Anti-racist employment strategy - A Fairer Scotland for All

Section 5: Resources for Employers

Recruitment and Retention

Scottish Government Minority Ethnic Recruitment Toolkit

This toolkit is for recruitment managers in the public sector looking to improve the diversity of their workforce by recruiting more racialised minorities. This toolkit includes a range of suggestions and ideas for organisations who will appreciate some initial guidance. It is not intended to be prescriptive and some of the guidance will depend on the specific context in which organisations are working. While a lot of the content has been drawn from practice that is used in parts of the public sector, the information in this toolkit may be equally useful to employers in other sectors.

Minority Ethnic Recruitment Toolkit (www.gov.scot)

Skills Development Scotland Guide to Engaging with BME Communities

This resource guide has been developed to help Skills Development Scotland training provider partners attract applicants from racialised minority communities and identify the support available to enable entry and progression on Scottish Apprenticeships.

Guide to Engaging with BME Communities

Skills Development Scotland Guides to Diversifying Your Workforce

In these guides there are practical and free/low-cost measures to source, attract, and retain employees that might have been otherwise overlooked. The guides offer tips on how to widen the search for candidates and ensure that selection processes are fair to all applicants. They also give examples of the resources available to help make the most of a new hire's abilities.

Diversify your workforce: Equality and diversity guidance for employers

Scottish Government Race Recruitment and Retention Action Plan

Our Race Recruitment and Retention Action Plan details the action we will take to deliver our vision to be a world-leading diverse employer where racial equality is achieved. The Plan's anti-racist approach covers five priorities to redistribute power and foster cultural change. We hope that this will prove a helpful reference point when considering action within your organisation.

Race Recruitment and Retention Action Plan

Anti-Racist and Intersectional Approaches

BITC – Toolkit – Mental Health and Wellbeing for Ethnically Diverse Women

A self-care toolkit, this guide aims to contribute towards the growing effort to educate and support managers with practical techniques to build authentic relationships and foster a deeper appreciation of the unique mental health challenges that may be faced by the racialised minority employees in their teams.

BITC – Toolkit – Mental Health and Wellbeing for Ethnically Diverse Women

CIPD Anti-racism Hub

As a means of addressing the barriers to change, CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development, has set out its anti-racism policy, supported by a new anti-racism hub, which includes a host of webinars, FAQs, and practical guides.

Tackling racism in the workplace | CIPD

Social Mobility Commission – Social Mobility Toolkit

This Toolkit offers practical help and ideas. It's been created with and for cross-industry, larger employers. It supports those addressing a new frontier in their diversity and inclusion agenda to find, attract, and develop employees from all socio-economic backgrounds.

Social Mobility Toolkit

Close the Gap – Research into black and minority ethnic women's experience of employment in Scotland

This research provides a range of lived in experiences to inform employer practice. A summary of their research findings can be found on page 3, section 2).

Close the Gap's research into Black and minority ethnic women's experience of employment in Scotland

Close the Gap – Guidance on Taking an Anti-Racist Approach to Tackling Women's Workplace Inequality

This guidance supports employers to take an anti-racist approach to addressing racism and sexism in the workplace, and the barriers faced by racially minoritised women.

Guidance for employers on taking an anti-racist approach to tackling women's workplace inequality.

Glasgow Disability Alliance – Ending Poverty and Removing Barriers to Work for Disabled People in Glasgow beyond COVID-19

The report highlights the intersectional barriers that disabled people from minority ethnic groups face that are reflected in the lower employment rates and their thoughts on the actions that employers need to take to address these barriers.

Ending Poverty and Removing Barriers to Work for Disabled People in Glasgow beyond COVID-19 - Glasgow Disability Alliance (gda.scot)

Fair Work

Fair Work First Guidance

This guidance outlines the Scottish Government's Fair Work First approach and exemplifies the Fair Work First criteria in practice. It should be used by those involved in awarding public sector grants, sponsorship and other funding, and contracts, and those seeking to access/accessing such funding and/or contracts.

Fair Work First Guidance.

Employers are also encouraged to use the Fair Work Employer Support Tool to understand their Fair Work' practices and access support to enable them to strengthen their approach. Similarly, employers should encourage their employees to use the Fair Work Convention's Employee Self-Assessment Tool to assess their own experience of Fair Work and be willing to engage with workers and unions in responding to the findings of these assessment tools.

Pay Gap Reporting

Close your Pay Gap Tool

This resource helps employers take steps to reduce the Gender Pay Gap. It also has a guidance section with topics such as flexible and part-time working, and recruitment and promotion.

Close your Pay Gap Tool

CIPD – Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting Guide

This guide seeks to encourage more employers to publish their ethnicity pay data voluntarily; facilitate this process by recommending the most appropriate and effective approach to categorising and reporting their data; and support analysis and use of the resulting information to produce effective action plans to address the ethnicity pay gaps and inequalities revealed.

Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting Guide - CIPD

PricewaterhouseCoopers – Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting

This short guide provides an overview of how employers can prepare for mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting.

Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting Guide - PricewaterhouseCoopers

Positive Action

Positive action | Equality and Human Rights Commission (equalityhumanrights.com)

Employment Statutory Code of Practice

Skills Development Scotland – A Guide to Positive Action This Skills Development Scotland guide provides an overview of what positive action is, with examples and suggestions to increase diversity in the workforce.

A Guide to Positive Action

Private Sector

Representative organisations such as CBI, Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and Institute of Directors (IoD) have various resources on their websites and share learning from their work on addressing racial inequality.

CBI – Bridge the gap: practical ways to close your ethnicity pay gap | CBI

FSB – Small Business Skills Hub | Articles, Guides, Training | FSB | FSB, The Federation of Small Businesses

IoD – Institute of Directors | Business Networking, Events & Training (iod.com)

Trade Union Engagement

Trade Unions play a key role in addressing racial inequality in the workplace and on building diverse and inclusive workplaces. Employers should work actively with Trade Union representatives. More information on how employers can get involved can be found at TUC Anti-Racism Taskforce | TUC

Training

Equality and Human Rights Commission: Unconscious Bias Training – An Assessment of the Evidence of Effectiveness

This report looks at the effectiveness of unconscious bias training. It makes recommendations for employers, policymakers and HR professionals to use the training effectively in the workplace to create more inclusive workplaces.

Unconscious bias training: An assessment of the evidence for effectiveness

Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights

This report outlines standards to provide the consistency and solid foundations needed to ensure anti-racist training within organisations can make a real difference in addressing racism and racial inequality.

Ten standards for training from an anti-racist perspective

Trauma

The National Trauma Training Programme provides accessible, evidence-based trauma training resources developed by NES and informed by experts by experience, including a trauma-informed leaders component. Support for training and implementation, across all sectors of the workforce, is provided by a team of Transforming Psychological Trauma Implementation Co-ordinators (TPTICs).

Further references

The Runnymede Trust – a race equality think tank (publications include a focus on employment)

Diversity UK

Think Business, Think Equality (thinkbusinessthinkequality.org.uk)