Introducing the Fair Chance Navigator

In 2018, Envoy began our first engagements working directly with employers on building and implementing Fair Chance strategies. Among our first projects was Bojangles Restaurants, a chain with 800+ locations and a new ownership group that understood both the social and economic value of expanding opportunities for jobseekers with past convictions. After 18 months collaborating with Bojangles on HR policy reform and recruiting strategy, we began to see the data roll in – disqualifications cut in half, opening up careers for thousands of justice-impacted employees, and higher retention and advancements for those candidates recruited through Fair Chance partnerships.

Seven years later, our team has worked directly with several dozen companies across a range of industries, and provided guidance and support to hundreds more through local and national partnerships. Over that time, we have seen clear patterns in the kinds of policy changes and recruitment practices that effectively expand talent pools and reduce barriers to employment. Some of these changes are simple, and some take months of planning and complex, multi-departmental coordination across the company. But over time, our team has worked to codify the actions and processes that successful companies have undertaken to move toward Fair Chance employment, in hopes of scaling this work beyond the small group of employers we are able to consult with directly.

The Fair Chance Navigator is the outcome of this process. The Navigator is based on a few core learnings that we have accrued through partnering with employers:

• Moving Fair Chance strategies forward requires clear and tactical guidance, inspiration from peer employers, and customization based on the unique circumstances of each company

• There is an internal sequence to how successful companies adopt Fair Chance practices, that moves from planning, to policy change, to direct recruitment, to deeper integration

• With the right tools, internal champions for Fair Chance employment can align leaders and develop the policy changes and partnerships to positively impact their company’s workforce.

This spring we will release the Navigator to a subset of employers, in collaboration with partnering workforce and business associations. We look forward to sharing this new resource for employers to build Fair Chance strategies through self-guided, self-paced actions. Through the Navigator, we hope to learn how employers engage with the content so we can expand and improve the platform over time. To learn more about the Navigator and pre-register, please visit fairchancenavigator.com – and see our video below!