Freshminds Diversity and Inclusion Charter

The Freshminds Diversity and Inclusion Charter outlines our commitment to promote the values of diversity and inclusion throughout our business.

Through our own hiring, retention, career progression, training and development processes, we strive to create a company in which diversity and inclusion is championed and in which barriers to achieving this are challenged and overcome.

As a talent and resourcing business, we recognise that we have the ability to lead and influence the D&I efforts of the communities we exist to serve – our clients who look to us to identify the very best talent, and the candidates who ask us to represent them.

We are committed to being actively anti-discriminatory, and to supporting talented individuals achieve career success, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age, disability or sexual orientation. We strive to attract, engage, retain and promote in line with these points.

Many barriers to inclusion and equality in the workplace are deeply entrenched, systemic in their nature, and will take considerable time and effort to overcome. Factors such as enduring disparities in access to higher education, wealth distribution and healthcare outcomes among under served and under represented groups require a widespread and continual address.

Our commitment is to contribute to these efforts by championing talent and ability, seeking opportunity and supporting our communities through the services we provide.

Adam Clements on behalf of the Freshminds Board

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Supporting diversity in recruitment

We are committed to drawing a diverse pool of talent into both the Freshminds business and the candidate network, and have the following steps in place to ensure that we are successful in identifying diverse talent:

1. Advertising of job roles: In order to ensure as diverse a range of applicants as possible we:

• Market across a range of media, and run outreach events at universities to directly engage entry-level talent

• Provide our teams with market-leading technology to minimise gender biasing language in job ads

• Review applicant volumes, and target under-represented groups through additional outreach activity

• Ensure that neurodivergent candidates are given equal opportunity to apply

2. Candidate screening: With a high volume of applicants to the network, we do have to set some minimum requirements in terms of academic attainment and/or professional experience when identifying suitable new network members. We recognise that this carries a risk of perpetuating inequalities that may exist at a systemic level.

• We deploy work sampling tools and specifically interrogate skills and ability, rather than just experience

• Conduct initial exploratory interviews with applicants to build a more informed view

3. Interviewing candidates: Before being put forward for a role, all applicants will be specifically interviewed for that role, and may be requested to prepare and submit relevant supplementary application materials. Our interviews are:

• Always face to face (either in person or via video conference)

• Notes are always reviewed by a third party to ensure completeness and avoid bias

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Supporting our candidates

Freshminds places candidates at all stages of their careers into both permanent and contract/interim roles. We are fortunate to work with exceptional talent, and always strive to mirror the quality of our candidate network in the service we provide to them.

1. ​Your Freshminds application: On application to the Freshminds network you will be asked to submit some demographic information. This is not mandatory, but does help us understand the diversity within our candidate pools. Crucially, your demographic data is not included in the information that Freshminds consultants view or search on within our applicant management systems. It exists to enable aggregated reporting.

2. Your Freshminds interview: Applicants joining the network may be interviewed by a Freshminds consultant. This interview is to ensure that we have a full understanding of your skills, capabilities, career goals and motivations. Your CV is a helpful guide, but we recognise that in order to connect you with the best career opportunities, we need to get to know you.

3. Presenting you for a role: You will always receive a detailed role brief and interview with a Freshminds consultant prior to being put forward for a role. This ensures that your application can be tailored and that you can get a clear and detailed understanding of both the role and the hiring organisation. We never send candidate profiles without prior consent.

We are always keen to ensure that our recruitment processes support all of our candidates, and welcome any feedback that you have. Please contact info@freshminds.co.uk if you would like to discuss any aspect of the work we do for candidates in our network.

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Supporting our clients

Freshminds provides recruitment and research services for many of Europe’s leading businesses. We take our responsibility to support their diversity and inclusion efforts seriously, including through the following steps.

1. Detailed role briefing: Our consultants are trained to take a comprehensive brief for every mandate, and to engage our clients and their hiring managers on the specific skills and capabilities that each job demands. While job descriptions can be a useful starting point for the briefing, we take the time to understand the team around the role, the specific objectives and deliverables, in order to ensure a well-informed approach to search and selection.

2. A commitment to diverse shortlists: We commit to delivering the most diverse candidate shortlist possible for each role. This means that where there are equally qualified and suitable candidates for a role, we will always ensure the most diverse group of candidates are presented.

3. Providing expertise and support: With a global network of strategy, change and transformation consultants spanning numerous specialisms, Freshminds has access to expert D&I advisors. We have been involved in large scale people and change programmes for a number of our clients, and are proud to have impacted the diversity and inclusion efforts of many, through the delivery of structured graduate programmes, deployment of senior advisors, and project management and implementation support.

If you are a hiring manager and have questions about our recruitment processes, or how we can help your organisation, please contact hello@freshminds.co.uk

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A commitment to continuous improvement

Driving meaningful change in diversity and inclusion requires sustained and coordinated action, and will not be achieved overnight. We recognise that the efforts today to attract talent from under-represented groups into our own business and those of our clients will, in time, ensure that the businesses of tomorrow are more representative.

Our goal is to continuously improve the diversity and representation at all levels of our own business, to measure this and report on the results to our Board on a quarterly basis from now on.

The demographic data that we ask candidates for on registration to our network is an important step in enabling continuous improvement. By understanding clearly where we need to do more to reflect diversity in our talent pools, we will be able to guide our activity towards the greatest positive impact.

The Senior Management Team and Freshminds Board of Directors have committed to regular reporting on diversity within our talent pools, to inform and identify clear actions.

Details of our ongoing work in this area will be posted in our News and Blog sections on the Freshminds website.