Regulator of Social Housing Attraction Strategy

Our Attraction Strategy is a key document that draws together strategically all that the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) does to attract, retain, support, encourage and reward its people to meet its priorities within a positive culture.

We will:

• Deliver the RSH’s strategic objectives and continue to meet new challenges and opportunities ahead it is essential that we have the right people, in the right jobs with the right skills at the right time

• Spread the candidate reach: we advertise internally and externally depending on the vacancy across various job boards, CS jobs, Inside Housing and specialist job boards

• Ensure RSH brand connects to our organisation's values, people strategy and HR policies

• High-quality content, good usability and consistent communication from our careers website

• Setting out what the recruitment process is likely to involve • Using social media to attract candidates

• Source candidates internally

• Equal opportunities and diversity in candidate attraction

We review job descriptions and person specifications to check for potential bias against people with a protected characteristic. For example, considering if there is an emphasis on number of years' experience rather than skills, because this could exclude younger candidates, women who have taken time out of the workplace to care for children or people who have suffered ill health through disability.

Discrimination can creep into the candidate-attraction process unconsciously. HR and hiring managers are made aware of the potential pitfalls when using the range of candidate-attraction channels on offer helping to ensure that candidate-attraction techniques do not exclude people with a protected characteristic and consider using methods that broaden the pool of prospective candidates and attract people from under-represented sections of the community.

Principles for recruitment

We have developed an internal set of recruitment principles, which include our position on whether roles should be advertised internally or externally, internal secondments and managed moves. The aim of our recruitment strategy is set out in the principles and set out below.

Aim

Our overarching aim in recruiting staff is to appoint the most suitable person for the post being recruited to in terms of skills, knowledge and behaviours to enable the regulator to meet its fundamental objectives. We aim to do so without discrimination or unconscious bias based on Equality Act protected characteristics. We recognise that appointment decisions will depend on the pool of applicants for a role and there may be more than one appointable candidate in any given recruitment round. In appointing the candidate who provides the best match in a recruitment exercise against the criteria set, there will be other candidates who will miss out and may be disappointed. Hiring managers will aim to give constructive feedback to unsuccessful candidates.

Candidate attraction statement

The regulator seeks to attract candidates that are suitably qualified and from a broad range of backgrounds.

We will do this by:
• Providing clear role information
• Providing clear information about working for us
• Offering flexible working options where possible
• Advertising in appropriate locations
• Explaining our recruitment process and communicating promptly with candidates
• Reducing biases in our recruitment processes
• Using testing appropriately during the selection process
• Monitoring the effectiveness of our recruitment approaches

Provide clear role information

Our adverts and role profiles will be clear and easy to understand, including qualifications, skills and experience that are relevant to the role. Qualifications and experience requirements will not pose an unreasonably high hurdle to candidates with the appropriate skills. We recognise that the recruitment process may create barriers for some groups, we will review our job requirements to remove bias in language and requirements wherever we identify those. This will include minimising the use of regulator-specific jargon in adverts and role profiles, providing explanations of unfamiliar terms as required.

Provide information about working for us

Our careers site and other supporting information will help candidates to understand our work, values and the benefits we offer. We want to attract candidates who are interested in our work and passionate about supporting a viable and well-governed social housing sector. We will provide information to enable candidates to self-select whether our organisation is right for them.

Flexible working options

We will offer flexible working options where possible. We will consider where a role could be based and offer as many options as possible, consistent with achieving our purpose and delivering our objectives, to attract the widest pool of candidates. We will consider all requests for flexible working to broaden access to our roles.

Advertising

We will advertise our external vacancies on Civil Service Jobs and our careers site as a minimum. In addition, we will normally also advertise in a range of other locations including those specific to particular roles. We will use the regulator’s social media channels to draw attention to our job adverts.

Explain the recruitment process

We will provide candidates with advice and information about how to complete our application form and the evidence we require. We will communicate with candidates about the progress of their application, provide information about the next stages, and offer feedback if they are unsuccessful after interview. We recognise that how we treat candidates reflects on our reputation and how potential employees view us as an employer. We recognise that recruitment is a two-way process and we will seek to build candidate engagement with our employment offer.

Reducing bias in recruitment

We recognise that discrimination can exist in recruitment processes and we will ensure that our attraction and selection processes are inclusive. Our recruiting managers complete training on recognising and reducing unconscious bias and effective recruitment including the legal framework.

We will use name-blind recruitment, where the recruitment panel will shortlist candidates without knowing their name. We will ask candidates to provide their career and education history with certain details removed. Name-blind recruitment has been shown to reduce conscious and unconscious bias in the recruitment process and is widely used in the public sector.

We are a registered Disability Confident employer and offer a guaranteed interview scheme for disabled candidates who meet the essential requirements of the role.

We may use positive action in recruitment to broaden the pool of prospective candidates and attract people from under-represented sections of the community.

Appropriate selection techniques

We will use appropriate selection methods including structured interviews, psychometric personality and ability tests, work-related tests or presentations as part of our recruitment process. The use of tests will be appropriate to the level of the job and provide relevant information about a candidate to support decision-making. We will review test usage to ensure that the test has reliability (can be repeated) and validity (is relevant to the job characteristic being measured).

Monitor the process

We will monitor our recruitment process to ensure that we are attracting enough suitably qualified candidates from a broad range of backgrounds. We will use metrics including the success of different channels in attracting candidates, using equality and diversity monitoring and reporting to review our selection processes and time to hire to identify and reduce delays in the process.