Companies are increasingly competing to be the preferred employer by implementing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices. And in today’s tight labor market, an approach called open-hire has attracted the attention of the Body Shop.
The open-hire idea isn’t new. In 1982, Bernie Glassman coined it when he started Greyston Bakery to employ individuals who faced barriers to meaningful employment. The bakery’s specialty is brownies which they sell online, and they supply Ben & Jerry’s brownies for their Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream.
The idea behind the open-hire policy was to hire anyone willing to work and support them by helping to remove the barriers that kept them unemployed. No interviews, background checks, or resumes were required. As open-hire employees often needed additional support for transportation, housing, and training, the company worked to assist them. Then in 1992, the Greystone Foundation was created and launched workforce development programs to serve those deemed unemployable or hard to employ. In 2008 Greystone Bakery became a B-corp.
The idea isn’t to make all positions in a company open-hire. There are many jobs for which open-hire isn’t suitable, and it has the potential to pose safety risks for employees and customers. But, for appropriate positions, Greystone found that they could quickly recruit open-hire employees while drawing from a broader and more diverse candidate field while increasing retention.
The Body Shop first piloted an open-hire policy for hiring at their distribution center in North Carolina in 2019. In 2020, they rolled it out to entry-level retail seasonal hires. And in 2021 they expanded the program to permanent hires and began partnering with charities to attract and recruit people from marginalized and underemployed communities. According to their website, they have hired more than 1400 employees globally through open-hire policies. To date, they report that about 10% of seasonal workers become full-time employees.
When hiring seasonal employees, the Body Shop eliminated background checks, drug screenings, and high school education requirements. Nykeba King, Global Head of Inclusion and Belonging, explains, “This program is about giving people first chances, a chance they have never had before, but it is also about second chances too.”
