Diversity hiring has become a hot topic for many organizations. With a multigenerational workforce in full swing, candidates proactively seek organizations that provide equal opportunities to diverse backgrounds. Here is a guide on diversity hiring for
As a hiring manager or recruiter, diversity hiring is a popular term you may have come across. Around the globe, workplace diversity has become a top priority for recruitment agencies and even for candidates.
So what exactly does diversity hiring mean?
Diversity hiring refers to a process where recruiters actively seek out candidates from diverse backgrounds and design a hiring process that provides an equal opportunity for candidates of diverse backgrounds like sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, disabled groups, and other minority groups.
Diversity hiring is fundamentally when an organization actively takes measures to ensure that talent acquisition and hiring processes are more inclusive and remove barriers that prevent candidates from indulging in equal opportunities during hiring phases.
In recent years, the issue of diversity hiring has become more visible than ever before. If your organization isn’t prioritizing this, you could be left behind as employees are beginning to favour diverse organizations over homogenous ones.
According to statistics by Glassdoor, 69% of executives rated diversity as an important issue in 2017. Along with this, the importance of diversity in the workplace has risen by 32% since 2014.
Why is diversity hiring important for your organization?
Inclusive and diverse hiring has been shown to impact organizations in countless ways positively. One of the most apparent impacts that come to mind is a more optimistic workforce, but diversity hiring offers much more than just a positive workplace culture. Organizations that hire diversely have shown to perform far better than their counterparts who do not actively hire diverse candidates.
Racially diverse teams are more likely to outperform their non-diverse counterparts by 35%, according to Forbes.
Diversity hiring is what grabs the attention of active job seekers. If you’re looking out for the perfect candidates for your organization, make sure that you include more inclusive and diverse hiring practices as it significantly improves your employer brand image. Studies also show that candidates would much rather work for an organization actively involved in diverse hiring practices.
Just remember that diversity hiring goes far beyond just representing different ethnicities or gender equality within an organization. It’s about genuinely acknowledging the needs and beliefs of your team. It involves understanding and valuing differences between individuals from different walks of life, which can be related to generation gaps, religions, disabilities, personalities, skill sets, experiences, knowledge bases, and so much more. The goal of diversity hiring is to identify and remove biases within the hiring process.
What are the advantages of diversity hiring?
- It expands your talent pool: It is evident that organizations that embrace diversity hiring benefit from a larger talent pool than those that don’t. Their vacancies will gain interest from a broader range of candidates because more job seekers from different backgrounds can relate to these organizations. Therefore, make sure you are using an Applicant Tracking System that knocks off discriminatory questions while accepting applicants.
- Improvement in employee productivity, retention & creativity: It’s a no-brainer that employees who feel more accepted, valued, and represented in their teams will be able to perform significantly better than someone who does not feel valued. Employees who feel more accepted and appreciated for who they are—irrespective of their gender, age or ethnic background, are happier. Consequently, a happier staff is more productive and less likely to leave prematurely. Of course, creativity is also heightened when people from all walks of life and different backgrounds collaborate—which is bound to spark new ideas.
- Positively impacts your employer brand: As mentioned before, diversity hiring will attract a larger talent pool, positively building your employer brand. In addition, if your organization is known for its diversity, it will appeal to many different customers, candidates and potential business partners. 75% of employees think more diversity is needed in their workplace, according to research by Deloitte. This goes to show how diversity hiring is so in demand by job seekers!
- Increases your organizations’ range of skills & experiences: Hiring diversely will help you understand clients’ needs. The more diverse your workforce is, the greater chances are that your employees will cater to the needs of customers and clients. In addition, if your organization is expanding to various places or globally, understanding and reaching out to a wider audience becomes more manageable with a more diversified team!
With these perks to diversity hiring, it has been proven that diverse workforces are better at problem-solving, avoid “echo chambers”, and significantly improve creativity and innovation in the workforce.
This results in better decision-making and higher overall performance. Diversity in viewpoints also allows team members to debate different methods and work styles and come to the best possible conclusion using a more comprehensive range of information.
How can you incorporate diversity hiring?
With so much being said about diversity hiring and its benefits, you must be thinking about ways to incorporate a more diverse hiring process into your recruitment strategy. So let’s dive into how you can create a more diverse recruiting strategy for your organization:
- Create policies that appeal to diverse candidates: As an employer, it’s one thing to claim that you value diversity, and it’s another actually to implement and put those values into practice. That’s why it’s vital to implement policies that appeal to diverse candidates proactively. For example, consider changing your scheduling and time-off policies to include more religious holidays and events. Or, you can consider adopting flexible work hours that allow candidates to continue being involved with their personal commitments instead of requiring them to conform to a one-size-fits-all type of work-life. It’s also essential to lead your organization so that employees feel comfortable speaking up in case their needs are not being met.
- Develop a diverse hiring team: Building a diverse workforce sets an example for potential candidates interested in your organization. In addition, an actively involved team of diverse employees or recruiters will attract a significant level of candidates from diverse backgrounds as they will be able to see how your organization has put words into practice.
- Set specific goals for diversity hiring: As you’re getting started, consider some specific goals your organization would like to accomplish with its diversity recruiting strategy. Your goals can reflect how you would like to increase diversity at different levels or focus on an area of underrepresented business (i.e., increasing female representation). You can also measure the impact that diverse hiring has on business results. Another way to put these values into practice is by recognizing, maximizing, and rewarding behaviours fostering a diverse and inclusive work culture. It’s also important to assess how your diversity recruiting strategies align with business initiatives, priorities and results. To make this process easier, create a checklist of how you can execute a plan for a diverse recruiting process by paying attention to the stages of the hiring process, what you’re doing to attract candidates and mapping your diversity recruiting efforts to those that job seekers most value.
- Develop an employer brand that showcases workplace diversity: Without a doubt, diverse hiring looks great for employer branding, but it’s important to evaluate whether it accurately reflects how diversity and inclusion play into your employee value proposition. Showcase the benefits and importance of diversity with your team and engrain those values into your workforce culture. Diverse candidates will seek out employers who truly value what they stand for, and developing those ideas holistically is the only way to reap those benefits truly.
- Audit your sourcing and job requirements: To attract a group of diverse employees, it’s essential to know whether your job postings are being delivered to the target demographic. As a recruiter, you need to assess whether your job postings reach a diverse pool of candidates. Start publicizing job openings in different venues other than your conventional places for job postings. In addition to this, it’s important to evaluate your job descriptions to see if they are not overlooking the criteria for different groups of individuals. You can do this by ensuring gender-neutral terms in job descriptions and limiting unnecessary job requirements that aren’t in a person’s ability to do the work. Your entire diversity hiring process will be incompetent if the job description and sourcing process do not cater to a wide pool of candidates.
Diversity in any workplace takes root in its employee culture and current structure, so solely focussing on diversity hiring won’t be effective until a culture of diversity is fostered and maintained within an organization.