What is a recruitment policy? +free recruitment policy template for UK small businesses
Do you want to better understand recruitment policy? Or are you looking for a simple-to-use and free recruitment policy template that’s suitable for a UK small business?
Then this is the blog for you. As one of the HR advisors at CharlieHR, I help founders and managers make better decisions around their people. And so much of that begins with recruitment.
Concerns about compliance, turnover, inefficiency, cost, reputation, or a lack of diversity can be mitigated by a recruitment policy. Without prior knowledge and experience, however, it can be difficult to know where to start or what to include.
This blog takes away the guesswork and demystifies the whole policy-making process. And it’s written from a small business' point of view, since we're one too.
What is a recruitment policy?
A recruitment policy, or recruitment process policy, is a document that sets out your business’ approach to taking on new employees.
Used to create and maintain an effective and consistent recruitment process, a recruitment policy also ensures that the business is in line with UK employment law.
The principles outlined in your recruitment policy should be followed every time you’re recruiting for a role. And, done right, a recruitment policy should make it easier to identify who’s right for a position, and improve the overall hiring process.
Why do you need a recruitment policy?
Recruitment is an essential part of business and business success, so you need to get it right. And that’s where a recruitment policy comes in.
The goal of a good recruitment policy is to:
- Help to identify people with the right attitude, skills, experience and qualifications.
- Ensure a consistent, organised, and fair and equitable hiring process.
Your recruitment policy should set out your company’s philosophy towards recruitment and establish your hiring principles and processes. It should also give your hiring managers a framework and ethos to follow, while simultaneously providing all candidates with a positive experience.
For example, at Charlie, we’re committed to building a company that’s representative of the society we live in, and where every individual feels that they belong. This is why we aim to make all of our hiring processes as fair and equitable as possible. And we believe in being transparent about them too.
Our hiring process is listed step-by-step on the careers page of our website, and so are the four core values that characterise the sort of people who work at Charlie. These are:
- Get uncomfortable - we love to see candidates who are not afraid to engage with our hiring team, regardless of the topic
- Give energy - we recruit individuals who suggest solutions, notice potential problems, and remain positive in the face of challenges
- Drive for results - we’re looking for people who don’t give up
- Be humble - Charlie team members are open-minded, responsive to feedback, and take personal responsibility.
So at Charlie, our hiring policy is at the core of who we are as a business.
Why else is a recruitment policy important?
Hiring the right people is vital, so all businesses — big or small — should have a recruitment policy in place.
A recruitment policy provides clarity and consistency when employing new people, setting out your recruitment philosophy, standards, practices, and ambition.
At Charlie, we’re transparent about how and who we hire, and what our new employees can expect in terms of salary, and perks and benefits when they get here. This is positive for our business in multiple ways, as it helps us attract the right people and often gets us good PR.
So our hiring policy is important because it:
- Prioritises inclusion and diversity to cultivate a team where every individual can thrive
- Creates a high-performing culture right from the start by giving candidates the tools they need to succeed
- Provides as much transparency as possible to everyone at Charlie to foster a culture of trust and retention.
Ultimately, our commitment to inclusive hiring is integral to building our diverse and high-performing team. If you do the same at your business then it’s likely you’ll see more of the talent you want in the room with you.
How to write a recruitment policy in 3 steps
As I’ve said above, your recruitment policy should do three main things:
- Set out your philosophy towards recruitment
- Establish your hiring principles
- List your recruitment processes (practices).
1 – Set out your recruitment philosophy
Your recruitment policy should start with your philosophy. This is what sets you apart as a business and includes your values, ethics and attitude. My advice is to sit down and write down (as a team) what values you'd like to show as a company when you hire people. This can sound a bit abstract, so here are some examples to make it more concrete:
- A commitment to diversity – by encouraging blind hiring and fairness across the entire hiring process.
- A desire for transparency – by having clear job descriptions that always display salary bands, expectations and benefits.
- A forward-thinking approach to wellbeing – by showing candidates you put a big emphasis on work-life balance.
- A commitment to results – by wanting to recruit people who understand what's at stake and will do their best to help you accomplish it.
Here's the philosophy we have at Charlie as an example: “At Charlie, we live by our mission. That means building a work culture that inspires and fulfils us, every day of the week. Come and help us make work better.”
Try to list all of what you care about as an employer, and write down your opening statement for your recruitment policy. It should be short, direct and convey what you're looking to achieve to make people want to join your organisation.
2 – Establish your hiring standards and principles
This is your commitment to transparency and compliance with UK employment laws. When it comes to recruitment, you must ensure you’re doing everything openly and in line with HR legislation.
To comply with UK employment law, it's a good idea to have some core HR policies in place, such as the following:
- An equal opportunities policy and statement – to make sure you don't discriminate against any candidate when it comes to hiring.
- A data protection policy – since you'll be keeping data about candidates, you'll need to make sure you have standards when it comes to saving and deleting the data.
- A diversity and inclusion policy – this is to include as many people in the hiring pipeline as possible so you don't miss out on the best and remove bias as much as possible.
With Charlie Recruit, blind hiring and score cards are part of the hiring process to help you pick the best candidate for the role. Find out more below.
3 – List your recruitment processes
The majority of any recruitment policy is devoted to how the business recruits its new employees — otherwise known as ‘recruitment practices’, ‘hiring processes’ or words to that effect.
Your recruitment practices are likely to be very business-specific, but there will be common processes for all small businesses. These may include:
- How the salary is set – this will include a series of criteria and how fair the salary is set. At Charlie, for example, we work with an expert to set salary bands every year for each role.
- Who is responsible for hiring new employees – each role has a different hiring manager, but you need someone to overlook the overall process.
- Who writes the job description – this can be done by the HR manager (or person responsible for budget) and hiring manager to ensure the job advert hits the right target and mentions the right skills.
- How you screen candidates – for pre-hiring and to make sure you have DE&I standards, you'll need to set specific standards when reviewing CVs.
- What the interview steps are – each interview process should have a clear framework and follow the same steps depending on the level and the role you're hiring (a mid-level won't have the same steps as a senior person, and a developer won't have the same tasks as a content marketer, for example). Outline each stage and what objective they have, but also mention whether interviews need to be online or in person.
- How to interview candidates – whether it's giving interview feedback or organising group interviews, you need to align all of your team members on the process to obtain the best results.
This sounds like a lot of admin, and perhaps that's where it's time to invest in a tool like Charlie Recruit – find out more below to streamline all of your recruitment workflows.
Recruitment policy template (UK)
The majority of your recruitment policy will be specific to your business, but the template below is an example of how we recruit at Charlie. As a fellow small business, you are welcome to use and adapt it.
Recruitment philosophy
At Charlie, we live by our mission. That means building a work culture that inspires and fulfils us, every day of the week.
Come and help us make work better.
Hiring principles
We’re committed to building a company that’s truly representative of the society we live in, and where every team member can feel that they belong. That’s why we challenge ourselves to make each and every one of our hiring processes as fair and equitable as possible.
We’re looking for people who:
- Get uncomfortable - we love to see candidates who are not afraid to engage with our hiring team, regardless of the topic
- Give energy - we recruit individuals who suggest solutions, notice potential problems, and remain positive in the face of challenges
- Drive for results - we’re looking for people who don’t give up
- Be humble - Charlie team members are open-minded, responsive to feedback, and take personal responsibility.
Recruitment processes
We do all our interviews remotely. The process usually looks like the one outlined below – but if you make an application, we’ll send you a more detailed breakdown ahead of time.
Step 1 - Initial phone call
Step 1 is an introductory phone call with the hiring manager. This tends to last around half an hour.
Step 2 - First stage interview
Next, you'll have a video call with the hiring manager, lasting about 45 minutes to an hour.
Step 3 - Skills test
You'll then be invited to complete an expertise test at home (we don't expect you to spend more than 1-2 hours on this).
Step 4 - Final stage interview
The final stage is made up of a few different parts – a 'meet the team' call, a chat about your skills test, and finally, an interview with either our CEO or Chief of Staff.
Download and edit this template so it works for your own business and how you recruit.
