Inclusive Recruitment:
Kin + Carta

Celebrating Disability has drafted the path that we need to embark on to make sure that we are always considering how we can better support neurodivergent and disabled kin within the company.

Celebrating Disability recently delivered a disability inclusion audit and report for Kin + Carta. This was followed by a training session based on the recommendations made in the audit. Kin + Carta described working with us as “truly, truly amazing.”

The Background

Kin + Carta is a B corp certified global digital consultancy firm, with a mission to build a world that works better for everyone.

Sofia de la Colina is Kin + Carta’s Global Inclusion and Diversity Coordinator. She is responsible for coordinating IDEA, the company’s D&I program, which aims to ensure that every individual regardless of their gender, race or background feels completely safe and empowered.

“Although we had been running the program for over two years and had celebrated different victories and faced different challenges, we realized that we were still lacking when it came to the inclusion of disabled people,” she said.

Kin + Carta had already made great progress when it came to the inclusion of the LGBT community, or of different ethnic groups. However, the D&I program and the wider company wanted to do the same for disability. They wondered:

“How can our processes make sure that we are taking down or acknowledging the barriers that employees with disabilities may face in the workplace? Or even for people that might be interested in joining the company: how can we make sure that they don’t have those barriers?”

Our Successful Proposal

After doing some research online, Sofia and her colleague Shereen came across Celebrating Disability. Sofia and Shereen were impressed by the “success stories” or testimonials on our website and they felt that our approach “sounded extremely human”, which was “what [they] wanted in an external partner.” They were also drawn to the fact that we could offer a holistic approach, providing a bespoke package of both consulting and training.

“Sometimes partners focus only on training,” said Sofia. “But the approach from Celebrating Disability was nice because it also entailed getting to know our processes – running a diagnosis first of our current situation, to later implement new strategies. And we found that extremely meaningful.”

After an initial consultation, Kin + Carta decided to work with us.

Creating Best Practice for Recruitment

Disability inclusion desktop audit

To assess where the company was at, we carried out a disability inclusion desktop audit of Kin + Carta’s processes and policies around recruitment and onboarding.

“Esi and Jen were able to provide us with a diagnosis of our current status of inclusion, and how we can improve this for disabled people,” said Sofia.

Next, we provided them with a report with recommendations and quick wins for implementation. “They presented this information in an amazing report,” said Sofia. “Then they provided an executive summary, which we could share with other levels of leadership.”

There were some challenges along the way, simply due to the fact that Kin + Carta is a consultancy with clients of their own. Sofia explained: “In a consultancy, it is not always easy to implement change. Because even if we can guarantee to be inclusive, or that our offices are inclusive, there is the extra difficulty that our client’s office might not be inclusive, or the tools the client is using might not be as supportive for people with disabilities.”

However, Sofia and her team found that “Esi and Jen were extremely patient and available for us all the time,” happy to answer their questions, and “provide answers and ways to support.”

Tailored training session

We also worked with Kin + Carta to design and deliver a bespoke training session, based on the recommendations that were made in the audit.

The 3-hour session was called “Recruitment Best Practice for Disabled & Neurodivergent Candidates” and took place on 8 August 2023 on Zoom.

With 20 participants in attendance, the session was intended primarily for “people that are the face of the company”, ie. the talent acquisition and people teams – those who are involved with interviews and onboarding. The goal of the session was to make sure that employees at Kin + Carta could understand the recommendations made in the audit.

“We were extremely happy with the result,” said Sofia.

The session, which took place on Zoom, was highly interactive, and created a safe space for participants’ questions and concerns. Jen opened the session by introducing the idea of the social model as a framework to understanding disability. There was useful discussion about disability inclusive language, and Jen explained the differences between the terms “neurodiversity”, “neurodivergent” and “neurotypical.” The group talked about reasonable adjustments and how to create an inclusive onboarding process. They also discussed how to initiate a conversation with a disabled employee about what support they might need, and how to recognise and speak up about a micro-aggressions in the workplace.

The session closed with an in-depth discussion about how to create a more inclusive recruitment process. This could look like: making sure that job adverts are accessible to everyone (eg. by using inclusive messaging or imagery, providing different formats, etc); creating an inclusive interview process (eg. reasonable adjustments at every stage, using a welcoming tone of voice, etc); or creating inclusive, comprehensive policies related to hiring, interviewing, reasonable adjustments and onboarding.

Key takeaways for Kin + Carta

• Understanding disability and neurodiversity
• Adopting inclusive language
• Learning about the social model as a framework
• Exploring recruitment best practice
• Recognising that inclusion is an ongoing journey

Next Steps

Kin + Carta are now equipped with tangible steps to immediately make a change.

“The incredible work of the audit provided us with actionable items,” said Sofia. “Even for really simple things, like making sure that our presentations are inclusive.”

However, Kin + Carta have also understood that disability inclusion is ongoing: “We have embarked on a journey that I don’t think will have a final destination where we say: ‘Yes, we are 100% inclusive for people with disabilities.’ But I feel that it’s something that we should always keep at the back of our mind.”

“Working with Celebrating Disability changed our perspective,” said Sofia. “We would definitely consider consulting with them again.”