Many business owners are starting to understand the necessity of having a diverse staff and all of the significant benefits that come with it. A recent study found that 85% of the UK companies questioned considering workplace diversity to be a priority, with all of those who agreed wanting to increase their own staff diversity.
By looking outside of the company’s usual hiring boundaries, you can recruit applicants with a wide range of backgrounds, abilities, and viewpoints – and these people can provide your firm an expanded perspective.
This has been reinforced in many studies and findings! McKinsey & Co. came to multiple conclusions from their findings, including:
- The association between diversity and company performance appears to remain intact: Since the statistically significant association between a more diverse leadership team and financial outperformance was demonstrated in 2015, they found it had continued to hold true over 3 years later in a revised, extended, and worldwide data set.
- Diverse leadership responsibilities do matter: The companies that were ranked in the top quarter for gender diversity on their executive teams were 21% more likely to outperform in profitability and 27% more likely to generate superior value.
- Diversity should not be limited to just gender: The top-quartile companies in terms of ethnic/cultural diversity on their executive teams had a 33% higher likelihood of leading industry profitability.
- There are ramifications of not being using modern hiring processes: The negative consequence of operating at the bottom of the class on diversity continues. When it comes to financial performance, organisations in the worst quartile for both gender and ethnic/cultural diversity are 29% less likely to attain above-average profitability than are all other companies in our data set.
With workplace diversity becoming such a prominent issue, recruiters have adapted with a recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) finding 57% of recruiters have updated their talent acquisition strategies designed to attract diverse candidates.
So, know that having a more diverse hiring process can bring in numerous benefits, we will provide a number of ways you and your business can make changes which will keep you ahead of the market:
Firstly, you will need to define diversity hiring.
Diversity Hiring: A Definition
Diversity hiring is selecting employees based on merit with specific attention given to ensure procedures have decreased the impact of biases associated with a candidate’s age, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and other personal traits is beneficial for the company.
A more comprehensive definition, you should also consider less visible forms of diversity such as educational background, family status, disability, sexual preference, gender identity, political inclination, religious affiliation, and so on.
When you have a varied staff in all of these elements, you’ll be able to get many various sets of abilities, abilities, viewpoints, and opinions, and that will drive company success. Once you have examined this first phase, some of these methods of fostering diversity in your recruitment process should be considered.
Be Considerate when writing a Job Specification.
It’s something you may not have considered while hiring employees, but some language can be exclusionary to specific groups of individuals, and so the wording of the job description may actually keep certain applicants from applying.
For instance, when it comes to phrases such as “dominant” and “competitive,” men could interpret them as being positive, but women regard them as negative traits. This might have the effect of reducing the number of people who apply for a job where that language is used.
The most important factor to bear in mind is that it is critical that work specifications are understandable by everyone, which means that plain, straightforward language is ideal.
When writing about job openings, be sure to maintain a consistent style of eloquent language that appeals to all demographic groups, which helps draw attention to your vacancy and helps you locate your ideal candidate.
Look to Scout Talent in Unconventional Places.
Traditional avenues, such as publishing employment ads, only allow a certain type of persons to be excluded.
An excellent example of this exclusion may be found in job advertising online through social media or job boards. It would, for example, eliminate candidates who don’t have social media access, those who don’t have internet access, and those who are visually impaired.
When considering who to recruit, it must be taken into consideration that not everyone uses the same channels to search for employment, thus promote your company on many other platforms to increase the variety of replies you receive; these might include referrals, job fairs, press advertisements, and so on.
When it comes to engaging people, videos are at the top of the list. You may use films for your job advertisements if you have the financial resources.
Make your Workplace Environment Accessible to Everyone
It’s important that a workspace is a safe and inclusive place for everyone. Most employees spend most of their lives in the workplace, so the physical environment matters greatly.
Having a highly accessible workspace will instantly increase your inclusivity as it will be a physically attractive, and feasible, place to work for all varieties of people. For example, if your office space has multiple floors, it may be necessary to install a lift for those who might not be able to use stairs.
Likewise, the building itself needs to be accessible, so a ramp or any other form of wheelchair access at the entrance is imperative so that wheelchair users can access the building.
Take a look around your workspace and ask yourself if it is accessible for people with different impairments; if not, a renovation might be in order.
Changing the psychology of a workplace can also make it more inclusive and a more attractive proposition for the best candidates. From the internal layout to the colour scheme to socialisation – all these factors can help to encourage diversity and inclusivity.
It is possible to have an accessible office even if you do not want to make physical changes to the building. Making staff accessible is an essential policy. In order to make an accessible workplace, staff training is required.
For instance, everybody in the company may undergo a training course on disability awareness, so that each of them can choose whether to offer assistance and what type of language to use.
Simple training sessions for your team may immediately transform the office climate, making it more inclusive and a place where everyone can feel happy.
Flexible working can make introduction to the concept of working from home or different hours easier to manage for your employees; for example, people with young children will find working from home or having different work hours easier to schedule.
It is crucial to note that in a modern workforce, it is highly improbable that everyone can work to the standard 9-5 schedule anymore; hence, the introduction of flexible working will help to entice applicants with diverse lifestyles to your organisation.
Promote to your Diverse Employees to refer their Connections
It is very likely that some members of your team will have networks of people with comparable backgrounds to them.
While diversity recruiting is a fantastic approach to raise diversity at your organisation, you should also leverage your varied candidate referral programme to both promote that your firm supports different backgrounds and ideas, and also to increase your diversity recruitment approach.
If you are interested in hiring more of a specific demographic of people, have a look at some of the individuals who already work at your company and who belong to that demographic.
You should be encouraging them to pass on your job posting to their networks, and you should provide them with the resources they need to help advertise your organisation. Both your employees and candidates will truly feel that your firm values their thoughts and presence, which is incredible for the overall morale and engagement in the team.
At LTEK Recruitment we approach the hiring process with ensuring every candidate is given an equal opportunity and that ur hiring processes are fair to both employees and employers. If you think your hiring process may need improvement, contact us at info@ltekrecruitment.com.