Last reviewed: 22 June 2022
- Your organisation should require high standards of disability inclusion in any contract with a supplier, including mechanisms for reviewing performance against key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Decide which indicators to monitor when agreeing contracts – these should have robust and tangible targets that allow you to see whether the supplier is meeting or failing to meet your requirements.
- Disability inclusion-related KPIs should be seen as equally important as any other KPIs you monitor with suppliers. Treat failure to meet them as seriously as you would treat failing to meet other crucial KPIs.
- When agreeing contracts, specify actions your organisation can take when KPIs are not met – for example, suspending the contract or even exiting the contract if necessary.
Why is monitoring outsourced recruitment services important?
You want to know that suppliers of recruitment services are meeting your organisation’s own standards on disability inclusion. They are providing services on your behalf, and your organisation has a legal duty to ensure that they are not discriminating against disabled applicants and candidates.
Furthermore, your organisation will be missing out on opportunities to hire great disabled candidates if they are disadvantaged by a supplier’s failure to meet inclusion requirements.
Even though they are not provided by you, outsourced recruitment services are one of the main ways disabled candidates will
Agreeing the contract
You need to consider how you will monitor supplier’s performance when agreeing the contract with the supplier. It will be much harder to enforce acceptable performance if the contract does not specify what the supplier needs to do, how you will monitor their performance, and what steps you can take if they do not meet the specifications.
See the other resources in this section for guidance on agreeing contracts with suppliers.
For more advice about disability-smart procurement, see our resource ‘General principles of disability-smart procurement.’
What to monitor
The specific KPIs your organisation requires suppliers to meet will depend on the product or service they are providing and what your organisation wants to achieve. However, below are some general areas to consider monitoring in outsourced recruitment services:
- Are candidates who need adjustments getting them? Ask suppliers to share data on how many applicants/candidates are asking about adjustments and how many are receiving those adjustments.
- Are they actively asking applicants or candidates about adjustments? It is not enough to provide adjustments only when a disabled person asks – suppliers should be proactive in asking applicants and candidates if anything can be done differently to make the process easier for them.
- How long are adjustments taking? What is the average time an applicant or candidate who asks for an adjustment has to wait before it is put in place? You could also require suppliers to provide all the data on this, so you see more than just the average. Even if the average is good, that could conceal a small number of disabled people who have to wait too long.
- How many applications do they receive from disabled people? If you use an external agency to collect applications, are they under-representing disabled people in the applications they collect? This can be indicative of barriers in their processes, for example inaccessible application forms.
- Does the supplier provide alternative formats? For example, application forms, tests and assessments. This includes large print and braille, but should also include allowing applicants and candidates to do something in a different way – for example, sending in an application video instead of a written cover letter.
These are general questions to consider when setting standards for monitoring outsourced recruitment services. When setting requirements in a contract, set specific goals with measurable performance indicators so that you can see whether the supplier is meeting your organisation’s standards.
How to monitor
Your organisation should be monitoring standards generally in all outsourced products and services. Disability inclusion should be considered equally among the other standards your organisation monitors. It shouldn’t be seen as an optional extra – if disabled people cannot use a product or service, then it is not fit for purpose.
As stated above, the way your organisation monitors the products and services provided by external suppliers should be specified in the contract. They specific way you should monitor recruitment services will depend on the nature of those services and what you want to achieve with them.
Employers should be proactive when monitoring recruitment services – don’t just assume that everything is going well until you receive complaints.
- Visit physical premises to make sure they are accessible for disabled applicants and candidates. For example, if you use an outsourced assessment centre, have a relevant professional from your organisation visit and check that it doesn’t have barriers to disabled people in the premises. They could use our ‘Premises accessibility checklist’ as a tool to see what to look for.
- Build requirements for sharing data into the contract and enforce these requirements. If you want to know data about how the supplier is performing (see the questions above for examples) then make sure they are required by the contract to share this with you regularly. Make sure that there is a person or team that is responsible for collecting and checking this and that there are steps specified that they could take if the data is not provided.
What to do if standards are not being met
- Raise concerns as soon as you are aware of them. Tell the supplier what is going wrong and what they need to do to fix it.
- Agree timeframes that ensure areas of concern are addressed as soon as possible.
- Activate provisions to suspend or exit the contract if there is a serious breach of the disability inclusion requirements.
Exiting and reviewing a contract
If the disability inclusion specifications that you stipulated at the beginning of the contract are not being met, you can discuss this with your supplier and establish how they intend to address this. If it is a serious breach of contract or performance does not improve, you may choose to call on any sanctions included within the contract.
Ultimately, you are responsible for ensuring that the products, goods and services that you buy can be used by and do not discriminate against disabled people.
The law
Organisations are legally responsible for ensuring that products and services they procure from external suppliers are accessible and do not discriminate against disabled people.
For example, in recruitment, that means that an employer can be held responsible for inaccessible tests and assessment centres, even when those are provided by an external supplier.
Further information
Contact our Advice Service for tailored guidance.
Read next
- Procuring disability-smart recruitment services
- Charter for disability-smart recruitment providers
- Best practice guide – Introducing an inclusive procurement strategy
- General principles of disability-smart procurement
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