5 Minutes with Jacob Hill, Founder and CEO of Offploy
Jacob Hill is the Founder and CEO of Offploy, a social enterprise supporting employers to hire people with criminal convictions. An ex-prisoner himself, Jacob now works with large organisations across the UK to embed justice-inclusive recruitment into everyday business practice.
Having been sentenced to 28 months in prison for possession with intent to supply drugs, Jacob used his lived experience to build Offploy, which has since supported over 5,000 people with criminal convictions into employment. His work sits at the intersection of compliance, commercial strategy and social value delivery.
Jacob believes organisations cannot afford to ignore this talent pool, particularly when “25% of the working age population has a criminal record.”
Tell us a little bit about your role. What does Offploy do?
“So OffPloy is a consultancy ultimately that supports large organisations to employ people with convictions. We do it, day in, day out… our employers represent about 60,000 roles across the UK.”
“On the other side of what we do is mentoring people with convictions. It’s what we’re known for. It’s how we cut our teeth.”
Why should employers be thinking about justice-inclusive recruitment?
“Retention is three times higher than the industry average when employing a person with a conviction.”
“If you had a revenue stream that was 25% of your income, you would have policies, processes, staff training, everything aligned to it. But when it’s 25% of your applicants… only 16% of companies have a criminal record policy.”
“It’s not a case of, ‘Oh, we’re not going to go down and employ people with convictions, it sounds too complicated.’ No. If you as an organisation don’t have your set-up right… you need to have a structure in place regardless.”
Many people assume criminal records mean prison. Is that accurate?
“One person out of every 10 goes to prison. Nine get community-based sentences… the majority of people with convictions, criminal records have never seen the inside of a prison cell. Never.”
What are organisations often getting wrong?
“You should not be holding data you do not have a right to access, including… someone’s spent conviction data.”
“There is no point in the entire criminal justice journey where an individual is told… on this day you can stop disclosing your convictions.”
“A conviction is not a protective characteristic. You can discriminate against someone with an unspent conviction for all roles.”
However, Jacob urges employers to assess risk properly:
“Look at the risk framework of the role… risk of harm to people, risk of damage to assets, risk of reputational damage, and risk of data loss.”
“Rather than looking at the conviction side, look at the role side first.”
What about security clearance and government contracts?
“The employment decision rests with you.”
“The only circumstance it does not rest with you… is if you do an enhanced with barred check and the person is barred from working in that role. You legally cannot hire them.”
On BPSS specifically:
“A conviction doesn’t show up apart from the basic part of the DBS check and therefore only unspent convictions show up on that.”
How did your own experience shape Offploy?
“I was arrested for possession with intent to supply drugs at a music festival.”
“I was sentenced to 28 months in prison.”
“It was whilst in prison that I saw the absolute human potential in there.”
“To date, we’ve supported over 5,000 people with criminal convictions. And every hundred people we support, there’s 55 fewer offences.”
For organisations listening, what’s your advice?
“If you are listening today, now you have a responsibility. Now you have an awakening.”
“It doesn’t have to be too difficult.”
If you’d like to learn more, Offploy provides free toolkits, templates and assessments to help organisations review their approach to justice-inclusive recruitment.
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In this episode of Let’s Talk Social Value, Jacob shares his personal journey, from a 28-month prison sentence for possession with intent to supply drugs, to founding an organisation that has now supported over 5,000 people into employment. His story reframes the narrative around people with convictions, shifting the focus from stigma to structure, systems, and opportunity.