Same vs fair – Why a one-size-fits-all approach is outdated

When it comes to inclusive procurement, treating every candidate the same isn’t always fair. Different people have different needs. So how can you adapt your processes so they’re fair?

Lisa Annese is the CEO of Diversity Council Australia. She unpacks what companies can do to tap into overlooked talent.

Unearth what practical frameworks you could incorporate in your hiring process to ensure you’ve got a fair approach.

+++

Getting It Right is podcast by Jobsbank. It was produced by Deadset Studios and hosted by Rae Johnston.

Access DCA's “Inclusive Recruitment At Work” report in full here; and make sure you download your episode guide here.  For more practical resources on inclusive procurement and social procurement visit the Jobsbank Resource Centre. 

CREDITS

Host: Rae Johnston

Deadset Studios executive producers: Kellie Riordan, Ann Chesterman, Rachel Fountain

Deadset Studios producer: Luci McAfee

Sound Design: Scott Stronach

We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land on which this show was made.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Ty (00:05):
Hello, Human Resources. This is Ty. How may I direct
your call?

Jobseeker (00:09):
Oh, thank goodness you are a real person, aren't you?

Ty (00:12):
The last time I checked love now, what can I
do for you?

Jobseeker (00:16):
Oh, great. Look. It's just that I've spent 40 minutes
bouncing around your phone queue. I just need some help
with my application for the role that you have advertised.

Ty (00:24):
Well, all the information is online love, and fair is fair.

Jobseeker (00:28):
Yeah, that's the thing though. I just need some assistance
to apply like I'm super qualified for the job, but
I can't access the online application fully because of my eyesight.

Ty (00:38):
Well, pop your specs on love because I can't give
you any more assistance than every other applicant now, can I?

Jobseeker (00:45):
Yeah, it's not that it's just that I'd like to
know what other accessibility options you might have. Do you
have an audio job description available or could someone talk
me through it maybe?

Ty (00:57):
love, love, love. As I said, fair is fair. There's rules,
you know, everyone's getting the same opportunities here. Best of
luck now. Hello, Human Resources. This is Ty. How may
I direct your call?

Rae Johnston (01:22):
Everyone wants the chance to be treated fairly when applying
for a job. But that doesn't always mean getting equal
or the same treatment. Our somewhat unhelpful call center friend
Tai seems to think employees should all be treated the
same way. But of course, we're not all coming from
the same baseline.

(01:44):
I'm Rae Johnston and this is getting it right. A
podcast from Jobsbank that helps you become a whiz at
buying and hiring with purpose. This podcast is full of
practical tips on how to develop a more dynamic and
diverse workforce and how to design fair hiring processes.

Lisa Annese (02:03):
Look at people on their criteria rather than as full individuals.
So you go criteria one and then you look at candidate,
a candidate B, candidate C that forces you to break
up the full person and to stop focusing on things
about them that might attribute to more biased outcomes.

Rae Johnston (02:29):
Lisa Annese is the CEO of Diversity Council Australia and
quite literally wrote the book on inclusive recruitment in the workplace.
Their report details how companies can tap into overlooked talent
and maps out what are the practical steps you can
take to create a more inclusive hiring process,

(02:53):
Lisa, could you break down the common misunderstanding that the
best way to be inclusive is just to treat everyone
the same way. Why is the same treatment not necessarily
always fair?

Lisa Annese (03:08):
It's a great question and it's often misunderstood and I mean,
the reason is that because people are all different and
they all have different needs and requirements. And so if
your objective is to create equity, equality of opportunity or
a fair go for everyone,

(03:29):
sometimes it means you have to do things a little
bit differently for different individuals. I mean, it's a concept
that parents intuitively understand if you have more than one child,
if you want to give them fair treatment and you
want to be
able to provide them with the same opportunity, you have
to sometimes parent children differently and take into consideration their

(03:52):
unique needs and potentially support requirements that they have. And
it's the same concept. So if you treat everyone exactly
the same, you end up with inequality.

Rae Johnston (04:05):
If we were to zoom out and take a bigger picture,
look at an organization, what's the first step that companies
should take when it comes to fair and inclusive hiring?

Lisa Annese (04:17):
It all starts with thinking about the job that you're
trying to fill and often people look to simply replace
the person that was there before, especially if they were,
you know, a high performing individual. And so people automatically

(04:38):
start thinking about who will do the job rather than
what do we need the job to do. So, thoughtfulness
around what exactly are the inherent requirements of the role
and working to develop some kind of job description that

(04:58):
doesn't actually lead us to think of any individual, but
just thinking of the functional requirements of the role that's
always the first place to start.
I often hear people talk about who they want first
rather than what they want. So to try and resist
that and to stay open, all starts with how you

(05:20):
design the job in the first place.

Rae Johnston (05:22):
Organizations are usually in a hurry to fill a vacant role.
But how important is it to slow down if you're
genuinely looking to be fair?

Lisa Annese (05:33):
So just as an example of what that might look like,
I mean, a lot of organizations use A I tools
artificial intelligence tools to help them with decision making. Those
tools can really assist with short cutting. But what if
those tools, what if the machine learning that has been
used to create, the intelligence has been based on past

(05:56):
decisions that have been biased against certain groups of people. Now,
I'm not saying that every single A I tool is
guilty of that,
but many are. And so if what you're looking for
is a workforce of the future that is more inclusive
than what we had in the past, you have to
be very vigilant about the kinds of tools you picked.

Rae Johnston (06:20):
So when we've slowed down, what practical steps do we
need to be taking then to incorporate into hiring processes
to address job seekers being locked out, how do we
make sure that we are inviting people in?

Lisa Annese (06:35):
So this is a really big question because there's no
one step. The process of recruitment is a real complex
series of events that start with identifying a job going
to market with a job description, different individuals and organizations
will have all sorts of processes for, you know, where

(06:57):
they place job ads, how they write job ads, what
are the expectations of the process for applying? And I mean,
that's very varied. I mean, I've seen some very onerous
requirements that employers have that create unnecessary barriers to employment.
But then it's also about the people who are doing

(07:20):
the recruiting. It's what are their skills, what are their mindsets?
How open are they to thinking about things in a
way without judgment?
Then how do you assess candidates and who's doing the
assessing and then how does the final decision get made?

(07:41):
And it's, it's also about the capability and the openness
and the skill set of the people who are involved,

Rae Johnston (07:47):
what thought needs to go into who's on the job
hiring panel itself?

Lisa Annese (07:53):
So for example, if you really want to be successful
in creating a more gender balanced organization, you'll have gender
balanced recruiters. If you are really serious about disability recruitment,
you will have people with disabilities involved in the process.
They will help design questions, they will help write the

(08:14):
job criteria because they will see things that if you
don't have a disability, you won't see this is really
complex and it requires a commitment to analyze and improve
on multiple aspects in the process because they all
you know, they build on each other. You know, the
job description at the very beginning might exclude people who

(08:36):
don't read themselves into it. You might just advertise on
seek.com . Well, there's lots of places you can advertise
which are more trusted sources in first nations, communities in
disability spaces. You know, I've seen some organizations do things
like job trials instead of interviews
as much better. It means that you get a proper

(08:59):
assessment of an individual, but it also means that a
person is able to show you what they can do
rather than who they are.

Rae Johnston (09:07):
What about assessing candidates as soon as individual interviews are done?
Are there any issues to watch out for? There?

Lisa Annese (09:14):
We have this desire once we finished an interview with
someone to fully assess them
and that process of judging someone as a full individual
is very prone to bias. And so you will be
assessing not just their responses to the questions, but your
brain will be sizing them up on all the irrelevant characteristics,

(09:36):
like their skin tone, their other aspects of their phenotype,
how they're dressed, how they are physically presented, their introversion,
their extroversion, and you will rank them
based on irrelevant attributes more favorably or less favorably. And
that will factor into your assessment of them. So a

(09:58):
simple way to disrupt that would be you complete all
your interviews, then you sit down with the panel and
you look at people on their criteria rather than as
full individuals. So you go criteria one and then you
look at candidate, a candidate B, candidate C
that forces you to break up the full person and

(10:22):
to stop focusing on things about them that might attribute
to more biased outcomes. I'd like

Rae Johnston (10:30):
to talk for a moment about identified positions. I've heard
some people say that they're not fair, are they fair?

Lisa Annese (10:41):
So an identified position is when an organization will create
a position and have criteria that this position is for,
for example, Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples or people
with disabilities or women. We have traditionally had groups that
have been excluded from

(11:01):
and still are excluded from the labor market or from
full participation in the labor market. What a waste of
potential and talent for the Australian economy. So an identified
position is an important method to try and remove or
address those historical barriers and the things that lock people

(11:26):
out
and it's successful in getting people who are usually overlooked
to getting them access.

Rae Johnston (11:34):
They're also important in the instance where you know, say,
for example, there's a health care role where that person
will be providing care to people that are in their
own communities. And it helps create a safe environment for
the people who will be approaching them or you know,
my own work at NITV, which is an Indigenous broadcaster.

(11:56):
We have Indigenous journalists because we have access to the
communities to be able to tell those stories that people
that are not of our background simply wouldn't have. So
sometimes they're just important to be able to get the
job done. Right.

Lisa Annese (12:10):
Well, in those cases, the targeting of a particular identity
is a critical part of the job criteria because it
the job criteria necessitates particular skills or attributes that can
only be brought by people who have had a particular
lived experience.

Rae Johnston (12:36):
If you want to know more about the inclusive recruitment
at work report Jobsbank produced with Diversity Council Australia head
to DCA website or you can visit the Jobsbank resource Center
which you can access at Jobsbank.org.au . There's plenty of
practical guides and tips on there, whether you're a big company,

(12:57):
small business government department or a not for profit.
I'm Ray Johnston and getting it right is a podcast
from Jobsbank . It's produced by Deadset studios. his episode was recorded on the unceded lands of the sovereign Darug, Gandangara and Wiradjuri peoples produced and edited on the lands of the Turrbal and Jagera people. We wish to pay our deepest respects to their elders past and present. And we ask that you too acknowledge the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Lands on which you're listening from.