The Co-op is keen to attract more women to its technical and engineering teams and has been looking closely at the way it designs and describes jobs. In particular, it has worked with a specialist external company to improve the structure, content and tone of its advertising and eliminate gender-coded language.
This is beginning to show significant results. The proportion of women applying for technical roles at the Co-op has increased from 29% to 36% over the past year. But there is still more work to be done on recruitment to ensure that the company attracts the best applicants, regardless of gender, and that this feeds through into hiring the very best people.
At the Co-op, as in many businesses, technical teams tend to be male-dominated. Changing this requires a fresh look at the recruitment process. Advertising that features traditional male-oriented language – and corporate jargon – may be off-putting to women who then feel the job is not aimed at them. A more creative and open-minded approach should attract a wider talent pool and lead to therecruitment of more women.
Since changing their approach to recruitment, the company has seen:
The Co-op is working with Textio, an ‘augmented writing platform’ that checks for gender-coded language and suggests more neutral options. The Co-op’s advertising has changed in a number of ways:
In addition, the company is introducing unconscious bias training for managers to ensure that the recruitment process guarantees equal opportunities to all candidates.
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