Improving Your Diversity Strategy

LinkedIn’s 2018 Global Recruiting Trends report shows that 78% of talent leaders place diversity as being one of the biggest impactful factors in recruitment processes in 2018. But what is really meant by diversity? It’s not just limited to ‘culture’. Diversity encompasses a mixture of things such as age, gender, race, social class, religion, political beliefs, personal life experience, and even down to personality.

Workplace diversity has many bottom line benefits. Diverse teams have proven to make better decisions, be more creative and attentive to primary goals. Organisations who are the most successfully diverse have delivered 35% better results than those with a less diverse team.

Start by Measuring Diversity

What gets measured gets done. If you have figures to refer to, you can set real targets. For example, can you really just say ‘let’s increase gender equality’ without knowing what percentages are actually represented? The most strategic option is to see that, for example, your employees are 36% male. Your target could be to try and find an almost equal balance around 50/50.

Doing this for each area of diversity you wish to improve will give you a visual representation of which areas are lacking most. This is especially useful if you analyse per team or department or office, rather than for the organisation as a whole.

Understand and Reduce Unconscious Bias

Unconscious bias is one of the biggest issues that prevents diversity. We all think that we don’t show any form of bias towards certain people or groups – but they’re called ‘unconscious’ biases for a reason. We all have them. Implementing training to help combat bias in the recruitment process and the workplace is essential – and the starting point is understanding the different types that can be present. You can read our full article on the types of unconscious bias here.

Your Diversity Policy

If you asked the people in your organisation what your diversity policy is, would they be able to tell you? It’s important for people to know, so ensure you communicate your diversity policy regularly and clearly. But of course, actions speak louder than words.

The best way to communicate your diversity policy is to truly practice it. Research from McKinsey showed that in the UK, senior executive teams proved a 3.5% increase in earning with every 10% increase in gender diversity. But, the percentage of women in senior leadership roles is only 22%. If there is a direct link between this and income, why aren’t these leadership teams more diverse?

Tell the Rest of the World

Make sure your marketing is designed with diversity in mind. If you’re preaching about diversity but your advertisement shows a group of white males aged 40-50, the message isn’t consistent. 52% of companies use diverse employee images in web and print materials to show they value diversity.

There are a number of ways to get your message out there, such as press releases, newsletters, or attending diversity related HR events. It’s all dependent upon what suits you as an organisation.

Diversity and Recruitment

Job Descriptions

Communicate in your job descriptions that you’re seeking diverse candidates to join your organisation – shout about your inclusion policy. This can help to attract candidates who may have had initial doubts about their suitability at your organisation.

Analyse the wording of your job descriptions, too. Make sure you aren’t unintentionally leaning towards a specific group of people. For example, words such as “dominant” or “competitive” are proven to be seen as positive traits for men. Words such as “loyalty” and “collaboration” have proven to appeal to more women. Write them according to what it is you want to accomplish.

Cultural Fit

It’s nature for us to hire based on ‘fit’. But this makes it way too easy to hire people like ourselves or people who remind us of someone we’re fond of. Instead, we need to shift the idea of ‘fit’ to true cultural fit. One of the misconceptions about cultural fit is that everyone is the same. But when you look at your real organisational culture, there will be a diverse range of people who can thrive. Even the likes of Google look to hire for cultural fit rather than focusing on ‘rock-stars’.

59% of recruiters stated that soft skill assessments are becoming one of the most useful innovations in recruitment. Our Values-Based Recruitment allows you to benchmark the values of your team and assess your candidates against these values, to see who will truly fit.

Software Tools for Addressing Bias

Asynchronous video interviewing tools can help to reduce bias in the early stage screening process and early interview process. There will be a lot less bias than in traditional formats as each candidate is given the exact same experience and asked the exact same questions. They can also be used to tap into a broader talent pool in far less time, giving you better opportunities to find diverse candidates. It further offers the opportunity for remote interviewing – in case you find that excellent candidate willing to relocate! Other features such as feedback collaboration and blind interviewing can even take you a step further.

Diverse Hiring Panels

Putting together a diverse interviewing panel can help to promote your commitment to diversity to your candidates, making diverse talent more likely to accept an offer. It also provides one of the simplest yet most effective ways to increase diversity, as your diverse hiring panel will get involved in the decision-making process. It helps to introduce more people in the decision-making process as it diversifies the opinions and preferences that are present.

Get in touch with us for a chat about how the Shine platform can help you overcome your bias or diversity issues, we’re more than happy to help!