary of a role
A job profile is an outline or a high-level overview of a role. It provides general information about the role as a starting point and is sometimes used as the first step when creating a job description.
Sometimes the terms job profile and job description are used inter-changeably, but a job profile is actually a summary document of a role whereas a job description is a translation of that role into a specific job or team. For each job profile, there may be multiple versions of job descriptions that align to variations within teams.
A group of job roles
A job family is a group of job roles involving similar types of work and/or requiring comparable training, skills, knowledge, and expertise. The concept can establish a robust framework within an organisation and is particularly useful when job titles for similar roles vary.
The concept of job families allows organisations to treat occupational groups differently from each other in terms of reward, career paths or development needs.
Job families may be linked to:
There will typically be 5-10 job profiles sitting within a job family.
The term “job architecture” encompasses the whole eco-system for jobs and provides the basic organising construct for aligning jobs in an organisation based on the type of work performed.
A job architecture will include job levels, job titling conventions, grades, career paths, spans of control, the criteria for career movement and can be used for ensuring equitable pay.
In summary, job design is the process; job descriptions, job adverts and job profiles are the outputs; and job families and a job architecture provide the structure.
Tech Nation, the UK network for ambitious tech entrepreneurs, has selected RoleMapper as one of its early-stage scaleup winners of its nationwide competition, Rising Stars.
The Rising Stars competition is the only of its kind in the UK and is designed to showcase the most exciting companies at Seed to pre-Series A from all areas of the country. The ten winners in total have been selected as Rising Stars through a rigorous competition process, with more than 330 applications received.
Sara Hill, Founder & CEO, Role Mapper Technologies, says: "This is great news for RoleMapper. Our goal is to transform workplaces through inclusive job descriptions and reducing bias in the hiring process. To be seen as an innovator in the HRTech space is exactly what we want.”The virtual nature of the competition this year has also made it accessible to founders from every corner of the UK."
The virtual nature of the competition has also been credited with increasing access for women founders.
The 2020 Rising Stars winners are the most diverse cohort yet, with 50% of the winning companies having women founders and co-founders - up from 40% in 2019
Esme Caulfield, Competitions Lead, Tech Nation, comments: “The Tech Nation Rising Stars competition highlights the best-in-class companies in the UK at the seed and pre-Series A stages and shows the amazing tech companies that make-up the UK’s pipeline."It's incredibly exciting to see the 2020 Rising Stars winners across a broad mix of sectors, as well as representing the most diverse Rising Stars cohort yet, with 50% of the winning companies having women founders, while 80% of the winners are from outside London.”
Rising Stars Judges Quotes:
Stephen Kelly, Chair, Tech Nation comments: “The Rising Stars announced today are great examples of the strength of the UK tech ecosystem. The winners highlight that innovation, determination and ambition in this fast-growing sector can be found right across the UK. What the Rising Stars competition, and indeed Tech Nation, does is provide a platform to showcase these exciting and innovative companies.”
Mary McKenna, Tech Entrepreneur & Angel Investor, comments: "It's fantastic to see so many brilliant companies among this year's Rising Stars. As well as being an incredible representation of the innovation and talent we have here in the UK this year's Winners represent great diversity in terms of gender, location and sector. "
Anika Henry, Operations Lead & EMEA Partner Manager, Google for Startups UK, comments: “At Google for Startups UK, we’re always looking out for the country’s great, new emerging tech start-ups, so it’s been a great honour to be on the judging panel of the Tech Nation Rising Stars. The high calibre and diversity of companies and out-of-the-box approach shown by the nominees has been really inspiring to see and I wish them all well in their journeys and development over the next year.”
Rob Kniaz, Partner, Hoxton Ventures, comments: “As an investor, being part of the Rising Stars 3.0 judging process was a truly inspiring experience. It's fantastic to see highly investable scaling companies with diverse founders from every corner of the UK. I will be following the winners’ growth with interest.”
About Tech Nation
Tech Nation is the growth platform for tech companies and leaders. Tech Nation fuels the growth of game-changing founders, leaders, and scaling companies so they can positively transform societies and economies. We provide them with the coaching, content, and community they need for their journey in designing the future. Tech Nation has years of experience facilitating and helping UK tech companies scale, both at home and abroad. Over 20 cohorts and 600 companies have successfully graduated from Tech Nation’s growth programmes. Alumni include Skyscanner, Darktrace, and Monzo.
From January 1, 2021, the Colorado Equal Pay Act (SB19-085) prohibits all employers from discriminating because of sex (including gender identity) — alone or with another protected status — by paying less for substantially similar work in terms of skill, effort and responsibility.
In summary, the Colorado Equal Pay Act prohibits an employer from:
We’re now seeing an uptick in organizations looking to utilize RoleMapper to help meet compliance requirements, and the great news is that we’ve configured RoleMapper to help our customers fix this in a matter of minutes.
As an intelligent job design platform, RoleMapper creates job profiles, descriptions and ads that are debiased and neutral in minutes, removing the common pain points of removing discrimination from the source of the role and not a copy tweak in a job ad.
To find out more about how RoleMapper supports compliance, you can book a demo here
It’s been a busy few months for the team at RoleMapper, which has been topped-off with the announcement that we've won Best Tech Startup at the UK Business Tech Awards.
The Awards celebrate the UK’s finest tech businesses and its aim is to recognise innovation and the exceptional application of technology to transform and grow businesses.
With a judging panel made up of leading tech experts from a range of businesses and organisations - including booking.com and North West at Tech Nation - this is a great achievement for RoleMapper.
The RoleMapper platform has delivered some outstanding results for our clients, including an increase in female hiring by 125% and a 50% increase in ethnic diverse hiring ratios in the US.
Since our launch 12 months ago, we have seen exponential growth and great success helping large organisations debias roles to unlock talent and diversity.
We see job design as key to creating more inclusive cultures, and as testament to that fact, the platform has delivered some outstanding results for our clients, including an increase in female hiring by 125% and a 50% increase in ethnic diverse hiring ratios in the US.
It’s great to be recognised by the UK Business Tech Awards for all our efforts, but it doesn’t stop there either. In other news, we are now on the UK Government’s directory of Cloud hosting, G-Cloud 12, and have expanded our team with the appointment of Frank Fernandes as Customer Operations Manager.
Here’s to another year of exceptional growth!
When designing flex into roles, make sure you make the viable options fair, consistent, and open to all. People want increased systemic flexibility for a whole range of reasons. If there is one thing this pandemic is revealing, it's that people are reflecting on what is important in their lives. Many employees have reassessed their priorities, leading to a significant shift in their work preferences.
By now, many employees working from home during the lockdown will have made quite firm decisions around how they wish to operate going forward. Some will have decided that nothing in their lives is quite like their family, and for that reason, they wish to extend remote working indefinitely or move to a more flexible working arrangement. This moment of reflection offers an opportunity for organizations to rethink how they approach work-life balance.
Making Flex Work As it stands today, over 90% of jobs are designed to fit office-based 9-5pm working patterns. However, COVID-19 has helped shift preconceived notions and traditions about work schedules. This change is not just temporary; it signifies a long-term trend in how we view work.
As a Victorian premise based around factory working hours, the 9-5 is massively outdated. Modern work demands a more flexible framework. Productivity profiles are more personal; for any organization, productivity and doing a job well are key, so a job should bring out the best in an employee. For example, some people work better in the morning, while others thrive at night. By breaking these time constraints, businesses can create a more engaging environment that fosters productivity and job satisfaction. Flexibility can also lead to improved mental health and reduced burnout, which ultimately benefits the organization.
There may well be a school of thought around letting this next wave of flexibility naturally take a more organic path; however, let managers work with it and have ‘tailored’ conversations at the employee level. It is absolutely right that these conversations happen between employees and managers, but you need to beware the pitfalls of letting this pan out without a systematic approach. Plan, Tools, and Guidance are essential.
Flexible Job Design
Seize the Opportunity As we come out of lockdown, there will be a significant change in how the workplace looks and operates in the future. For example, some companies will trial moves to a smaller set of core hours so they can manage meetings and interactions while still offering flexibility for employees. Others will use technology to enhance the working-from-home experience, ensuring all employees have access to the tools and resources needed to thrive in a remote setting.
The workplace we return to will be very different. Business leaders need to develop a vision of what their workplace should look like and design systemic, sustainable flexibility into their workforce. This vision should include a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, ensuring that all employees feel valued and supported in their work environments.
The opportunity is now. But the question is, how will you challenge the traditional thinking that still exists in your organizations? How will you challenge this systematically at scale? Engaging employees in these conversations, gathering their feedback, and implementing changes based on their insights will be crucial to the success of any new flexible work strategy. Ultimately, adapting to this new way of working is not just a trend; it is a necessary evolution for businesses aiming to thrive in an unpredictable future.
Moreover, consider the role of leadership in this transition. Leaders must model the flexibility they expect from their teams, demonstrating that work-life integration is a priority. Providing ongoing training and support for managers will be essential in navigating this shift. The benefits of a flexible work model not only enhance employee satisfaction but can also lead to increased retention rates and a more robust organizational culture.
As organizations embrace systemic flexibility, it’s vital to regularly revisit and assess these policies. Are they meeting the needs of employees? Are they contributing to business objectives? By maintaining an open dialogue with employees and being willing to make adjustments, organizations can ensure that they are adapting effectively to a rapidly changing work environment.
In conclusion, designing systemic flexibility into roles is not merely a response to the pandemic; it’s an opportunity to innovate and redefine how work is perceived and conducted. By prioritizing employee well-being, fostering open communication, and embracing technology, businesses can create a resilient workforce ready to face future challenges.
Recent research by the UK government found that jobs promoted with flexibility had a 30% uplift in applications. Our own studies with companies on the RoleMapper platform found that jobs designed and promoted with flexibility generate a 125% increase in female candidates and an 80% increase in quality of hiring (based on the CV-to-hire ratio).
And flexible job design for some organisations has help achieve 30% women in senior roles and reduced employee turnover 80%+.
Our 5 dimensions of flexible job design help determine the feasibility of whether certain flexible working patterns will work or not.
Dimension one: Location Dependency
This determines how dependent the role is on a particular physical location, or the importance of face to face communications at a physical location in order to receive and/or conduct the role effectively. This helps us to understand the impact of the role holder not being present in the workplace.
However, if you could ask managers; ‘can this role be available to work remotely going forward?’ they will give you their view, but Managers often have biases or personal preferences around how jobs and teams need to work.
So, to really understand if the role can be worked on this basis there are some specific questions that we could ask around the job itself that takes it away from personal preference or any bias that might exist.
Dimension two: Control over Workflow & Predictability
The second dimension determines what the flow of work look like for this role and how predictable it is. This helps us to understand the dynamics of the peaks and troughs, and also gives an idea of the level of control the individual might have over the flow of work, as well as whether there is any scope to flex the time in the role. Dimension three: Availability & Responsiveness How available and responsive does the role holder need to be when work comes in? What are the expectations of stakeholders and colleagues in terms of availability and responsiveness of the role holder? This helps understand the impact on absence from the role for any period of time.
Dimension four: Capability & Expertise
Here we are looking at what extent other people in the team have the capability and expertise required to deliver the role. Is it a completely unique role with only one person with the specific expertise to do it, or is it a role carried out by many people?
Looking at this dimension helps us to understand if there could be any option to consider other people to replace, cover or share or step up as a development opportunity if the role holder is absent for any period of time.
Dimension five: Segments of Work
Finally, the last dimension is looking at the segments of work in the role. All jobs should be able to be segmented into 4-5 key high level segments of work responsibilities.
Determining what the work segments are gives us a sense of how the job might be divided up and possibly split or shared between one or more people that might enable part-time working in say a job share or shift pattern working arrangement.
Setting-up a mechanism to help your managers assess the flexible job design dimensions for their roles. Embed a systematic approach to assessing job and team flexibility that takes into account all the variables that have an operational impact on varying ways to work flexibly in the role.
Helping identify, a systematic and consistent view of the viable working patterns that not only work for the employee but also work for the business and the team.
It also provides managers, teams and individuals with a roadmap of what flexible working patterns will work and which ones will be more challenging.
By applying the 5 dimensions to every role, every flexible working request, every job you design, you will be able to have a systematic, consistent approach to designing flexible working patterns.
In this article, we'll discuss some common flexible working pitfalls, and the steps organisations can take to avoid them.
The workplace we've gone, or are going back to, will now be very different. Business leaders now need to develop a vision of what their workplace should look like and design systemic, sustainable flexibility into their workforce.
The time to make that flexible working change is now. But the question is; how will you challenge the traditional thinking that still exist in organisations? How will you challenge this systematically at scale?
Now, there may well be a school of thought around letting this next wave of flexibility naturally take a more organic path. Let managers work with it and have ‘tailored’ conversations at employee level.
It is absolutely right that these conversations happen between employees and managers, but you need to beware the pitfalls of letting this pan out without a systematic approach.
Without question, the pandemic has hit parents with young children very hard indeed. However, many people who aren't parents also want increased flexibility for a whole range of reasons. If there is one thing this pandemic is revealing is that people are reflecting on what is important in their lives.
Despite this – and the right-to-request flexible working in the UK and other countries - there is still a tendency to view the need for flexible working as being exclusively for parents, or in some cases as a privilege for senior staff.
An inconsistent approach to how we respond to flexible working requests or the conversations we have around increased flexibility, can breed unhealthy friction in the workplace. It can also get you in a lot of hot water in how you justify one arrangement for one person but not for another. Access to commercially viable flexible working patterns should be open to all. Those with kids, those with elderly parents, those with a situation that requires them to take time away from work at short notice, and those who simply perform better when they have the freedom to manage their own time.
Flexible Working Pitfall #2: Diving in without a plan A key challenge for managers working with teams who have different variations of flexibility is how to manage individuals, workloads and communications across varying schedules and locations.
Different working patterns do require advanced planning and coordination of schedules, as well as team communications and collaboration.
Doing a bit of upfront planning around how to manage, and accommodate, varying work schedules and locations will pay dividends.
To help manage this, many employers put in place a model of core days and core hours during which everyone knows that the whole team will be available.
Co-located teams, where some might be working in the office and some working from home can also lead to challenges – be these perceived or real - about how the team communicates and collaborates effectively together.
If the manager is in the office, it will invariably be the case those working in the office will get more airtime and find it easier to collaborate and share information. Those at home risk missing out on the watercooler chats or informal corridor conversations. If you are not careful, this can also lead to more deep-rooted bias around perceived performance. Research has shown that where teams have co-located staff, it is often the case that homeworkers are more likely to be over-looked for the strategic projects and promotions than those more visible in the office.
Flexible Working Pitfall # 3: Increased flex without design Pitfall number three is a theme that really runs through pitfall 1 and 2 but needs to be pulled out separately as it’s a ‘biggie’.
Flexibility means different things to different people – you will have employees who want:
Pitfall 3 is what a lot of well-intentioned managers fall into it – that is agreeing to flexible working patterns without consideration for the job, its workload and deliverables or how the team needs to collaborate to get work done.
Agreeing to flex without considering the job design can do more damage than good
Where the flex has been agreed to help the individual but has been designed for and around the individual and not the role can lead to all sorts of issues.
But here is the big takeaway - not all flexible working options work for all roles. It has to work for the role, the team and the business as well as the employee. When flexible only goes one way – if there are too many boundaries or restrictions in place, flexible working can’t be what it’s supposed to be, flexible.
We have seen how this has tipped some managers over the edge and shifted them from the camp of being supportive of flexible working arrangements into the camp of it’s a nightmare and too difficult to manage.
It’s essential that as you start to increase the flexibility in your jobs, teams and workforce, you design and agree to viable working patterns that not only work for the employee but also work for the business and the team. By being aware of the flexible working pitfalls, you can make it work for everyone.
Interview bias has been a problem for some time. The interview process, if not managed correctly, leaves you wide open to biases that impact how you conduct the interview and the hiring decisions you make.
In the world of bias-academia, the “Halo or Horns” effect is a terms often used to describe specifically how “confirmatory bias” can manifest itself in the recruitment process - when an interviewer allows one strong point about the candidate to overshadow or have an effect on everything else.
For instance, knowing they used to work at a particular company might be looked upon favourably. Everything the applicant says during the interview is seen in this light: "well, she left out an important part of the answer to that question, but, she must know it, she used to work at X company”.
The "horns" effect is just the opposite - allowing one weak point to influence everything else. And then there is the “mini-me” bias, where we have an unconscious tendency to favour those who remind us of ourselves. This can result in managers favouring a candidate because they are similar to themselves rather than because they are the best person for the job.
Structured interviews help debias decision making
So how do you stop this happening? Bias training? Yes, good idea, it at least makes you aware. But training alone will not make a systemic shift - it is very difficult to be consciously conscious of our unconscious biases every single minute of the interview.
There has been lots of research into interviewing and in particular what types of interview best reduce interview bias. Structured interviews have been found to be considerably more effective than unstructured interviews.
Clarity on requirements is the key to structured interviewing; what you are assessing – the requirements - and ensuring the criteria you are assessing for are inclusive and have been reviewed for bias.
Ultimately, to ensure your structured interview is inclusive you only want to be assessing the absolute essential criteria required to perform well in the job, desirable criteria are not discussed.
"Structured interviews are one of the best tools we have to identify the strongest job candidates." Dr Melissa Harrell, People Analytics Team, Google.
In summary, without a structured interview process, managers may well fall foul to their unconscious biases in their interpretation, assessment and selection of talent. But if the requirements you are assessing have not been rigorously assessed for interview bias, or potential to exclude talent, then all your efforts may well be in vain.
The biases unconsciously baked into the job requirements in your job descriptions could potentially be helping you to screen out the best, most creative and diverse people in the market.
Break interview bias with intelligent job design
So, how do you ensure requirements are inclusive? At the point when we define these requirements. It’s when we design our jobs and create our job descriptions. It is the process of designing a job and creating a job description where you determine the screening and assessment criteria for prospective candidates.
By adopting an intelligent job design approach you connect the dots with your inclusive job description, your inclusive requirements and your inclusive structured interview process.
At the point of when you are creating your jobs – whether for job profiling, job description creation, job advert creation – you design your requirements inclusively and ensure that they feed into a structured interview, closing the loop and debiasing the process.
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