Church of England: Full-Scale Recruitment Process Review Through a DE&I Lens

Situation

The Church of England (C of E) and its seven National Church Institutions (NCIs) have made great progress already in creating a diverse, fair, and unbiased recruitment processes. But, like most organizations, they face unique challenges. The main one being the barriers which come with being a faith and mission-based organization, coupled with the external perception of the Church. With the progress they had already made, the C of E were looking to accelerate the pace of change and take this to the next level, which is where PeopleScout came in.

Solution

The Church of England engaged PeopleScout to execute a recruitment process review through a diversity, equality and inclusion lens (DE&I) with the goal of uncovering further opportunities, including:

• A forensic deep dive of over 80 internal documents spanning role creation, assessment policy, organizational values, and DE&I training.
• DE&I data analysis of C of E’s recruitment processes focusing on progression and engagement.
• Deep immersion in the organization and connection with its members to understand what is happening on the ground through discovery interviews and focus groups, winning hearts and minds along the way.
• Regular consultative check-ins with the core team to ensure they are involved at each step of the way so they can own the recommendations.
• Co-creating a vision of what the future can look like with an actionable roadmap decided by current C of E employees.

Results

Examples of some of our recommendations include:

• Create a competency/behavior library and corresponding bank of interview questions to support hiring managers when designing role profiles, job descriptions and interviews for their roles.
• Revisit the Church of England’s brand visibility, marketing strategy and transparency based on feedback from their new joiners in order to better attract candidates from all backgrounds and religious orientations.
• Create clarity around instructions for filling out application forms to allow more consistency in response quality from candidates (e.g., using example responses).
• Keeping interview panels to a maximum of two or three members from C of E to reduce candidate anxiety.
• Create a central onboarding checklist to ensure everyone receives the same support when joining their role in any of the NCIs.

With the support of PeopleScout, Church of England’s National Church Institutions now have:

• Clarity over their current strengths in diverse recruitment to roll out wider, as well as opportunities for improvement
• Actionable, realistic, tailored recommendations for creating change in their unique organization
• A co-created roadmap with both quick wins and long-term strategy to mobilize change immediately whilst maintaining momentum
• Out-of-the-box ideas for talent attraction and candidate experience to boost the diversity of new joiners
• Support and buy in from key stakeholders and employee resource groups so that any actions can have a lasting embedded impact