DE&I · Cobalt UK

To Cobalt, DE&I is a journey, not a checkbox.

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) at Cobalt is foundational to the way we work, underpinning all elements of our company culture, the way we work with our candidates and clients, how we work with, value and celebrate our colleagues, and beyond.

DE&I is a journey and not just a tick box. That’s why we are dedicated to hiring and retaining a representative workforce, and continually educating our team on DE&I best practices, which sets the foundations for truly inclusive recruitment.

We recognise that in our position as a specialist search, recruitment and HR consultancy, we play a vital role in the DE&I journey across the Real Estate and Construction sectors. We want to promote equity and improve not only the prospects of potential candidates working within these industries but the opportunities for our clients to engage with a relevant and representative talent pool too.

Every day, we work with businesses at different stages in their DE&I journey, from initial awareness of the need for greater diversity, real equity and inclusive workplaces, through to the implementation of key pillars of inclusion across both recruitment and internal practices.

Pillars of Inclusion

DE&I at Cobalt is built upon four key pillars; services to clients, hiring & onboarding, company culture and language.

1. Services to Clients

Attrition is the biggest cost to any business, so a focus on DE&I can improve retention and save costs across the board. We know many of our clients face similar challenges when it comes to DE&I, so by sharing our collective successes and challenges, Cobalt can help take your business from intentions to actions.

It all starts with a conversation to understand the values of your business – what is important to you, and how does DE&I fit into that?

As part of our commitment to supporting DE&I with our clients all our consultants are trained Inclusive Recruiters, helping to optimise your hiring processes and access broader talent pools while ensuring equity and inclusivity for all candidates we work with, allowing the best possible outcomes for our clients in hiring the best talent. We can also offer our clients:

Bespoke diversity reports based on specific requirements
Recruitment process reviews to optimise for inclusion
Regular reporting on our industry-wide candidate diversity data
Invites to our industry-leading Cobalt Conversations networking events

2. Hiring and Onboarding

The what, the who, and the how of hiring. We’ve left no stone unturned in analysing our processes to optimise them for diversity, equity and inclusion, through the Inclusive Hiring workshop that internal Hiring Managers complete we ensure our recruitment and onboarding is equitable and accessible for all. In these workshops we aim to understand and interrupt biases and create hiring processes that focus on letting candidates best showcase their skillsets.

3. Culture

We want to cultivate a diverse, interesting, and healthy work culture that is driven by our people, for our people. Culture is everything from the way we work with each other, the way we make decisions, how we recognise, reward, and celebrate our successes, and how we communicate. As recruitment specialists, we welcome sharing our own best practices with clients for the betterment of workplace cultures through the Real Estate and Construction sectors.

4. Language

Inclusive language is woven into our policies, training, and day to day communications. This encompasses how we talk about and communicate Cobalt to the world, but also how we talk about our people, our candidates, or clients. We have also held a Cobalt Conversations event about the importance of inclusive language to discuss and share best practice amongst our clients.

Cobalt Conversations

Cobalt Conversations is our series of panel events focused on diversity, equity and inclusion where we bring together clients with similar goals, but perhaps at different points in their DE&I journey, to hear from experts from the industry and beyond discussing their expertise, challenges and successes, with the aim of providing our clients with actions and solutions to apply in their own organisations.

Previous events have included how we can foster inclusivity at work, how language impacts belonging and diversity initiatives, and the importance of incorporating inclusive recruitment into an organisation’s DE&I strategy.

We are always interested to explore opportunities to collaborate with like-minded people to bring these conversations to the real estate and construction industries. Whether you are a DE&I advisor/practitioner, or a real estate or construction company that want to explore the potential to work together or attend our next event, then please get in touch with our Head of Inclusion, Megan Bond.