Diversity & Inclusion at Westlakes Recruit
1.Diversity Statement
Powering a Diverse Nuclear Future
You Belong in Nuclear
We strongly believe that diverse thinking with inclusive cultures can drive greater decision making and organisational agility. There is a world of talent, some close to home, that can’t access Nuclear.
We want to make a positive and impactful change, so the nuclear innovations and technology of the future are delivered by diverse teams built as a reflection of the world we live in.
Through a variety of internalefforts, we strive for inclusion and equality for all our employees.
1.Community
We believe that the power of togetherness, through communities, can change the world and influence an energy transition to clean energy.
We are building an inclusive nuclear community, so together we canshare a culture of belonging, ensuring that the next generation of nuclear workforce is more diverse than the last.
2.Best Practices
Innovation takes many perspectives; to create services for a global nuclear community, we need a workforce with different backgrounds and experiences.
We’re making constant progress in building a Westlakes Recruit nuclear community that represents the diverse and ever-changing world we live in. And we’re committed to do far more:
- Inclusive hiring standards and processes. We’re building more diverse candidate shortlists. We’re working internally to engage more diverse interview panels with our customers to ensure that diversity is reflected at every stage of the hiring process.
- More robust diversity recruiting efforts for nuclear. We are working to accelerate progress in diversity hiring and recruiting across technical, engineering, and leadership nuclear roles.
- Expansive diversity outreach and external partnerships. We are expanding our diversity outreach efforts, including our ties with schools, colleges and universities and other organizations that support and engage with talent from underrepresented communities.
- Inclusive hiring training.
All of our recruiters are trained in inclusive hiring practices. These include taking part in a Diversity Checklist and IAT Test to eliminate unconscious bias. We also provide our hiring panel with a list of inclusive questions to ask candidates in internal interviews.
High Speed training – Equality and diversity
3.Confronting Unconscious Bias
We are adopting the use of implicit Association Testing to assess unconscious bias.
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report; it shows that you have an implicit attitude that you did not know about. For example, you may believe that women and men should be equally paid within the nuclear sector, but your automatic associations could show that you associate men with earning more than women.
The IAT was developed to detect unconscious bias based on several factors including race, gender, sexual orientation and national origin.
Individual strategies that we are adopting to address unconscious bias include:
- Promoting self-awareness: recognizing one’s biases using the Implicit Association Test is the first step.
- Understanding the nature of bias is also essential. The strategy of categorization that gives rise to unconscious bias is a normal aspect of human cognition. Understanding this important concept can help individuals approach their own biases in a more informed and open way.
- We are also promoting opportunities to have discussions, with others, especially those from socially dissimilar groups.
- We are also encouraging individuals to share their biases, so we can help others feel more secure about exploring their own biases.
4.Hiring & Onboarding
We pay close attention to how we attract and assess talent at every step of the recruitment and hiring process.
One approach we are taking is to reduce bias in job descriptions. We analyze text and remove words or phrases that could bias a candidate against applying.
We’re also evolving ourviews from “culture fit” to “culture add” when assessing candidates. We want to engage people with different backgrounds and a wide range of experiences. We focus on how a candidate would add to the culture of either Westlakes Recruit or our customers in Nuclear.
We’re expanding our recruiting efforts as we invest in partnerships to bring more individuals of underrepresented backgrounds to the nuclear industry.
5.Expanding Data
We’ve put a lot of thought into how we can make nuclear inclusive of more identities.
Over the next year, we intend to collect data for internal placements from people happy to share and self-identify as having a disability, being non-binary, LGBQT and/or their demographic data to give us a better picture of the nuclear workforce representation.
We gather the data as part of a major effort to give employees an opportunity to be heard and to expand our diversity, equality, and inclusion strategy in a data-driven way.
This new data will help us set company-wide goals to ensure each of our areas of operation are highly accessible and to continue our emphasis on disability inclusion in our workforce.
6.Our Work in Diversity, Equality and Inclusion
Westlakes Recruit is committed to making diversity, equality, and inclusion part of everything we do—from how we build our products, how people interact with our website and how we build our teams. It’s part of how we show up in our communities as well. We provide people solutions that are for everyone. Our customers are spread across continents and therefore our roles are accessible too many people in many languages.
2.Diversity Programme
Diversity isn’t an interchangeable value for Westlakes Recruit, it is who we are and underpins our vision to power a diverse nuclear future.
The nuclear industry has been very kind to us at WR, as our business continues to grow, we are becoming more present on a national and global level. And with it, we are becoming more accessible to many diverse people from global society.
We are deeply committed to ensure that the next generation of the global nuclear workforce is more diverse than the last and that the little atoms of the future have equal opportunity
4 Week Collaborative Programme
3.Inclusive Questions
- Describe a time when you helped a co-worker or direct report with a work problem.
- Describe an occasion at work when you had to do something you didn’t agree with. How did you handle it?
- How do you measure success at work? How does a successful day at work look for you?
- Describe a time when you received feedback from a supervisor or someone on another team. How did you react? What was the end result?
- What have you learned in the past year that you’re proud of?
- What are your career goals? Have they changed?
- How do you like to be managed?
- What attracted you to the role?
- How do you maintain work-life balance?
4.Diversity Checklist
Introduction
This Equalities checklist is an internal assessment that will enable WR to check whether equality of opportunity is practiced, and discrimination eliminated within our company.
RECRUITMENT & SELECTION
Advertising
When advertising a post do you?
- Advertise in plenty of time prior to the interview and selection process
- Advertise using a wide range of sources
- Give details of the necessary skills and qualifications required
- Indicate salary range
- State that you are an equal opportunity employer
- State that flexible working arrangements are available
- Provide the opportunity for applicants to informally discuss the post
- State the location of the post
- State that you welcome applications from applicants with disabilities
- State that you welcome applications from minority groups
- Use wording which would not discriminate against specific age groups
| Yes | Sometimes | No |
|---|---|---|
Are your job descriptions?
- Clear and comprehensive, do they include all major tasks and responsibilities
- Written to a standard format to enable valid comparisons to be made
- Extensive enough to cover the skills and knowledge that applicants will require and not breaking any anti-discrimination laws
| Yes | Sometimes | No |
|---|---|---|
Application forms
When designing your application form and procedures do you?
- Ask for only essential personal details, name, address and telephone number
- Include an equal opportunity monitoring form which is detached from the application form
- Ask for personal details on the equal opportunities monitoring form
- Advise the candidate of the purpose of the equal opportunities monitoring form
- Invite candidates to demonstrate how their experience and skills meets the job specification
- Assess the candidate’s application based upon their experience, knowledge and competencies rather than their characteristics and background
- Ask whether or not a candidate has a disability so that special arrangements can be made for the interview
- Give a specific deadline for receipt of applications
- Provide contact details and an address for where the applications must be sent
- Give the candidate plenty of notice of interview dates and times
- Acknowledge receipt of applications in writing
| Yes | Sometimes | No |
|---|---|---|
Short listing
Do you consider the following when interviewing applicants?
- An initial telephone interview with applicants
- Making appropriate arrangements for applicants with disabilities if appropriate
- Ask questions related to the experience the candidate has gained, relevant to the requirements of the job
- Not including questions about birthplace, nationality, race, colour, gender religion or sex, marital status, age, childcare responsibilities
| Yes | Sometimes | No |
|---|---|---|
PAY BANDING
Does your company take into consideration the following legal requirements?
- Pay employees in accordance with the salary specified in the employment contract
- Ensure that there is equal pay for men and women doing similar work or work of equal value thereby meeting the Equal Pay Act
- Not make deductions from salaries without prior written agreement (except where required or authorised by employees’ contracts or by law, e.g. National Insurance)
- Give clear guidance to all employees on their statutory entitlements for maternity, paternity and adoption pay, sick pay, and redundancy pay
- Give all employees clear and transparent guidance on the company’s payrise and bonus scheme
- Meet the Minimum Wage Act 1998
| Yes | Sometimes | No |
|---|---|---|
WORKING PRACTICES AND PROCEDURES
Training & development
Do your internal training procedures encourage employees to develop their skills by?
- A robust induction session whereby new employee members are fully integrated into the company
- Raising awareness through the induction process of employee’s responsibilities in eliminating discrimination in the workplace
- Having a consistent approach towards training for all employees throughout the company
- Identifying training needs through a structured appraisal process
- Ensuring that all line managers and those responsible for employees’ management are aware of their responsibilities to release employees for training and development opportunities
| Yes | Sometimes | No |
|---|---|---|
Challenging perceptions
It is essential that any negative perceptions that may exist in the workplace be challenged.Does your company address prejudices in the workplace by:
- Providing training or raise awareness amongst employees of the business benefits of a diverse workforce
- Guidance for employees responsible for recruiting on the effects which generalised assumptions and prejudices about race, gender and disability can have on selection decisions
- Incorporating equal opportunities and diversity practices into day-to-day activities to eliminate rejudice and bias
| Yes | Sometimes | No |
|---|---|---|
Equal Opportunities Policy and Diversity Statement
Does your company have a policy that states your commitment to equal opportunities, in particular the following:
- Does the policy state your company’s values on equality opportunities and how they will be put into practice
- Identify in the policy the areas of discrimination that your company will counter (e.g. race, gender, disability)
- Have an action plan with clear measurable objectives and targets to back up the equal opportunities policy
- State how, why and when the monitoring of the workforce is undertaken
- State how the policy will be reviewed and updated
- State the aspiration to attain a workforce that is representative of the communities from which your company works and / or provides products or services etc
| Yes | Sometimes | No |
|---|---|---|
Dignity at Work
Does your company have any of the following procedures or support systems to address bullying and harassment in the workplace?
- Advice for employees on the correct way to make an informal or formal complaint
- A clear written disciplinary process to deal with complaints of bullying or harassment which is communicated to all members of employees
| Yes | Sometimes | No |
|---|---|---|
Flexible Working Practices
Do you offer any of the following flexible working practices to your employees?
- Flexitime, allowing people to choose the hours they work, i.e. vary the start and finish times of their working day
- Time off in lieu of any overtime worked
- Home working / (working from home)
| Yes | Sometimes | No |
|---|---|---|
OVERALL TOTAL SCORE
Gold – 59
Well done WR is fully committed to diversity in the workplace and should continue the good work.
Silver – 39-58
Your WR shows some commitment to diversity but may benefit from a diversity audit.
Bronze –19-38
WR should look at its HR policies and procedures to actively encourage diversity within the workplace and would fully benefit from a full diversity audit.
At risk –0-18
WR may have employment policiesand practices that are unnecessarily discriminating against both existing and potential employees.
5.Guidelines for Inclusive Job Adverts
- Never mention race or national origin
- Phrases like “strong English-language skills” may deter qualified non-native English speakers from applying
- A “clean-shaven” requirement can exclude candidates whose faith requires them to maintain facial hair (and it also indicates the position is for men only)
- When reviewing candidates: Avoid “Cultural Fit” and focus on “Value Alignment”
- Limit referral hiring, and go beyond your network
- Don’t waiver from the qualifications for a select few
- Ask everyone the same set of interview questions
- Challenge your assumptions based on names, schools and locations
- If possible, remove names from candidates and review ‘blind’
- Avoid Gender Bias
- According to a Hewlett Packard Internal Report, women will typically only apply for a job if they meet 100% of the qualifications. To avoid unconscious gender bias deterring women from applying to your jobs, consider eliminating requirements that are not essential. If the position is one where training can easily be provided, don’t insist experience in a specific software suite. Generalise areas where transferable skills are okay, and clearly outline which qualifications are required, which are strongly preferred, and which are nice to have.
- Remove Gender-Coded Words
- If candidates assume the role is more suited for the opposite gender, you will miss out on qualified candidates. The best way to avoid this common mistake is to avoid words that are typically understood to be ‘coded’ for a male or female audience.
- Work hard to remove gendered words from your adverts. Use gender-neutral jobs titles. Before posting run it through one of the many gender decoders out there, like this one
- Attract experienced workers
- The UK is challenged with an aging workforce. A third of workers are over 50, with people spending on average 7 years longer in the workforce than in the 1970s, according to a report from Human Resource Executive. Some best practices for avoiding age discrimination include making sure your employer branding reflects a wide range of the age of workers at your company.
- Additionally, avoid loaded phrasing like:
- “Young and energetic”
- “Calling all recent graduates!” (Unless for a specific graduate program)
- “No more than X years of experience”
- “Junior” or “Senior” except as part of a job title
- “Supplement your retirement income!”
- Be Inclusive of workers with disabilities
- Make sure your job postings are welcoming to workers of all abilities by advertising when there are accommodations like flexible hours or tele-work policies that would appeal to workers with disabilities.Let applicants know your workplace welcomes and values all candidates with phrasing like: “Ability to complete tasks with or without reasonable accommodations.” Instead of writing “Access to your own vehicle isn’t always necessary”, try “Access to reliable transportation,” which is more inclusive to people with disabilities.
Highlight Your Inclusive Benefits, Values and Diversity Commitment
Make sure to clearly state your company benefits and guidelines on parental leave and flexible working practices. This will highlight you’re an equal opportunities employer, who values the importance of diversity and inclusion.
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We do Nuclear. We only do Nuclear. We do all of Nuclear. -
NUCLEAR FAMILY
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NUCLEAR END-TO-END
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NUCLEAR PURE PLAY