One in four adults in the UK of working age has a conviction – for employers, turning a blind eye to this untapped talent pool is not an option. As a prison leaver himself, Jacob Hill founded Offploy in 2016 to reduce re-offending by helping those who have been through the criminal justice system build skills and confidence and supporting them into jobs, as well as working with organisations to better understand, recruit and retain people with convictions.

While more and more high-profile companies, including Timpson, Tesco, KPMG and Greggs, are recognising what people with convictions have to offer, many still have progress to make. People Management sits down with Hill to discuss why employers should be taking steps to hire people with convictions – and where they should start.

What motivated you to start Offploy?

When I was 21, I founded a business for camping at music festivals and received £300,000, as well as being named Yorkshire’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year. I won all sorts of awards and accolades and had all these great things going on in life, but my business was failing and I didn’t know how to talk to anyone about that. As the debts mounted, I made the stupid and regrettable choice to try and repay them through selling drugs at music festivals. I was arrested by undercover security and ultimately sentenced to 28 months.

My mum is a police officer and my dad is a drugs investigator, so I should have been the poster boy for not going to prison.

The judge said: “You had all this support in life, and you didn’t ask for help. You made this choice.” I really get it, and I reflect on that all the time.

But it was for this reason that I knew I was going to be okay after prison – the privilege I had before custody gave me a heck of a lot of opportunities. Recognising the incredible talent and drive and determination of the people inside prison, I wanted to do something to open up pathways for them and be part of their journey.

What barriers do people with convictions looking for employment face?

Why should employers hire people with convictions?

There are three benefits that I always see.

• The first is access to talent—with 12.6 million people with convictions in the UK, an employer that refuses to employ them is turning their back on 25 percent of the working age population.
• The second is retention – the Timpson Group sees a 74 percent retention rate after twelve months in their justice cohort, which is huge in this market, especially in retail.
• The third is social value – the Social Value Portal has shown that employing someone with a conviction for 12 months saves society £24,527.

Why is that important?

Because as an employer, my mind tells me that this is good for recruitment and retention, but my heart tells me that this is actually good for people, this is good for society and this is making a difference for an individual and their family. Being able to show that also means businesses can report that they are generating social value for society, as required under the new Procurement Act.

If we’re talking about prison leavers, you might find that they’ve got big gaps in their CVs because of their prison sentence. But there’s so much you can pull from that gap. Can you imagine going into a prison environment, surviving that for nine months, 10 months, a year, coming out the other side, and being willing to turn up to an employer and say “give me a chance” – that takes so much resilience. Whether they’re skilled or not, they’ve got the values and character and determination, which more employers are focusing on in recruitment now, because you can train skills.

What advice would you give to organisations looking to recruit from this talent pool?

The first thing I’d say to employers is to at least write down your processes for when you’re hiring someone with a conviction, and when an existing colleague gets a conviction – what would you do as an organisation in that situation, where would you stand? Never blanket ban people based on the type of conviction they have; always make decisions on a case-by-case basis. You can talk about employing people with convictions and ex-offenders, but if you refer to them as a homogenous group, you’re talking about the most serious, violent serial killers right through to someone like my
little old nan, Brenda, who’s got more speeding points than she’s had years on the earth. When you consider an applicant sitting in front of you, talk to the character and the circumstance, not just the conviction.

So where should they start?

There’s two routes that organisations typically take to employ people with convictions.

One is partnering with the New Futures Network, a government agency to help employ from within prisons, and they will help you hire people when they’re released and maybe even to set up your operation as an organisation inside a prison.

The other route of hiring people with convictions is the community-based route, and the best way to do that is to stop your policies and processes putting people with convictions off. Trust me, they are looking for work, they want to be part of an organisation, and all you have to do to attract more talent is say:

“We actively encourage people with convictions to apply for our roles.”

The best place to start is to work out where you are and then work out where you want to be. To work out where you are, we’ve got a free inclusivity diagnostic tool, which will let employers know on a percentage scale where they are in terms of their culture, their processes and their social values measurement.

How can employers support people with convictions once they’ve entered the workforce?

A person with a conviction doesn’t necessarily have any different needs someone without a conviction. They still might have the same mental health challenges, or they might have fallen out with a partner, they might have money problems, they might have all of these. But, on the flip side, they might not as well.

The main thing as an employer that you can do to support a person with a conviction in the workplace is around diary and priority management. They may have appointments to attend with a probation officer. They may have an ankle tag on, which means they have to be at home within a curfewed timeslot. They may, if you’re employing them directly from the prison, have to go back there at night time. All of this can be sorted with just a conversation.

They also may be incredibly anxious that their colleagues are going to find out about their conviction and what will happen to them if the other colleagues do find out – so reassure the individual that you won’t be telling any of the colleagues in the workplace, and if there are reprisals from other colleagues because they find out, then that’s an independent disciplinary process for harassment or bullying in the workplace.

One of the biggest things that an employer can do is to stand by their recruitment decision let the individual know:

Also listen to the CIPD podcast episode ‘Unlocking opportunities for prison leavers’

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