Inclusive Hiring Practices for Frontline Roles: What Works Across the Funnel

What are inclusive hiring practices in frontline recruitment?

They are the steps that give every capable applicant an equal chance, from how the job is defined to how the decision is made and explained.

Order pickers, drivers, cleaners, security officers and hospitality staff often apply on a phone, between shifts. Many have no CV. A large part of the pool may speak Dutch as a second language. Agencies and employers can handle hundreds of applicants a week for the same few roles.

Can a night shift worker reach you outside office hours? Is each requirement in the advert needed for the work? Do two recruiters at two branches ask the same questions? Inclusion is how the process is built. Who ends up hired is the outcome you then check.

Why does inclusion in frontline hiring come down to process?

Unfair outcomes usually come from small steps repeated hundreds of times.

Bias in Dutch hiring is documented. Researchers sent 4,211 fictitious applications to vacancies in ten occupations in the Netherlands and found discrimination against applicants from ethnic minority groups, with rates that differed considerably between groups. They found no evidence that adding personal information to the applications reduced it (Thijssen, Coenders and Lancee, 2021). Our blog No Hiring Tool Removes Bias. Including Ours. looks at this study in more detail.

Illustrative example: an agency receives 200 applications a week for warehouse roles. If one step loses one applicant in ten for a reason unrelated to the work, such as an interview slot during the applicant's own shift, that is 20 people a week, more than 1,000 a year, who never got a fair look. Nobody decided to exclude them. The process did.

Structure also helps quality. In a 2022 review, structured interviews came out on top of the common selection methods for predicting job performance (Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens, 2022). The research is mostly from outside the Netherlands and measures job performance, not fairness, but it shows that asking everyone the same questions does not lower the bar.

Wording matters before anyone applies. In five studies, job adverts with more masculine themed words, such as competitive or dominant, made women find the jobs less appealing, mainly because they expected not to belong (Gaucher, Friesen and Kay, 2011).

What does Dutch and EU law expect from employers and agencies?

Equal treatment law covers every step from advert to placement.

How these rules apply depends on the facts, so take advice on specific cases.

For the full timeline, see The EU AI Act and Recruitment.

What does an inclusive frontline hiring process look like, stage by stage?

Eight stages, each with one practice you can check this week.

1. Write down only the requirements the job needs

Write each requirement as a supervisor would say it: "lifts boxes of up to 15 kilos through an eight hour shift" rather than "physically fit", and "can reach the site for a 06:00 start" rather than "own car". Then ask: if a new starter lacked this on day one, would the job fail, or would a week of training fix it? If training fixes it, it is a wish.

Take most care with requirements that sound neutral but affect some groups harder, such as a Dutch language level, years of experience or a driving licence for a job without driving. They need a legitimate aim and must be appropriate and necessary for it; writing the reason down shows quickly whether you have one. For language, set the level the task needs, such as following a safety briefing.

2. Put pay, hours and the real shift pattern in the advert

Put the hourly wage or range, the shift pattern and start times (including early starts) and the location in the first lines. Use plain, short words, since many applicants read Dutch or English as a second language. Describe the work rather than a type of person: drop words such as "tough", "dominant" or "young team". Say how to ask for an adjustment.

3. Let people apply on a phone, in minutes, without a CV

A CV upload favours people who own a laptop and have written a CV before, which says little about the job. Ask only what you will use at this stage: contact details, the role and the facts that decide the next step. Leave date of birth, photo and nationality out of the form; right to work is checked later, for everyone you plan to hire. The W3C accessibility guidelines help here: for example, people should not have to enter the same information twice in one process, and buttons need a minimum size (WCAG 2.2).

4. Ask every candidate the same questions, at a time they choose

Frontline candidates are often at work at 10:00, so office hour interviews quietly exclude people who already have a shift job. Let candidates choose the time, or use a format they can complete after their shift.

Ask everyone the same questions, tied to the requirements, with a short guide written in advance on what a good answer contains, and note what each candidate said against each requirement. How to Run Structured Interviews at High Volume works through this step by step. Keep questions on the job: "This role starts at 05:30 on weekdays. Can you work that pattern?" Leave children, religion, family plans and health out. If the job does not need Dutch, interview in a language the candidate understands well, so you hear their experience rather than their vocabulary.

5. Offer adjustments before anyone has to ask twice

Ask every candidate early: is there anything we can change so you can take part? Common examples are more time, a written instead of a spoken format, a different time of day, or a person instead of a form. None of these needs a diagnosis. Record the adjustment given, not the condition behind it.

6. Run the same checks for everyone you plan to hire

Checks become uneven easily: an extra document request for one candidate, a check after the offer for another. Decide which checks the role needs, such as identity, right to work and required certificates, and run them for every candidate you intend to hire, at the same stage. The identity check is a legal duty for every new worker anyway: Dutch employers must establish identity with a valid identity document and keep a copy in the payroll records, and check residence or work permit status where it applies (Wet op de loonbelasting 1964, article 28).

7. Let a person decide, and tell every candidate the outcome

A named recruiter or hiring manager should decide against the requirements and record the reason in those terms: "did not hold the required certificate" rather than "not a good fit". Tell every candidate the outcome. If any step is automated, keep a person in the decision; our blog The Tool Should Never Be the One Saying No explains why.

8. Review where people drop out, every month

Look at how many applicants reach each stage and where they leave. A sharp drop at one step, such as after the interview invitation, often points to a practical barrier you can fix. Comparing outcomes between groups can involve special categories of personal data, so take legal advice first; How to Measure Quality of Hire in Frontline Recruitment covers fairness measures.

See it on a real role: the AI Interviewer gives every applicant the same short, structured voice interview on their phone, whenever it suits them.

What changes for staffing agencies?

Agencies run one process for many clients, so the risk is drift between them.

Where does AI help inclusive hiring, and where can it hurt?

It can give every applicant the same structure, and it can also repeat the bias in what it is given.

Used well, AI can hold a first interview at any hour, ask every applicant the same questions and record answers against the requirements, so a recruiter can see what a decision rests on.

A requirement that should not be there is applied to everyone just as consistently. Ask any voice tool provider how it handles different accents and what they tested, and offer another format to candidates who need one. Never use tools that read emotions from a face or voice (see the table above). No hiring tool removes bias, including ours. Keep a person in every decision, tell candidates when they are talking to an automated interviewer, and check the outcomes.

What does this look like for one warehouse role?

Illustrative example: one order picker role, before and after the checklist.

All details are invented to show the method.

What are the limits of a process checklist?

A better process can make unfair outcomes less likely, but it cannot rule them out.

A requirement applied consistently can still affect one group harder without good reason, and most of the research cited here comes from outside the Netherlands. Checking outcomes by group is the real test, and it needs legal advice first.

How Radius helps

Radius Hire is the AI hiring platform for frontline roles. It is built to put several of these practices into the daily process:

Radius does not remove bias, and it is new, so this article explains how the product works rather than claiming results.

What should you do first?

Start with the requirements and the interview, because everything else follows from them.

Take one role you hire for every week. Write its requirements as tasks with a reason for each, drop the ones that fail the day one test, and turn the rest into questions every candidate gets. A month later, look at where people still drop out. Inclusive hiring is a set of small, recorded choices, made the same way for everyone, with a person behind each decision.

General information, not legal advice. Position as of 22 October 2026.