Last Summer, we created the world’s first Employment Charter for justice-impacted people.
Last Summer, our Communications team assembled the world’s first 3-tier Charter for recruiting and progressing people with criminal records (from here on, we’ll call them ‘Fair Chance candidates’).
Our Charter was compiled from over 500 data points drawn from work by various global leaders in the field, including the Second Chance Business Coalition in the USA, the Fair Chance Coalition in Canada, and various well-known UK charities and non-profits.
We knew from the outset that we didn’t want to create a single, pick-n-mix guide that would allow employers to be unreasonably partial about who they worked with. Nor did we want to focus just on prison leavers, who make up only 10% of Brits who’ve tangled with the UK’s Criminal Justice System.
Instead, we collaborated with employers and charities for several months to co-create a 3-tier system – from Bronze (Aware) through Silver (Believer) to Gold (Champion); then we put it out for consultation and piloting at the back end of 2023.
And that’s where we are now: 12 organisations (of various sizes, sectors and compositions) are putting the Bronze and Silver tiers through their paces. The pilot phase will close the day before Good Friday (Thursday, March 28th) and we’ll be taking feedback from all our pilot members during that week so that we can revise and improve the charter.
We can’t wait to collate all their feedback at a special Soft Launch event on May 22nd – watch this space for more information when it’s available.
