Businesses with a diverse workforce are more successful businesses. 

To illustrate that point:  

• Diverse companies are more likely to financially outperform their peers (McKinsey’s Diversity Report) 
  • Gender: 25% more likely to outperform peers financially 
  • Ethnicity: 36% more likely to outperform peers financially 
• Diverse organisations are 70% more likely to capture new markets (Harvard Business Review) 
• Diverse companies are 45% more likely to report a growth in market share over the previous year  

The current skills gap requires creativity and inclusivity and there remains a huge opportunity to bring underrepresented and hidden talent communities into the workforce to address the skills gap, including attracting women, ethnically diverse, LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent communities to STEM roles. 

Gattaca Solutions is committed to supporting our clients in bridging the gap, widening talent pools and helping make organisations’ recruitment processes more inclusive. These events are possible thanks to the dedicated and passionate ED&I team within Gattaca Solutions, it is their personal motivation and drivers that have created environments for genuine conversation and positive action. Rina Madlani, a guest speaker on our pride panel back in 2021 perhaps said it best, “How you treat your people is a reflection of how you’ll treat our people” and that reflection can be seen within our team – they're true custodians of client talent and dedicated advocates and ambassadors to support any organisations’ ED&I journey.  

Actions speak louder than words 

Key dates in Gattaca Solutions’ Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) calendar are our ED&I workshops. We invite organisations to spend the day thinking about inclusive recruitment, learning from ambassadors and practitioners, as well as collaborating with peers to find real solutions to attract diverse talent into their organisations. 

So, what do these events involve? 

• External speakers on a variety of ED&I topics 
• Sharing the challenges  
• Providing insights, ideas and case studies – to inspire positive action 
• Sharing resources to support organisations’ ED&I journey 
• Collaborative workshops on building inclusive recruitment processes 

In case you missed it... 

Some highlights from our previous sessions include:  

• Storytelling with Jake Chambers  
• Inclusive recruitment with Jo Major 
• Candidate perspectives with Bridge of Hope 

One of the features of our ED&I sessions is to create a space that everyone in attendance feels comfortable to speak freely in and to honour that we won’t discuss every element of the sessions here, but we will share some key take aways.

Storytelling with Jake Chambers  

Jake joined the Gattaca team in 2022, having worked in Recruitment Marketing roles for the last 8 years, with a range of organisations from start-ups to global brands. Jake supports our clients strategically with candidate attraction and engagement best practice, with a real focus on ED&I and candidate experience. 

His session walks our attendees through how their employer stories are being told, how they can harness those stories and where to start.  

“It’s likely that your brand already has a presence on platforms that reach diverse audiences, with broad skillset ranges.  

• Social Media– Green Umbrella research, over 73% of UK adults regularly access Facebook  
• Indeed – UK Company Pages viewed more than 110 million times in 2022 
• Indeed & Glassdoor – 6/10 online UK jobseekers visit Indeed every month, over 51 million monthly site visits  
• LinkedIn – approx. 30% of the UK population aged 16+ use LI  
• Google Maps – used by 77% of internet users aged 16 to 64 

If it’s not a case of uncovering a hidden channel, what do we need to do to engage broader audiences in our employer brand?”  

When it comes to storytelling for your employer brand, Jake shares, it can be split into two main categories: 

• The content you share  
• The content that is shared about you  

A key takeaway from Jake’s session is that clients have been surprised to find there are lots of ways they can talk about the work they’re doing, the successes of their employees and their teams, without needing a hefty media budget. Jake offers tangible actions and topic suggestions throughout the session that the group discuss their experiences with and can take away and implement after the even concludes.  

We’ll be sitting down with Jake in the coming weeks to discuss this further so do keep your eyes peeled.  

Inclusive recruitment with Jo Major  

Through a twenty-year+ career in the recruitment space, Jo has helped to grow businesses, schools, charities and enterprises, and shaped the careers of some outstanding humans. She founded Diversity in Recruitment because of her absolute drive to get ED&I on the agenda of recruitment teams, no matter what their size and capacity. Jo believes recruiters can influence and lead real change. 

“A passion for equality & recruitment” - Jo Major, Founder  

Diversity in Recruitment’s mission is to make recruitment accessible to everyone and during our workshops Jo shared some incredible and thought-provoking statistics and ideas with the group. Her session opens up the dialogue around getting started with ED&I, it’s a topic that can feel insurmountable, but Jo’s work illustrates the importance of building momentum.  

You can read more about Diversity in Recruitment here and connect with Jo on LinkedIn here.  

Candidate perspectives with Bridge of Hope 

Bridge of Hope’s phenomenal team have shared their personal journey’s and lived experience when it comes to the importance of ED&I and the ongoing conversations we have every day with our clients.  

It wouldn’t do their experiences justice to surmise them here but instead we’ll share with you their why – the thing that drives every individual there and the thing that aligns their work so closely with ours:  

“Having a job changes everything. When we're young, we dream big. Astronaut, ballet dancer, doctor, England captain. No child imagines being unemployed - without purpose, income or reason to get up in the morning. But far too many grow up into that reality. 

A job is rocket-fuel for self-worth; a job provides for families to flourish. And the more of us who are in meaningful work, the better it is for the economy, too. But what if you're ready to launch and just can't achieve ignition? 

Bridge of Hope Careers team knows first-hand how soul-destroying it is to be unemployed. 

We also know that hundreds of thousands of people are overlooked for employment because of their identity or history. We're talking about age (youth and experience), race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, sex or gender identity, time out as a parent or carer, service in the military, disability, neurodiversity, previous homelessness, a past history of addiction or mental ill-health, or a criminal record. 

That's wrong and oversight, because we're also talking about people who can bring unparalleled grit and resilience, loyalty, creativity, and employability into the workplace. Fortunately, employers are waking up to this. And we're here to kick them out of bed.” 

You can read more about Bridge of Hope here and connect with our guests James Fellowes & Chance Bleu-Montgomery on LinkedIn.   

So, a couple of questions for you:  

• Where are you at on your ED&I journey?   
• Where do you want to be?   
• How can we help you get there?  

James Parnell and Graham Day are on hand to talk about your diversity and inclusion journey today!