Diversity is the biggest business buzzword of recent years, but what does it really mean and why is it in fact, so important? On one hand, it is important for workplaces to reflect societal demographics, and on the other, understanding inherent diversity of professionals offer a plenitude of advantages, both within our businesses and across wider society.
Having different perspectives and backgrounds on your team - if you do have a diverse team that is - will help contribute to newer and more diverse ideas that help solve problems and drive innovation. The statistics don’t lie, diverse businesses are more competitive, more innovative and more profitable. Building teams from qualified candidates, regardless of factors like gender, background, race, religion, or sexual orientation brings value.
In this guide you will learn what diversity recruiting is, why it is important and which strategies you can use to deliver diversity through recruitment.
What is diversity recruiting?
Diversity recruiting is the idea that your team should reflect the society that is around you and that your recruitment policies are free from biases for or against any individual or group of candidates. It is based on meritocratic systems and structured to find the best candidates, whilst excluding biases from the recruitment process.
Though many may assume that diversity is primarily related to multiculturalism, diversity recruitment is actually about creating a workforce with wide-ranging attributes including; age, gender, race, sexual orientation, education, background, languages, abilities and so on.
A diverse workforce isn’t easy to create or easy to maintain. Practically, diversity involves conflicting perspectives which means that a diverse organisation will have to foster a mature approach to conflict.
Why is a diversity recruiting strategy important?
There are many associated benefits of diversity strategy in your organisation. In order to benefit from these advantages, you will need to employ the diversity recruiting strategies discussed below. Doing so will bring benefits such as:
- Diverse perspectives
A diverse workforce has access points to a wider variety of perspectives, which is extremely beneficial when it comes to planning and executing a business strategy.
- Boosted creativity
Studies show that a diverse workforce is more creative. The different perspectives that are brought together in an environment will bring fresh, new ideas and improve the creativity of your workforce.
- Greater innovation
Inclusive companies are “1.7 times more likely to be innovation leaders in their market” according to Josh Bersin’s research.
The more employees that are exposed to new perspectives and worldviews, the more opportunity there is to generate innovative solutions and ideas. Combining these views can often lead to opening the doors to more innovation.
- Improved decision making
Researchers have found that when diverse teams made a business decision, they outperformed individual decision makers up to 87% of the time. This was research conducted from a white paper from the online decision-making platform Cloverpop.
- Increased productivity
A study by the Network for Business revealed that diversity also has productivity benefits, with a diverse organisation being 1.32 times as productive as a homogenous one.
- Maximise profits
One of the latest reports from the consulting group, McKinsey, titled ‘Diversity Wins’, has highlighted the financial risk businesses take when they ignore diversity at the top. Their research has found that companies with the most ethnically diverse boards outperformed those with the least diverse boards by 36%.
Other research points to the cash flows of diverse companies, which are 2.3 times higher than those of companies with less diverse workforces. Diverse companies are “70% more likely to capture new markets than organisations that do not actively recruit and support talent from under-represented groups.”
- Reduced employee churn
A more diverse workforce is generally more inclusive of different individual characteristics and perspectives. This leads to greater inclusion which means that employees feel more accepted and valued. The more diverse the workplace, the lower the turnover rates.
- Higher employee engagement
As with reduced turnover, the principals of engagement remain very similar. With more people having the shared knowledge and experiences of feeling like they may not traditionally fit into the workplace, the more diverse the teams, the less that this is an issue.
Diversity recruiting strategies
A diversity recruiting strategy should define the goals of recruitment and will often be part of an overall diversity and inclusion policy. Recruitment is just part of making the cultural changes happen in the workplace. Your D&I policy should reflect questions about what the recruitment process is going to look like and how you will achieve diversity and inclusion in your strategies.
The second most important part of the diversity recruiting strategy is identifying who is accountable for the results. Is it going to be HR? Is it going to be department heads? Is it going to be the board of directors?
Finally, your diversity recruitment strategy should set out how the results of this strategy will be assessed and measured.
These are some of the tools available to support a diversity recruiting strategy.
1. Psychometric testing in the recruitment process
Psychometric testing often involves an activity or assessment that is given to potential candidates to assess their skills, abilities and knowledge in specific areas of competence. They can also be used to gain an understanding of a candidate’s personality, making it easier for you to identify individuals who will fit not only your job description, but your company culture and work patterns.
Psychometric testing simply involves selecting the skills and traits of your ideal candidate, asking them to complete the test as part of your recruitment process, then analysing the results. This provides an objective view of each applicant, based purely on their suitability against your pre-defined criteria. As such, psychometric testing removes unconscious bias from recruitment as it relies purely on talent and inherent qualities to find the right candidate for the role.
2. Target diverse candidates
Instead of targeting candidates from just one source, i.e. web recruiting platform, reach out to different platforms to obtain a wider selection of candidates. Something as simple as a job posting on social media like LinkedIn or Instagram can engage a wider talent pool.
It is important to identify the relevant channels through which to reach diverse audiences with vacancy advertisements. For example, there are many online and offline groups dedicated to women in technology. Groups such as these can be tapped to gain access to a more diverse range of candidates.
3. Encourage referrals from existing staff
A candidate referral programme is something that you will have either heard of or experienced.
Your current workforce can be a lightning rod, transmitting new job postings to the wider community, especially where your workforce is already diverse.
4. Develop and promote the organisation’s diversity credentials
Developing your brand is a good way to champion your D&I recruitment vision. Discuss the benefits and importance of diversity with your team, get their buy in and engrain those values into your company culture.
Being an organisation which can show that it values differences, people and opinions from all walks of life will help you to become recognised as an employer that truly values diversity.
5. Establish diversity and inclusivity policies
It is essential to live your diversity values when it comes to recruiting diverse candidates. This is why it has become essential to instate company policies that appeal to diverse candidates.
This includes things like showing an awareness of religious holidays, encouraging flexible working hours and having forward thinking policies for childcare and maternity and paternity leave.
Employees also need to be encouraged to speak up if they think certain policies are hindering diversity in any way. Studies show just how easy it is to get caught up in bias and groupthink, so it’s important to encourage open and honest dialogue to ensure everyone feels welcome.
If you want to encourage diversity in your recruitment process, bringing in policies like this is a great way to achieve buy-in across the business.
6. Introduce diversity targets
One way to increase diversity is to set diversity targets, this could be as a percentage of the total number of the staff or a number that has been carefully modelled. Whether or not you think diversity targets are beneficial, what is essential is that you demonstrate that there has been no bias in selecting candidates.
7. Avoid unconscious bias
Unconscious bias dictates the way we behave most of the time, and a diversity and inclusion recruitment strategy needs to minimise its impact as much as possible.
One of the measures that can be taken is unconscious bias training for all involved in the recruitment process. This will help to mitigate some of the more human prone errors in selecting candidates, from the C.V stage to sending out a job offer.
Another method which can be used is the use of blind resumes . This involves removing information like names, schools, date of birth, specific locations, and so on, which can all contribute to a biased assessment of the candidate - even if this is not done consciously.
8. Consider diversity when defining job descriptions
Auditing your job adverts to attract more diverse candidates is essential. It's important not to alienate any groups of people through the language used in job descriptions. Make these as inclusive as possible. Remove any use of languages or ideas which could make potential candidates think you are looking for a specific gender, ethnicity or any other diverse background only apply.
9. Ensure consistent interview procedures
Whenever you standardise something, you are making it easier to compare and contrast objectively. One of the best ways to do so is by using the same questions and the same interview procedures for all candidates. This helps to mitigate the risk of unconscious bias and give you a better benchmark to compare candidates against.
10. Offer remote and flexible working opportunities
Being able to offer solutions which help to increase or widen the diversity of candidates is going to be essential. Remote and flexible working opportunities are just one of the key elements of being able to reach out to a wider range of people.
For those who have commitments like children or looking after a relative with sickness, being able to offer flexible and remote working opportunities will appeal to their needs as well as those of the business.
11. Provide valuable training opportunities
Did you also know that staff who have benefited from employer-provided training tend to be more loyal to their employer? One of the best ways to retain your staff is to provide them with training opportunities.
Providing training also gives your people the opportunity to upskill, increasing the value they bring to your organisation without the need to recruit.
12. Offer mentoring
As with training, mentoring is attractive, and can encourage diverse applicants to consider handing in that application. Those who lack confidence but have all the skills may be reluctant to apply. Offering mentoring can help to remove mental blocks.
13. Build a diverse recruitment team
If you really want to build a diverse team, then you need people who understand what that looks like and what that means. A diverse recruitment team can not only implement the strategy but also live it.
Improve your diversity recruitment strategy with Thomas
Diversity recruiting is the idea that your team should reflect the society that is all around us and that recruitment policies should be free from biases for or against any individual or group of candidates.
A lack of diversity in your workforce and unconscious bias in your decision-making processes is harmful to your business can prevent you from hiring and retaining the best talent. Our talent assessment platform can help you to increase the diversity and inclusivity of your workforce and reduce unconscious bias in your decision-making processes.
If you would like to find out more about how we can help you address unconscious bias and increase the diversity of your workplace, please speak to one of our team.
