Employing Potential

Employing Potential at DMU connects employers and PWCR advocates to explore inclusive hiring, DBS, belonging, and career progression.
About this Event

Employing Potential is a summer event series hosted by De Montfort University and funded by the Randal Charitable Foundation. The initiative brings together people with lived experience of the Criminal Justice System (CJS), recruiters, business owners from both SMEs and larger organisations, and professionals who support people with criminal records (PWCRs). This new event series is designed to spark meaningful conversation and support organisations in reflecting on recruitment and hiring practices relating to people with criminal records — a group that represents almost a quarter of the UK working-age population.

The event is designed to create a supportive but critically engaging space where attendees can openly explore the practical, cultural, and logistical realities of recruiting and supporting PWCRs in the workplace. Rather than delivering formal training or prescriptive guidance, Employing Potential focuses on meaningful discussion, shared learning, and constructive challenge.

Through a roundtable discussion format, participants from diverse professional and personal backgrounds will be encouraged to exchange ideas, share good practice, question assumptions, and consider what inclusive recruitment and workplace progression could look like within their own organisations and contexts.

We especially encourage attendance from people involved in recruitment, interviewing, hiring decisions, or organisational hiring policy and practice. Examples may include HR leaders, recruiters, hiring managers, talent acquisition professionals, interview panel members, DEI leads, workforce planners, and organisational decision-makers.