With the recent launch of the Clear Assured process, I believe there is a huge opportunity for the larger employers to drive best practice through the supply chain and stimulate more employment opportunities for disabled people. After all, we will all benefit by widening the talent pool.
For those unfamiliar with the Clear Assured process, it is a new framework for the assessment and development of inclusive recruitment processes, launched by The Clear Company, to help employers and talent providers ensure a barrier free experience for disabled candidates.
The Clear Assured process, which has the backing of some of the UK's biggest employers, government and leaders in disability, involves an online self-assessment relating to how an organisation finds, assesses and retains disabled talent. It has been devised to help to raise the standards in recruiting disabled talent, and, in doing so, not only helps organisations in terms of compliance with the Equality Act but will also open up many more opportunities for disabled employees.
I am proud to say E.ON is one of the first organisations - along with BT, Southeastern Railway, HMRC and the Home Office - to register to become Clear Assured. We have already experienced significant benefits from the process and I am hoping that the power of the E.ON brand, combined with the strength of some of the other early adopters, can encourage widespread uptake of the Clear Assured process amongst businesses of all sizes. After all, if we all insist that our suppliers, such as recruitment consultancies, are Clear Assured, we could make a huge impact. Not only would we significantly improve the practices and policies in the recruitment of disabled talent, but we would benefit by employing more talented disabled candidates into our organisations
A Clear Case for E.ON
We introduced our diversity policy at E.ON in 2010 because we realised we were missing a strong commercial opportunity by fishing in traditional pools and not exploring disabled talent. As a business, we were intent on understanding our customers and accessing markets which we hadn't been in before - to do this, we needed to make sure our workforce was as diverse as our customer base.
Our focus on diversity has had a hugely positive impact on our business performance. When the DWP formed a steering group on disability to help to embed good practice into the market, we were invited to join as one of the lead employers, along with BT and the Home Office. Over a two year period, this evolved into an initiative into which 200 employers worked in association with The Clear Company to create the Disability Clearkit, a free online service to share best practice and offer guidance to employers in terms of the recruitment of disabled candidates and retention of disabled employees.
Having been heavily involved in the creation of the Disability Clearkit, registering to become Clear Assured was a logical step for our business. For us, it is important to demonstrate that we have put rigour into making sure that our processes and policies mean we are accessible to disabled people. We may be one of the leaders in the diversity agenda within the private sector but we are still keen to continue to learn and to improve what we do.
The Clear Assured process has already helped us. It has highlighted that we need to give more guidance to our internal recruiters and up-skill our line managers when it comes to recruiting disabled people. It has also resulted in us reviewing our website, in terms of fonts and language, to make it more accessible to the disabled.
Becoming Clear Assured is not a question of ticking boxes and getting a badge. The Clear Assured process provides a framework for development, for identifying opportunities for improvement and for providing the guidance, support and expertise which organisations need in order to excel as recruiters and employers of disabled candidates. It helps to make sure that your policies and practices are as accessible as they can be. We want to play a role in encouraging more organisations to become Clear Assured, and will be looking at altering our tender documents to suggest that key suppliers should become Clear Assured if they wish to work closely with us.
The Clear Assured process is not just for large employers, it is equally relevant to smaller businesses. After all, why wouldn't an organisation want to have the right processes and policies in place to attract from the widest base of talent?
Sue LaVerne, HR director, E.ON Energy Solutions
