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Key Learnings: Finding your unique value proposition as an employer brand How to market your company & stand out to top candidates How to message your offers strategically so candidates choose you About this eBook Okay — so you’re not a FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google). You’re also not a Unicorn or “stock market […] More
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN What you can do as an employer to appeal to 90% of Hired candidates The various types and definitions of remote and hybrid work What the data tells us about remote work How best to support remote teams About this eBook This ebook for employers covers the current landscape, where remote hiring […] More
Many HR departments are attempting to create a diverse workplace in today’s world, but you can’t have diversity without inclusion.
To construct a diverse team and a modern and attractive workplace culture, HR staff must create an environment that welcomes all individuals and fosters equal engagement and representation.
In recent years, there has been a significant effort in the UK to fight for equality, to the point that employers are instituting quotas based on gender, BAME, disability, and even sexual orientation.
There are two significant types of diversity in today’s workplace:
First, inherent diversity is concerned with qualities such as race, gender, and age. Education, experience, beliefs, skills, and knowledge are all aspects of acquired variety.
Natural HR has set out to explore our top ideas for making a diverse and inclusive recruitment process a standard element of your people talent strategy in this article.
What is the definition of workplace diversity?
It is critical to remember that workplace diversity is defined as when a company understands, accepts, and values differences between people of different races, ethnicities, genders, ages, religions, disabilities, and sexual orientations, as well as differences in personalities, skill sets, experiences, and knowledge.
What are the benefits of diversity and inclusivity recruitment?
Having a functional diversity and inclusion strategy that is incorporated into your recruitment workflow will provide your company with various benefits, including:
Hiring better talent.
Being able to make more informed business decisions.
Increasing the performance of your teams.
Accelerating innovation by allowing different mindsets to collaborate.
Gaining more decadent customer satisfaction due to high-quality staff.
Improving company culture with improved employee satisfaction.
The inclusive hiring in the workplace checklist
The tutorial below will walk you through the whole recruitment process, from bringing on a new team member to crafting a job advertisement and interviewing qualified candidates. It will include critical considerations to ensure that diversity and inclusion are prioritized at each stage.
1. Audit your job adverts to remove bias:
When it comes to inclusive and diverse recruitment, you can’t look forward without looking back. As a result, the first step you must take is to assess your whole recruitment pipeline to identify faults and begin implementing improvements that will address diversity and inclusivity concerns.
When reviewing historical job advertisements, you may find a propensity to employ more masculine or feminine language in job advertisements, which may discourage particular groups from applying for specific roles. Based on the findings of this analysis, you may then retroactively apply new conditions to the recruiting procedure to reduce biases in future recruitment drives.
2. Target sources where diverse candidates are focused:
It is now easier than ever to recruit applicants from a large skill pool with the Internet’s strength. To that end, sourcing individuals from several sources is a terrific method to diversify your recruitment pool.
Rather than relying solely on traditional job boards or recruitment agencies, look for chances to diversify candidates through alternative sources such as educational institutions, government agencies, and even rehabilitation centers.
You might also communicate directly with organizations that focus on specific areas; for example, for a technology post, you could interact directly with women in technology groups to connect with suitable female applicants.
3. Encourage your employees to utilize their network:
If you want to hire more of a specific group of under-represented people, reach out to some of your current team members who fall into that category.
Creating an internal applicant recommendation program is one approach to accomplish this. You will be able to connect with similar candidates from varied backgrounds by utilizing your existing internal pool of diverse workers.
4. Offer internships targeted at underrepresented groups:
Offering internships to folks with specialized credentials is a terrific approach to foster up-and-coming talent in your sector. To accomplish this, you may form collaborations with education and community organizations in your area to provide an opportunity to groups that may struggle to take the first steps into the roles you’re recruiting for.
5. Develop an employer brand that showcases your diversity:
When developing a brand identity, don’t overlook the significance of diversity and inclusivity. You should encourage employees from various backgrounds to share their experiences with your organization, which you should then incorporate into your employer and recruiting branding.
Having these stories in place and actively pushing them in your applicant sourcing is a terrific approach to ensure your diversity recruiting strategy is working properly.
6. Utilize blind recruitment:
Blind recruitment is one of the most popular trends in the industry. To reduce bias during the first recruitment stage, it takes steps to blackout essential information such as name, age, education, and candidate photos. The idea here is to avoid further discrimination in who you choose to interview.
7. Rethink what factors you screen for when hiring:
When determining what your ideal recruit looks like, it is vital to ensure that your possible candidates exhibit the characteristics that your firm values. Throughout the recruitment process, examine how you’re screening candidates and yourself to see whether you’re directing the outcomes towards specific types of people owing to potential bias.
Chris Bourne is Head of Marketing at Natural HR. Natural HR is a cloud-based HR software for small businesses and organizations looking to improve staff management and pay.
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN The story of the “Great Resignation” and where we are now in 2022 3 key trends to navigate, coupled with our exclusive data 5 strategies to invigorate pipelines, increase efficiency, expand talent pools, and retain talent once they’re onboard About this eBook We’ve taken one of our most popular eBooks for employers […] More
Business priorities in 2022 have all shifted to center around talent. Primarily, finding it. The Great Resignation, or the Great Reshuffle, or the Big Quit — whatever you want to call it — continues to dominate headlines and highlight the ongoing shortage of labor. But companies need to understand that the skewed supply and demand ratio for talent is here to stay. One study even predicts a global human talent shortage of 85 million workers by 2030.
Despite this trend seeming to look like old news at this point, many organizations’ hiring programs were still completely caught off guard over the last year. In a report by Hiretual, 61% of recruiters said sourcing talent was their biggest challenge in 2021. At the end of 2020, when asked about their biggest anticipated concern, sourcing talent didn’t even make it to the top three.
That same report found the second and third biggest challenges for recruiters surveyed went to candidate engagement and employer competition, respectively. Again, when recruiters were asked the same question the year before, neither of these obstacles was high on the list.
What these responses signal is a shift in priority from inbound to outbound recruiting. That is, rather than relying on workers to go out and find jobs, companies are now having to sell available jobs to workers — and doing so at scale is proving difficult. While companies and recruiters may be beginning to understand this, the amount of LinkedIn posts we’re still seeing from leaders exclaiming, “We’re Hiring!” — expecting qualified prospects to go out of their way and click through to a boring careers page — shows not many have adapted to compete.
As organizations around the world refine strategies for the future, now is the time to commit to growth, and adapt to achieve it. Companies that do will stand to benefit from a final post-pandemic jolt to productivity, setting themselves up for a more sustainable future. But with more jobs available than there are workers to do them, those that fail to change their recruiting strategy will see their workforce — and success — atrophy.
Getting More Human With AI
The pressure is on for talent acquisition, but changing priorities brought on by the pandemic will require recruiters to do more than fill jobs. Going forward, recruiters must offer opportunities that meet heightened needs from talent (such as more inclusive cultures and more flexible work schedules) and align with refined company objectives (like scaling skill sets and leading product innovation).
To do that effectively, recruiters need to be able to spend more time doing the more human aspects of the job, to provide a better experience to candidates, and better qualify talent for the needs of the business — now and for the future.
If 2021 investment data is any indication, talent acquisition tech stacks are getting reevaluated. In fact, 62% of companies increased their investment in talent acquisition technology last year, according to Aptitude Research. Because something has to give, more companies than ever before will look to AI recruitment technologies to give themselves a competitive advantage. Here are a few ways AI will help companies address key recruiting challenges in 2022.
Revealing Blind Spots
Not all talent is accessible in the same places, and many recruiters are looking for candidates with too narrow of a view into the available talent pool. Usually limited by a handful of disparate job boards, with limited search functionality or candidate profile visibility, talent acquisition pros end up missing access to a large share of qualified talent.
AI recruiting tools will broaden the scope of available talent. By pulling candidate profile data from multiple talent pools, hiring teams can access significantly more of the total talent population and search from a single source. Some platforms are approaching access to almost a billion candidates. Companies that need to scale growth will have more options, and more opportunities to hire.
In addition, AI will help recruiting teams remove limitations to how they find talent by mitigating unconscious bias from the process to make more equitable hiring decisions. This works by automatically matching candidates based on the skills relevancy of what a recruiter is looking for, rather than focusing on any other candidate’s features. For example, blind searches can be conducted to remove attributes like gender or race, or even education, to help remove bias and lack of diversity in the hiring process.
By managing diversity in the outbound phase of the recruiting process — as opposed to scrubbing data in ATSs or CRMs — organizations can take a more proactive approach to make equitable hiring decisions.
Meeting the Need for Speed
To reach goals for scale, hiring teams need to shorten the time it takes to bring the right jobs to the right people. With AI, organizations will begin to automate more of the transactional and respective aspects of the hiring process. This will give recruiters more time to focus on building relationships by engaging prospective talent in meaningful ways.
Without the right technology, recruiters will spend less time adding value to the process. Automation will free up the time it takes for recruiters to facilitate communication by removing manual tasks like bulk outreach, scheduling, and managing candidate pipeline data, so they can spend more time consulting with talent to place them in roles that best fit their interests, ambitions, and experience.
Teams leveraging AI will encounter fewer obstacles with potential candidates in misaligned job expectations and broken feedback loops, resulting in faster time to hire and smoother onboarding experiences.
Establishing a Foundation for Growth
For many candidates, contact with a recruiter is the first moment of exposure they have with an organization. That first impression has the potential to create interest by offering the candidate valuable and relevant experience. It also has the potential to diminish the brand in the eye of prospects and their peers.
With the help of AI, organizations will set up hiring teams to showcase their brand to candidates in the best light and build a workforce that better supports company objectives for the long run. By engaging talent with a more inclusive approach, increasing the speed and ease of the hiring process, and broadening the scope of talent they see and consider, only organizations leaning on AI will overcome today’s hiring challenges to build workforces that grow.
Shannon Pritchett is Head of Community at both Hiretual and Evry1 (which she co-founded in 2021).
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What You’ll Learn: Top recruiting trends for small to medium size businesses (in the US, companies with less than 10,000 employees, in the UK, less than 1000) Benchmarking metrics for value-driven recruitment strategies, including equity, efficiency, and transparency As a scaling startup or mid-size business, what your 2022 recruiting metric goals should be About this […] More
The ‘S’ (social) in ESG campaigns is integral to any business, a lack of diversity can negatively impact growth and stifle creativity. Diverse teams generate almost 20% more revenue than those that are lacking in this area.
Thinking carefully about the specific language used in job adverts, using blind CV assessments, and employing inclusive interviewing techniques can all help businesses embed diversity and inclusion into their recruitment policies.
With almost one-third of jobseekers and employees have said they would not apply to a company where there is a lack of diversity among its workforce, it’s time that businesses start to scrutinize their recruitment policies.
Think about the job advert
Pay attention to the nuances in recruitment communication to ensure what is written is inclusive and unbiased.
Job adverts should avoid phrases such as “competitive nature” and “aggressively determined” in favor of truthful descriptions of competency, these phrases are also typically ‘male-coded’, so might deter female applicants from applying. Similarly, complex jargon and specialist terms can also overwhelm applicants. Adverts should be as simple and to the point as possible.
The use of equality and diversity statements in job adverts can aid in creating an inclusive atmosphere from the very start of the recruitment process. One study found that job adverts with an empathetic diversity statement left 71% of potential applicants with a positive impression of the hypothetical employer.
Similarly, awards such as ‘The Times Top 50 Employers of Women’ can be mentioned on job applicants to reassure minority applicants that they are welcome to apply.
Blind CV assessment
The Department for Work and Pensions sent out applications to 1,000 job vacancies with 2/3 containing names typically associated with a certain ethnic group. Results showed that ethnic minority applicants needed to send out 74% more applications in order to generate the same success rate as those with White sounding names.
Removing names, ages, genders, and postcodes from CVs before they are assessed can remove opportunities for bias to enter the recruitment process. A number of top employers adopt this technique, including the UK’s Civil Service.
Championing diversity and inclusion is not just about CV blind initiatives. It’s a complex and multifaceted agenda.
Keeping an eye out for opportunities to learn more about diverse talent pools should be a priority. At Totum Partners, we host a series of successful diversity and inclusion webinars, such as: ‘How to create the most diverse firm in Britain’.
Inclusive interviewing
Once a candidate is at an interview, the best way to minimize bias is to combine a number of efforts, there is no magic bullet approach.
Standardizing the interview questions in a structured manner will allow the employer to focus on the candidate’s skills that will determine their ability to perform the job. Unstructured interviews are difficult to compare, making it more likely that personal factors will infiltrate the hiring decision.
Sometimes called a “mental shortcut”, affinity bias is common. This means we gravitate towards people who we feel are similar to ourselves. Training modules and workshops are a good way to generate self-awareness of your own biases.
The importance of succession planning
Employees should be able to see diversity all the way up an organization. Last month it was reported that 2 in 5 Black employees have left their job because of a lack of diversity.
Initiatives that only focus on entry-level recruitment leave BME employees without anyone to look up to. Since 2018, among the Fortune 500 boards, of the 974 seats filled by new directors, 80% were by White directors, this is an example of bad succession planning.
Organizations should consider lateral workplace diversity when looking at how to progress talent internally. Firms that ignore this form of conscious inclusion, will soon be left behind, especially considering the escalating numbers of employees quitting their jobs in the UK in recent months.
Accountability
Having awareness of the benefits that diversity brings to the workplace is important, but actions speak louder than words.
As a recruitment firm, Totum is committed to questioning candidate lists that show a lack of diversity. Feedback on a BME candidate that reads “something was not quite right” needs to be followed up for factual feedback. Too often this behavior goes unquestioned.
This is embedded into the Race Fairness Commitment that Totum is a part of. The Commitment pledges all members to engage in activities to ensure equal access to opportunities for all candidates.
Calls for diversity and inclusion will grow louder in 2022. Deloitte’s 2018 Millennial Survey demonstrated that diversity is integral to workplace loyalty, with candidates saying they are more likely to stay with an employer for over 5 years if there is diversity in the workplace.
Employers must be aware of how to entrench diversity and inclusion into their recruitment policies, or both their business and colleagues will suffer. CV blind assessments, inclusive interviewing, and succession planning should be a staple in any recruitment process in 2022 if businesses want to take this agenda seriously.
By Deborah Gray, Director at Totum Partners.
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What You’ll Learn: Benchmarking metrics for efficiency, equity and transparency How top employers are winning tech talent and how you can emulate them Overall trends in what employees want from an employer brand In this ebook: While the US continues to see record highs in “quits” among what’s known as “The Great Resignation,” companies are […] More
