North Star Housing is Opening Doors to Diverse Talent - Business in the Community

North Star Housing is Opening Doors to Diverse Talent

How North Star Housing expanded its inclusive recruitment initiatives after signing up to Business in the Community’s Opening Doors campaign.

North Star Housing is a North-East based housing association. Its purpose is to provide affordable housing, invest in communities and develop new homes across the Tees Valley, North Yorkshire and County Durham. As an organisation consisting of circa 100 employees, North Star Housing has demonstrated how actions undertaken as part of Business in the Community’s (BITC) Opening Doors campaign can contribute to expanding inclusive recruitment initiatives within an SME.
 
North Star Housing joined the Opening Doors campaign in April 2022 and signed up to various campaign calls to action, complementing its inclusive approach to hiring diverse talent.

North Star Housing logo

Actions North Star Housing has committed to

Use diverse images and role models in your communications
 
North Star Housing has consciously actioned the use of diverse images and role models in its communications, an integral part of its wider Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy.This is evident on the organisation’s website. Developers are currently working with both staff and tenants to ensure that EDI requirements are met in terms of images, text and format ready for a summer relaunch of the website. Following this approach, North Star Housing has also successfully used diverse images in email banners and its quarterly tenant magazine.

Train hiring managers on inclusive recruitment

As part of this commitment, all managers at North Star Housing are required to complete annual refresher training on recruitment practices. Additionally, all new managers receive specific recruitment and selection training, delivered by the Director of People. To ensure effectiveness, this training is mandatory and until the training is successfully completed, new managers are unable to participate in recruitment processes.

This year, all North Star Housing staff, including managers, are scheduled to receive unconscious bias training, which takes place every three years. This further facilitates managers in becoming more inclusive during hiring practices, in order to create a more equitable workplace.

Advertise jobs on channels that target diverse groups
 
To target diverse groups in recruitment, North Star Housing uses a recruitment applicant tracking system to advertise vacancies. Along with the usual job boards, vacancies are pushed out on diverse job boards, such as DiversityJobsGroup and Jobs4Disability, to target different demographics, such as disabled candidates, ethnically diverse candidates, LGBTQ+ candidates and older candidates.
 
Partnerships between businesses and education providers are also beneficial in creating pathways for young people into work. North Star Housing is committed to hiring up to three apprentices at any one time, across a variety of departments. In 2024, two apprentices secured full-time, permanent employment with North Star. This year North Star will also be reigniting the Board Trainee Programme, aimed at increasing the diversity of its Board. This two year programme was previously launched in 2021, in conjunction with the Housing Diversity Network and four North-East based Housing Associations. As a direct result, North Star was able to recruit a young, ethnically diverse female onto its Board.

The outcome of the Opening Doors campaign

North Star Housing has been able to thoughtfully reconsider its recruitment methods, as a result of the campaign. By committing to specific actions under BITC’s 5 keys for inclusive recruitment framework, North Star Housing has been able to foster a more inclusive recruitment process in hiring and retaining diverse talent.

This has led to successful outcomes, such as the implementation of the “Rooney Rule”, tailoring apprenticeship recruitment directly towards areas of diversity that are underrepresented, partnering with a local LGBTQA+ charity to provide training opportunities for staff and working with Refugee Futures to create a six month paid work placement to enable a refugee to gain valued work experience at North Star Housing.

Aimee Woodcock, People Services Project Lead, North Star Housingm says: “North Star has a clear and open approach to inclusive recruitment. As disability confident employers we guarantee interviews to any applicants who declare a disability and meet all the essential criteria of the role. Similarly, we have adapted the American “Rooney Rule” and applied this to our recruitment processes, ensuring that all candidates who declare themselves as being ethnically diverse will also be guaranteed an interview if they meet all the essential criteria of the role. 

Both schemes have been in operation for several years now and we have seen successful appointments as a direct result. One of which has been the recruitment of an ethnically diverse candidate. In the two years since commencing employment, the staff member has been able to secure a skilled worker visa through North Star sponsorship and they have been promoted twice within their department. This staff member continues to shine at North Star which was notable when they received more nominations in the Christmas staff awards 2023 than all the other nominations put together.”

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