Increase Diversity with CharityJob’s Equal Opportunities Reporting

It’s crucial for charities to build a workforce that reflects the communities they serve. A diverse workforce not only strengthens charities’ connections with those communities, it also fosters innovation through a wide range of perspectives and can ultimately lead to better performance. In recruitment, we see charities using a range of methods to work towards increasing diversity and inclusion. But are your efforts actually translating into results? Are you tracking progress in your hiring pipeline? Do you know which areas need further work? Read on to find out about our free equal opportunities reporting tool.

CharityJob’s free equal opportunities reporting tool

At CharityJob, we’re passionate about helping charities build fairer and more inclusive recruitment processes. And the first step to improving diversity is assessing where you’re currently at. That’s why we created our free equal opportunities reporting tool.

When you post a job using the CharityJob Apply application method, you’ll get access to our free Applicant Tracking System (ATS), where you can choose to collect data with our in-product equal opportunities form.

Candidates complete this form when they apply for your job. Once you meet the required number of candidates, you’ll be able to access anonymised reports showing the diversity of your applicant pool, as well as comparisons between applicants and hires. This will help you understand who you’re attracting to your roles and how the diversity of applicants compares to those you’ve hired.

What is an equal opportunities form?

An equal opportunities form (sometimes known as a diversity monitoring form) collects demographic data from applicants. Our form covers gender identity, age, disability, ethnic group, sexual orientation, religious beliefs and socio-economic background.

Why use it?

Here’s how our tool benefits both candidates and recruiters in the recruitment process:

• It’s quick and easy for candidates: Our form takes just moments to complete, and they only need to do it once. Their information is saved in their profile for future applications.
• It saves you time: Our tool automatically collects and analyses the data all in one place (when you choose to use it). No more distributing forms, manual data entry, or analysis. You can use the saved time to act on your findings.
• Understand your pipeline: Learn about who you’re currently attracting in terms of demographics and where any gaps are.
• Compare the diversity of applicants vs hires: see if there’s a mismatch between those you’re attracting and those you’re hiring.
• Identify areas for improvement: Use the findings to build an inclusive, data-driven recruitment process.

How do I get it?

Equal opportunities reporting is free when you post a job with us using the CharityJob Apply application method. Simply select ‘Yes’ to ‘Would you like candidates to complete our equal opportunities form?’.

Once you’ve posted at least one role with this selected, and received at least five applications (for a single role or across multiple roles), you’ll gain access to an anonymised ‘Applications diversity’ report. This shows the demographic profile of your applicants. If you’ve posted multiple roles, you can use the filter option to include specific jobs in tailored diversity reports.

When you’ve posted at least three jobs using equal opportunities reporting and marked at least one candidate as ‘Hired’ for each, you’ll gain access to an anonymised report showing the profile of your applicants versus those that you’ve hired.

Use the data to drive your recruitment strategy

This knowledge is powerful! It can help you pinpoint areas for improvement and invest in evidence-based strategies to create a more inclusive recruitment process.

For example, are you attracting a diverse pool of candidates, but seeing that those hired tend to be similar to your current charity employees? Consider reviewing your shortlisting and interview processes. Try using clear scoring criteria, anonymous recruitment, skills-based assessments and diverse panels. These help reduce bias and enable more effective decisions when choosing which applicants to take forward to the next stage.

On the other hand, if you’re not attracting a diverse pool of candidates in the first place, the issue could be to do with how you advertise your roles. In this case, we’d recommend reviewing your job descriptions. Watch out for non-inclusive language, such as gender coding and age bias. And avoid arbitrary requirements (like years of experience) which don’t actually predict a candidate’s performance in the job. Instead, focus on the essential skills needed to do the role.

Once you’ve got a strategy for building a more diverse workforce, you can use our tool to monitor your progress.

A note about the tool

We created this tool because we’re passionate about fairer recruitment in charities. However, collecting demographic data is complex and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. So we recognise that our tool has some limitations.

While we hope it works for your charity, we understand each charity’s needs are unique. We welcome your feedback on the form and the tool. We’ll keep developing it based on input from you and from candidates.

Ready to build a more inclusive team at your charity?

Get started with CharityJob’s equal opportunities reporting today when you post a job.