Recruiters told a London audience on Tuesday that current CRMs on the market are hampering recruiters by not yet being able to both track diversity-related information and to anonymise the content at the same time.

Speaking at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC)’s equality, diversity and inclusion conference, recruitment leaders Kelly Dunn and Jane Morris said their companies were having to build their own internal systems to deliver these requirements and “keep EDI information separate from identifiable job applicants”.

Dunn and Morris, along with Rob Jane of Wavemaker, addressed the current state of play of using technology for EDI purposes in their businesses in their panel discussion. They also offered examples of EDI practices at their businesses, respectively KD Recruitment and TPP Recruitment. 

For instance, Dunn founded her business on the premise that people can still achieve great results in recruitment when working part-time, when it became difficult to effectively flex her hours with a former employer after she became a parent. For the last two years at TPP Recruitment, Morris said, the company has done away with a requirement for any core hours to be worked, with strong success.

Their EDI practices extend to their job applicants and candidates, both Dunn and Morris said. Dunn, expressing “a passion for supporting neurodiverse workforce applicants”, noted that recruiters sometimes must develop alternative measures to interviews for some neurodiverse candidates such as test periods. Recruiters can also help potential employers create conditions that will allow neurodiverse candidates to shine, Dunn said.

Morris said her agency works to the theme of ‘All Together Better’ by such practices as role design and removing requirements that are not necessary to the position in order to attract more diverse candidates. One of their underlying principles is: “You’re only as inclusive as your least included person.”

The REC’s EDI Summit was held at London’s Tower Bridge Novotel on Tuesday [28 November 2023] and attended by about 100 participants.

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