New Possible’s British HR Awards set out to discover and celebrate the organisations that are truly passionate about delivering a world-class people experience.
Continuing with our Sharing Success series, we interview British HR Awards 2025 Winners to shine a light on the inspiring projects that are improving workplaces across the UK and beyond. In this article we chat with Keith Rosser from Reed Screening, Winners of the ‘Innovation of the Year' category.
Introducing Keith Rosser
Keith is committed to making UK hiring faster, fairer, and safer. 14 years ago, Keith founded Reed Screening, an employee screening business in Reed, the world’s largest family-owned recruitment business. He also chairs JobsAware, the UK’s largest worker-rights platform launched on BBC Breakfast to over 6m people. In addition, he serves as a Non-Executive Board Member of three government organisations and is Chair of the Better Hiring Institute.
About Reed Screening
Keith said: "Reed Screening (RSc) is one of the UK’s largest screening businesses completing 1m+ checks each year. Uniquely we are family owned, UK based, fully onshore, open 24/7/365 and work one day a week for charity. Reed Screening stays open 16 hours more a day for our customers, allowing them to achieve market leading vetting times and be there 24/7 for everyone whatever their shift pattern. Charity is at our core, giving 20% of revenues to charity while delivering our mission to pioneer the future of hiring. Reed Screening works closely with the UK Government to transform UK hiring and make it faster, fairer, and safer."
Making UK hiring faster, fairer, and safer
Reed Screening, part of the Reed Group, has significantly advanced diversity, inclusion, and candidate experience in UK hiring over the past year through a nationwide initiative aimed at making hiring faster, fairer, and safer. While the initiative brought direct benefits to Reed, its broader ambition was to transform hiring practices across the UK for the benefit of all work-seekers and employers.
A key milestone was the launch of hiring toolkits in collaboration with industry, government, and trade bodies. These toolkits, now covering 80% of the UK workforce and downloaded by over 20,000 organisations, have helped standardise hiring practices and improve inclusivity.
Reed Screening also established the UK’s first National Hiring Committee (NHC) alongside the government.
When asked about the NHC, Keith said: “The National Hiring Committee was established to remove systemic barriers in hiring and to improve diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and candidate experience across the UK. Its core mission is to:
- Standardise national hiring rules to create a more consistent and fair process.
- Advise on policy reforms that make hiring more inclusive, especially for underrepresented groups.
- Collaborate with UK government, employers, and experts to shape best practices and national frameworks.
- Drive innovation in hiring technology and policy, such as digital right to work checks.
The NHC and Reed Screening worked closely with the DBS on a number of initiatives including the new identity policy released in April. This aligns the criminal record checking process more closely with the digital right to work process, improving efficiencies for candidates and employers.”
To achieve its ambition, Reed Screening found it essential to work with the government. They held eight parliamentary sessions with MPs, Peers, and employers, resulting in a series of first-of-their-kind employer guides on topics such as AI in hiring, hiring fraud, women in the workplace, and hybrid workforce management. These guides, including one distributed to over 600,000 members via the CIPD and Chartered Management Institute, offer practical policy recommendations and support inclusive hiring.
Recognising the exclusion created by digital right to work checks - which currently leave out one in five work-seekers, Reed Screening collaborated with government ministers to develop a “right to work roadmap” aimed at improving inclusion and ensuring equitable access to employment.
In recognition of these efforts, Viscount Camrose invited Reed Screening to establish the UK’s Hiring Taskforce in Parliament. This taskforce is focused on accelerating the transformation of hiring practices, enhancing diversity and inclusion, and modernising candidate experience through digital credentialing solutions.
When asked about the opportunities and risks of AI in future hiring, Keith commented:
“In Reed Screening we are trialling the use of AI to further speed up the onboarding process for clients. Through agentic AI there are useful process efficiencies to further improve candidate experience.
AI has the potential to help both job applicants and hirers. Utilised well it could revolutionise hiring. Hirers need help with increasing volumes of job applications and AI can provide that scalability, efficiency gains, and speed. It could potentially reduce bias in the hiring and selection process too. However, as the current Workday case is bringing to the world’s attention, AI could also scale bias and risks making hiring even more unfair if not utilised correctly. Algorithmic bias is caused by the data used to train AI, meaning it could perpetuate or amplify discrimination should it be developed using biased data.
AI bots could assist work seekers when applying for jobs, helping them to tailor their applications and apply for roles that are a good fit. Used well by hirers, AI could also enhance candidate experience providing real-time updates, 24/7 support, and assistance through the process.
One challenge is transparency with many AI systems operating as “black boxes,” making it hard to understand or challenge decisions, this raises ethical and legal concerns, especially under GDPR and UK Equality Act. This could quickly create a trust problem with the public.
Reed Screening’s work, such as producing the UK’s first free employer guide on AI in Hiring with Lord Holmes, demonstrates the importance of responsible AI adoption. The guidance helps employers to sensibly and effectively implement this technology."
What advice would Keith give to other organisations looking to make the hiring process fairer and more inclusive?
"The aim is to make UK hiring the fairest in the world. Key to this is the removal of any unnecessary barriers, include voices with lived experience when designing (and simplifying) the hiring process, train hiring staff on inclusive hiring, obtain candidate feedback, and use technology thoughtfully. One very good way of ensuring fair hiring is to use free resources like the Better Hiring Institute’s National Hiring Framework which includes a large range of free material."
Overall, judges praised the initiative for achieving "impact with government backing" and "leaving a legacy".
The British HR Awards is powered by New Possible, an employee insight platform that's committed to your success. New Possible helps leaders build healthier organisations by providing meaningful insight that can drive real change. Find out more about our mission or book a demo.
