HarperCollins UK named on Best Employers for Race list

Friday, 2 November 2018 Books+Publishing

HarperCollins UK is the only publisher to have been named as one of 70 of the best UK employers for race diversity and equality, reports BookBrunch.

The Best Employers for Race list, compiled by UK organisation Business in the Community (BITC), was established in 2017 and aims to acknowledge ’employers that are taking a proactive approach to address racial inequalities in their organisations’. This is the second consecutive year HarperCollins has been listed.

Current UK employment statistics show gaps between the employment rates of Black, Asian and minority (BAME) people and white people, according to a report published by BITC. The Best Employers for Race list seeks to highlight organisations that currently demonstrate ‘clear action on leadership, progression and recruitment’ of BAME employees.

The report comes as HarperCollins announces the introduction of blind recruitment and extended unconscious bias training for 250 hiring managers. A new blind recruitment platform removes all identifying features from resumes, including gender, race, and educational establishment, and changes names to aliases, while unconscious bias training will help recruiters to understand bias and introduce fair recruitment process procedures.

HarperCollins director of people John Athanasiou said: ‘This is our next step in driving further improvement in diversity and inclusion, and as well as the direct benefits we will also have access to more data on the diversity of our recruitment campaigns to help inform future strategies. Ultimately, we believe blind recruitment will be a key tool in how we address the makeup of our workforce, and will also impact the gender pay gap.’

HarperCollins was previously the most nominated company at the 2016 Race Equality Awards. That same year it began a BAME traineeship scheme to tackle the underrepresentation of BAME employees within the business.

Category: International news