By Rik Willis, Training & Advocacy Manager, Offploy CIC
Across the UK, employers are facing many challenges: labour shortages, rising recruitment costs, and increasing pressure to demonstrate meaningful social value. Yet, one talent pool continues to be largely overlooked, namely people with convictions.
For many businesses, the idea of hiring someone with a criminal record still raises concerns. Questions around reputational impact, safeguarding, customer confidence, insurance, compliance, and operational risk often dominate the conversation long before skills, experience, retention or potential are considered.
Businesses have a duty to protect customers, colleagues, contracts, and brand reputation but what many employers are now recognising is that the answer is not avoiding the issue altogether, it is managing risk properly and consistently.
That is where structured support, education, and practical tools become critical.
The Untapped Workforce Sitting in Plain Sight
13 million people in the UK have a police criminal record; that is about 1 in 4 of the working age population. Every year, thousands of individuals experience the criminal justice system and come through determined to rebuild their lives through stable employment, yet many struggle even to secure an interview.
This creates a significant disconnect. Employers report persistent recruitment gaps in operational, logistics, facilities management, construction, warehousing, hospitality, and support services roles, sectors where motivation, reliability, and retention are often more important than perfect CVs.
Research consistently shows that stable employment is one of the strongest factors in reducing reoffending. For employers, that translates into access to a motivated workforce that is often highly committed to proving themselves and very grateful and loyal to an employer who gives them another chance.
Businesses that have embraced second-chance hiring report strong retention rates, improved loyalty, and a positive workforce culture. Many also find that employees who have been given another opportunity bring resilience, determination, and perspectives that strengthen teams overall.
The Reality of Employer Concerns
Barriers are rarely rooted in unwillingness alone. More often, employers simply do not feel equipped to assess risk confidently.
Hiring managers and HR teams ask:
• What if something goes wrong?
• How do we assess whether a conviction is relevant to the role?
• What are our safeguarding responsibilities?
• Could this impact customer trust or contractual obligations?
• Are we exposing the business to legal or reputational harm?
• What if line managers feel uncomfortable making the decision?
The problem is that many organisations currently approach these decisions inconsistently. One manager may be supportive, another risk-averse. Some businesses rely on blanket exclusions, while others make subjective decisions without clear frameworks or governance.
Without structure, employers can unintentionally discriminate, lose strong candidates unnecessarily, or expose themselves to poor decision-making processes that are difficult to defend internally or externally.
The solution is not removing caution. It is replacing uncertainty with informed, structured, risk-managed decision-making.
Moving from Fear-Based Decisions to Risk-Based Decisions
Forward-thinking employers are shifting towards structured approaches that balance opportunity with operational protection. This means recognising that not every conviction creates the same level of risk, and not every role carries the same exposure.
A decades-old non-violent offence may have little relevance to an operational warehouse role, while other offences may require additional controls, restricted duties, or enhanced supervision depending on the environment.
Businesses need practical ways to assess risk:
• The relevance of the conviction to the role
• The time elapsed since the offence and the age at the time of the offence
• Evidence of rehabilitation and motivations to not reoffend
• Safeguarding and compliance considerations
• Potential mitigation measures
This is where specialist guidance becomes essential.
How Offploy Supports Employers
At Offploy, we work with major employers to help them navigate the realities of hiring people with convictions safely, confidently, and effectively.
We understand that employers do not need lectures or idealism, they need practical tools that help their managers make informed decisions whilst protecting the business.
That support is delivered through three key methods: Consult, Train and Support.
1. The Offploy Toolkit:
The Offploy Toolkit has been designed to help organisations build practical, scalable approaches to inclusive recruitment and risk management.
Rather than encouraging businesses to “take a chance,” the toolkit supports employers in implementing clear processes and governance frameworks that enable informed hiring decisions.
This includes guidance around:
• Role risk assessment
• Recruitment policy development
• Candidate assessment frameworks
• Escalation routes for higher-risk decisions
• Hiring manager confidence and training
• Safeguarding considerations
• Communication and onboarding approaches
The toolkit helps organisations move away from inconsistent, manager-by-manager decision-making towards structured and defensible processes that align with operational realities.
For larger employers and supply chains, this is particularly important. A centralised approach creates consistency across multiple sites, contracts, and business units while reducing uncertainty for frontline hiring managers.
Have a look at our full Employers’ Toolkit here: www.offploy.org/employers-toolkit
2. Getting Started Employing With Conviction Webinar:
Many hiring managers have never received formal guidance on how to assess criminal record disclosures appropriately. As a result, fear often fills the information gap.
Offploy’s free 45 minute GSEWC webinar helps address this by giving employers practical insight into the realities of recruitment, risk, rehabilitation, and operational decision-making.
The sessions are designed to move the conversation away from assumptions and towards evidence-based understanding.
Using our “ICEBERG” methodology it typically includes:
• Understanding the importance of an inclusive culture
• Getting a robust ex-offender policy in place that covers new hires AND existing employees
• Managing reputational and other risk types
• Building safer recruitment pathways
• Practical case studies and examples
• Ensuring a realistic and supportive onboarding process
• Calculating and measuring social value and social impact
Importantly, the webinars provide employers with a safe environment to ask difficult questions openly, something that is often missing from broader inclusion conversations.
That honesty matters. Businesses cannot build confidence if they feel unable to discuss risk transparently.
Book yourself onto a free webinar here: www.offploy.org/webinar
3. Using ScoreApp to Identify Organisational Readiness
Some businesses may already have supportive leadership but lack operational frameworks. Others may have policies in place but low confidence among managers. Some may have significant supply chain exposure but no consistent governance process.
Offploy’s ScoreApp helps organisations assess their readiness and maturity when it comes to hiring people with convictions.
The assessment process helps employers identify:
• Existing strengths and gaps
• Recruitment process risks
• Policy inconsistencies
• Training requirements
• Governance weaknesses
• Opportunities for improvement
Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all solution, the ScoreApp provides employers with a clearer understanding of where support is needed and what practical next steps could look like.
This is particularly valuable for organisations looking to embed social value commitments into procurement and workforce strategies while maintaining robust operational controls.
Take our ScoreApp to see where you are doing well and where you might need some help: offploy.scoreapp.com
Why This Matters Now
Increasingly, businesses are recognising that exclusion alone does not reduce risk. In many cases, it simply removes opportunity without improving outcomes for employers, communities, or society.
At the same time, organisations are under growing pressure to demonstrate measurable social impact, improve workforce resilience, and broaden access to employment.
Done properly, hiring people with convictions can support all three objectives. But equally importantly it changes lives, not just of the individual but their family and wider circle as well.
This is proven to reduce the likelihood of that individual reoffending and therefore makes all of us safer.
We are helping employers to have the confidence to open up more roles to people with convictions. This is making society a better place as well as helping the employer to broaden their talent base, improve their retention rates, and help their business to succeed.
That is why the future of this agenda will not be driven by businesses trying to do the “right thing” but by the fact that this is “good for business”.
For employers prepared to build this into business as usual, the opportunity is significant: access to motivated talent, stronger workforce resilience, improved social value delivery, and a more inclusive labour market that benefits everyone.
