Diversity and Inclusion within a recruitment environment is important as it has been shown that a diverse group of people brings different ideas, backgrounds and perspectives and allows employers to broaden their scope as a business as well as exploring different strategies that employers can use to access more diverse talent pools and create a workforce that is diverse and inclusive. It has also been proven that a diverse team benefits businesses to increase productivity, be more innovative and creative as well as achieving better results.
Businesses all around the world are focussing on developing their diversity and Inclusion recruitment strategies as this goes beyond business performance but is also a moral purpose for a business to strive towards.
As individuals, there are differences that make us diverse, most of us define diversity by social categories including race, gender, religion, age and sexual orientation, these categories help businesses identify the diversity gap in their business and recruitment strategy and building teams from qualified candidates regardless of social categories is a step towards true equality in the workplace.
How can we increase diversity in the workplace and how we work with our clients:
- Audit recruitment process – look at current process and provide recommendations and identify any gaps in the process
- Implement strategies in the businesses recruitment and selection to create an unbiased process
- Create company policies that appeal to diverse candidates – it’s important to implement company policies that appeal to diverse candidates (e.g. Flexible working hours, holiday entitlements) and then actively promote them when sourcing
- Job descriptions and advertising – look at re-wording adverts and job descriptions to make them more inclusive (check jargon, local and gender language). Review essential points and mention diversity in job adverts. Target sources where diverse candidates congregate, for example there are many groups both online and offline dedicated to women in technology, this could be a great source to meet and connect with high calibre female candidates directly, instead of waiting for them to find you through platforms like job boards. The more you take the initiative to find these channels, the more likely it is that your talent pools will be diverse.
- Develop an employer brand that showcases diversity – mention the benefits and importance of diversity with your business and team, get their buy in and engrain those values into the company culture
- Interview process – use testing such as verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, aptitude tests, etc. and create standard interview questions that can be repeated with all candidates
- Introduce and setting diversity targets allowing individual teams / business to plan how they will implement diversity in recruitment and then track to measure the diversity
- Encourage all employees to refer their connections
- Blind resumes – this is an increasingly popular technique recruiters are using to remove bias from how candidates are screened. “Black out” any and all personal information on resumes. Information such as name, school, locations can contribute to some degree in a biased assessment of the candidate, even if it’s not done consciously.
- Blind Interviews – this applies to early interaction with the candidate as it’s harder to remove all personality and bias when talking to candidates on the phone or in person. They can be accomplished by sending candidates text-based questions via text, or through your recruitment platform of choice. Candidates answer these questions anonymously and are asked to avoid providing personal information. The goal is to remain free of bias regarding who you choose to interview further.
Future plans:
- Artificial Intelligence to review resumes and automate candidate shortlists – One way to ensure that you remove bias from your resume screening process entirely is to utilise artificial intelligence technology. Most recruitment databases Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) can be used to impartially whittle down the most high-potential candidates. Use the screening tools included in the ATS to find candidates with the most potential and the best resume of skills. This technique allows you to completely remove personal opinions about specific candidates from the equation, and only focus on information that’s relevant to the job description.