Dec 22, 20222 min read

Accelerating Fair Chance Project

Updated: Jan 3, 2023

This report presents the findings from the Fair Chance project’s survey, innovation lab sessions, and employer engagement conducted in 2019 and 2020, highlighting both current opportunities and challenges that employers face to expand employment opportunities for justice-involved individuals. As part of this project, we also established an Employer Framework for corporations to identify and develop Fair Chance hiring strategies that align with their unique structures and needs

Key Findings

Key Findings from this project are based on the survey, innovation lab sessions, and employer engagement conducted in 2019 and 2020.

Despite various Fair Chance hiring laws and employer support for the concept of hiring justice-involved youth, inclusive hiring practices are not yet widely adopted.
Hiring opportunities for justice-involved youth are further limited by compounding issues such as widespread stigma, skill-matching, and employer education on the nature of justice-involvement.
Hiring practices, including outreach and interviewing, vary widely depending on the company. Any intervention should consider these differences and be tailored to meet the specific company’s unique structure.
Adopting a Design Thinking approach can help leverage employer expertise and identify new hiring strategies to include justice-involved youth in talent acquisition processes.

Employer Framework

The Employer Framework offers a guide for employers to evaluate, adapt their hiring practices and strategize on potential inclusive talent solutions.

This Framework is based on the Design Thinking method and our project findings, and was developed with the goal of accelerating employment opportunities for justice-involved youth. As current events reveal longstanding racial inequities in the market and corporations risk losing access to the next generation of diverse talent, this framework is intended to assist employers in:

Examining current diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) approaches and opportunities to expand their impact by investing in inclusive talent solutions and hiring strategies;
Leveraging institutional expertise to develop a core set of actionable recommendations focused on driving anti-racist hiring strategies while driving bottom-line impact; and
Creating a design thinking strategy that secures buy-in from front-line recruiters, managers, and C-suite executives.