One of the RFU’s strategic objectives is to drive rugby union to better reflect the diversity of society. We are committed to supporting people from marginalised or underrepresented groups to thrive at the RFU. We believe hiring people from different backgrounds and with different identities at all levels will be crucial in ensuring our spaces and work is more representative of wider society. 

To understand how well we are achieving this objective, we measure success in a number of ways:

• we ask employees to disclose information about their identity through our HR system so we can see our diversity at different job levels.
• we ask employees about their satisfaction and engagement through our annual surveys.
• we report on the retention rate of our employees.
• we consult our employee networks on how to improve our policies and processes.

When it comes to our recruitment process, we want to be able to identify where there may be barriers for people on the basis of their identity. We can do this by collecting information on people’s identities as candidates progress through our recruitment process. Once we have identified where the barriers are, we can start to address them and make our process as inclusive as possible. For example, if we can see from our data that women are less likely to progress past the interview stage, we can take actions like reviewing the diversity of our interview panels, upskilling panel members on bias and providing more opportunities internally for women to develop. 

It is incredibly helpful for us if you answer our questions on identity.  

This information is considered highly confidential and is not connected to your profile on our website. It will not impact on your application in any way. The information will be viewed anonymously so we can track the diversity of applicants as a whole and to identify areas that there may be bias. In the cases that this information is viewed, it will only be accessed by our People team and not by hiring managers. 

If you are successful in your application, this information will transfer over to Oracle, our HR system. In your induction, you will be shown how to update this if you do not want to share the same information that you shared anonymously during the recruitment process.  

We have tried to choose language that is as inclusive as possible when asking about identities but please do let recruitment@rfu.com know if you feel we could be more inclusive.  

Unfortunately, we had a limited number of characters for the questions in our recruitment process so this page is designed to provide more context to the questions we have asked.  

Caring responsibilities – for this question we mean to include anyone that looks after or gives any help or support to a family member, friend, or neighbour because of long-term physical, disability, mental ill-health or problems related to old age.  

Ethnicity – we have drawn our ethnicity question from the census but have also included a write in option for those whose ethnicity was not covered by the ones listed – this is available after the full set of questions. 

Trans identity – trans is an umbrella term to describe people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth. We have included an unsure option here for people who may be questioning their gender identity but don’t feel fully comfortable choosing yes.  

Gender identity – we have included a non-binary option in our gender identity question. Non-binary is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn’t sit comfortably with ‘man’ or ‘woman’. Non-binary identities are varied and can include people who identify with some aspects of binary identities, while others reject them entirely. 

Sexual +/ romantic orientation – this question is designed to be ace and aro inclusive where ace and aro are umbrella terms used to describe the wide group of people who experience a lack of, varying, or occasional experiences of romantic and/or sexual attraction, including a lack of attraction. We have also used bi+ to include all romantic and/or sexual orientations towards more than one gender, including for example, pan identities.  

Social mobility – we have asked a question about school meals. Free School Meals are a statutory benefit available to school-aged children from families who receive other qualifying benefits and who have been through the relevant registration process. It does not include those who receive meals at school through other means e.g. boarding school. 

We have also provided some examples of occupations of your main household earner when you were about aged 14. Here are some further examples in case you didn’t see the occupation of your main household earner represented:

• Modern professional & traditional professional occupations such as: teacher, nurse, physiotherapist, social worker, musician, police officer (sergeant or above), software designer, accountant, solicitor, medical practitioner, scientist, civil / mechanical engineer
• Senior, middle or junior managers or administrators such as: finance manager, chief executive, large business owner, office manager, retail manager, bank manager, restaurant manager, warehouse manager.
• Clerical and intermediate occupations such as: secretary, personal assistant, call centre agent, clerical worker, nursery nurse.
• Technical and craft occupations such as: motor mechanic, plumber, printer, electrician, gardener, train driver.
• Routine, semi-routine manual and service occupations such as: postal worker, machine operative, security guard, caretaker, farm worker, catering assistant, sales assistant, HGV driver, cleaner, porter, packer, labourer, waiter/waitress, bar staff.
• Long-term unemployed (claimed Jobseeker’s Allowance or earlier unemployment benefit for more than a year).
• Small business owners who employed less than 25 people such as: corner shop owners, small plumbing companies, retail shop owner, single restaurant or cafe owner, taxi owner, garage owner.
• Other such as: retired, this question does not apply to me, I don’t know.