“Inclusive teams outperform their peers by 80% in performance evaluation. Gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to have financial returns above national industry standards whereas ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to do the same.”
Data leads the way and these stats are the starting point in proving how important diverse talent is for the growth of any company. If you are still thinking and not taking action to hire and retain a diverse workforce, now is your time to do that. If you read our last post on how to attract diversity, follow through that and take leads from this one to recruit more diverse employees for your company:
Look Into Your Workplace Policies
Your diverse recruitment strategy starts from here. Before you think about ways to attract diverse candidates and retain them, first, investigate your existing recruitment policies and see where the loopholes are. More so, go through your previous records to see where and how you lost diverse employees the most. Chances are that your Muslim employees did not get prayer breaks, mothers weren’t offered any daycare packages for young children, and black women were made to feel they were assistants rather than their actual roles. Offering workplace policies that appeal to diverse candidates is the way to loop them into your employee pipeline.
Take all your existing data and sift through it to see the reasons that drove your employees right out the company door. What would have retained your former diverse employees? Was it offering a flexible schedule which is sometimes preferred by women employees? Would making work/life balance your company mantra attract millennials since that is what they value? Look into your current data and rectify where you went wrong the last time. Take that and change the company policies to get a better, more productive, happier diverse workforce.
Blind Resumes & Interviews
Your HR team might be trying their best, but unconscious bias has a way of interfering with decision-making. This is why blind resumes and interviews are the most popular hiring methods in the recruiting toolkit. Removing the candidate’s name or other identifiers which may lead from their resume makes the recruiter look at their talent, skills, education, and experience. When the recruiters do not know the race, gender, ethnicity, or color of the candidate they will be able to objectively identify and evaluate the high-quality candidates.
Similarly, various companies are also implementing initial blind interviews. By removing identifiable objects from the applications, the candidates can anonymously answer job-related questions. This way, the initial screening can be done without any identification. What’s more, is that the resume should be kept anonymous before the interview, so as to remove or reduce any bias. This can especially be helpful if you look into your previous data and see how many potential employees you lost during the resume screening and initial interview process.
Let The Data Guide You!
Talent is equally distributed, but the opportunities aren’t always! If your company uses real-time analytics, it can be ensured that equal opportunity can be extended to all candidates. Statistical reports, graphs, and data help leaders see where they can make improvements in their company policies which impacts diverse employee retention. This funnel data will help you see the difference between the potential candidates applying for multiple jobs company-wide and the percentage of current diverse employees you have.
Your data tells a story and seeing its visual representation helps leaders understand the real problems and the solutions that can be implemented to create a more equitable recruitment and hiring process.
Use Sourcing Methods Intentionally
The candidate pipeline can become a bottleneck for diversity if the company is relying on referrals for hiring. Most of the time, when there is a new position in the company, the current employees end up referring to the resources they know. Other times it could be Talent Acquisition looking into their current pool of resumes to see which one fits the job description the most. If data and current analytics are of any value, you must change the pattern. Generally, people’s networks are composed of individuals like them demographically.
Take advantage of diversity recruiters and third-party diversity recruitment job boards to diversify the candidates in your talent pipeline. Create a careers page on your company website showing the culture, employees, leadership, and projects you work on. Go back to your previous diverse hires to find out what attracted them to your company. Inquiry about their hiring process which got them into your company. Utilize this data to make changes in order to increase the number of diverse employees in your company.