The Prime Minister has announced that a group of organisations have pledged to operate recruitment on ‘name blind’ basis, reducing the potential for discrimination. The Civil Service has committed to introducing name-blind recruitment for all roles below Senior Civil Service (SCS) level. KPMG, HSBC, Deloitte, Virgin Money, the BBC and the NHS have committed to deliver name-blind applications for all graduate and apprenticeship level roles. The announcement follows the Prime Minister’s speech to Conservative Party Conference, where he cited research showing that people with white-sounding names are nearly twice as likely to get job call-backs than people with ethnic-sounding names. The CIPD will be promoting the benefits of name-blind recruitment and will be working towards embedding this as standard through its training and development courses. 

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