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Diversity Hiring: Best Ideas To Help With The Inclusion Process At Workplace

Diversity hiring is a strategy to hire qualified individuals based on merit while eliminating bias in the process. Diversity hiring along with inclusive hiring, aims to uncover and minimize any biases that might be unintentionally or intentionally discriminating against qualified, diverse candidates during the recruitment, screening, and shortlisting processes.

To build a heterogeneous workforce, businesses must actively follow practices to seek out and hire applicants inclusively from a variety of backgrounds. Read on to find out the best ideas to help the inclusion process at the workplace.

Assess your current hiring process

Conducting an audit of your hiring process is identifying any potential obstacles and anomalies. Evaluating the diversity hiring data of your current diversity hiring plan gives you an upper ground. So, before creating a diversity recruiting policy, establish the status of the organization. Based on the data, you can create a good recruitment experience by auditing your present hiring procedure. It will assist you in finding any instances where your current hiring procedures may unintentionally use discriminatory practices. It will help you in mapping out the candidate and organization’s journey during the hiring process, collect recruitment metrics, qualitative, and quantitative data, and more. Once your audit is complete, it is easier to create an inclusive recruitment strategy. The strategy will aid in encouraging workplace diversity at your business. 

Select one metric at a time to improve your hiring process

Companies are now concentrating on strategies for recruiting a diverse workforce to ensure that their employees reflect the society they serve, but achieving it in a short time is difficult. For organizations with a diverse workforce to continually improve their DE&I metrics, the company needs to conduct regular audits of your organization to assess gaps, and put in place metrics that you would like to track. 

An audit might highlight several areas in your recruitment strategy that need improvement, but attempting to address all of them simultaneously can be daunting for any organization. The best way to achieve a holistic improvement is to define the most important metrics based on your organization’s objectives and deep-dive into them one at a time.

Encourage referrals from minority candidates

A reliable recruiting tactic used to draw top, diverse applicants is employee referral programs. Inclusive referral programs, especially for encouraging minority candidates, helps attract more diverse candidates and allows an open space for minority recruitment.

Pinterest used a detailed process to diversify its workforce: relying on referrals from a variety of current employees. They witnessed a 24% increase in female referrals after six weeks. Employee referrals can significantly reduce hiring costs, speed up the process, and improve recruitment quality. Employee referral programs are a popular choice among HR professionals since they help them find top candidates quickly and affordably.

Make sure the hiring process is bias-free

There have been substantial numbers of studies that highlight biases and unfair practices in the recruiting process. Who gets hired is heavily influenced by unconscious sexism, ageism, and racism.

However, there are steps organizations can take to identify and minimize these biases. A diversity and inclusion hiring strategy is the same as the regular hiring process, with a few enhancements that keep a check on the hiring process. The objective is to make the hiring process bias-free by eliminating unnecessary questions from applications and interview schedules that are either derogatory or which creates room for stereotyping candidates.

Ensure that it is easy for candidates to apply

Candidate experience begins from a candidate applying for a job application to the onboarding of the selected employee(s). During this timeline, companies should ensure the procedure is smooth and straightforward. Candidate experience also includes ensuring that your application process works with assistive technology.  Consider having multiple ways for everyone to apply and ensure there are no barriers. Also, creating a diverse interview panel to represent the company’s ethics in front of the candidate, helps in building trust. 

Include an affirmative action / equal opportunity statement on your job ads and your website’s careers page

Most of the candidates who come across your job posts may not be aware of your equal opportunities and D&I initiatives, which means many talented candidates who are looking for a workplace with an inclusive culture may not consider applying. This is why you must take every opportunity to talk about your commitment towards diversity, equality and inclusion.

Make sure to include an affirmative action or an equal opportunity statement on your job ads and its website’s careers page. Ensure that this statement is clear and easy to find, ideally at the top of the page. It should include a brief description of your company’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equality. 

Making an equal opportunity statement ensures applicants feel comfortable and secure about the company and aids in recruiting diverse candidates. It is a reflection of what the company stands for, and there won’t be unfair treatment based on their race, national origin, gender, or sexual orientation.

Provide diversity training to managers and interviewers

Unconscious bias exists everywhere, which is why diversity training is essential in organizations, especially for managers and interviewers, to weed out bias and prejudice in the workplace. Managers and interviewers should invest time to learn and understand a diverse staff to hire candidates fairly. They can further mentor their teams to create a comfortable and cohesive environment for the employees. 

Diversity training teaches managers how to cope with prejudice against particular groups in the workplace and how to handle people from diverse cultures and ethnicities. Therefore, establishing an inclusive atmosphere for all employees at all levels of the organization hierarchy.

Work with recruiting agencies that are committed to diversity and inclusion hiring strategy

Recruiting agencies are a great resource for finding top talent. They can assist you in finding the exact talent the company requires because they have access to a solid diversity recruiting strategy. Recruitment firms who are seriously committed to diversity know how to conduct candidate interviews in a way that respects your company’s culture and attracts diverse talent., The agencies, especially, comprehend the value of recruiting diverse talent who mesh well with the corporate culture because employee and employer retention rates rise.

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Taniya Pan

Taniya Pan

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