5 Reasons Why Diversity Hiring Is Crucial

Diversity hiring is much greater than just ticking boxes. It is a hot cake right now, eyeing the attention of every employer and employee. 

It includes but is not limited to maintaining just a male/female gender ratio. It includes a whole lot more things that every employer should consider to make their organization top-notch. 

Here, we have listed 5 reasons regarding why diversity is crucial and how it can be strategized at your workplace. Maintaining diversity at your workplace is really not a big deal, it just needs to be brought into practice. 

What is Diversity Hiring?

Diversity in recruiting, commonly referred to as diversity hiring, is the absence of bias in the hiring process. The procedure ensures that no one is evaluated based on factors that are unrelated to the job description, such as age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or sexual preferences. Other groups, including women, veterans of the military, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, are now included in a more inclusive definition of diversity under a more contemporary perspective.

It entails aggressively seeking out applicants with a variety of experiences and making sure that their aptitude and skills are evaluated rather than their background.

“I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Why is Diversity Important in the Workplace?

The modern workforce now operates under the guiding ideals of diversity and inclusion. However, talent and employment discrimination still exists in some parts of the world. For instance, there are discrepancies in the workplace that affect people of colour, including lower hiring rates, unequal pay, a lack of leadership opportunities, and unfavourable work environments.

To fight this, many top businesses are now consciously changing every facet of their operations. Here is a list of the top reasons to convince you about the importance of diversity in the workplace.

Diverse employees can better understand your clients.

Not all your clients are the same.They each have a unique set of life experiences, traditions, and values that they bring with them from their various backgrounds. You can better understand and serve your various consumers and clients when you employ a varied group of employees. This significantly boosts your company's competitive advantage.

Check from the statistics itself:

Diverse businesses generate 2.5 times more cash flow per employee, and inclusive teams are over 35% more productive.

Companies with more than 30 percent female board members reported increased year-over-year revenue compared to their less gender diverse competitors.

Your brand will improve.

Nowadays, with the prevalence of social media, a company's success depends on how appealing they are to both potential employees and customers. More competent candidates apply for open positions when a company develops a reputation for recruiting a diverse team. As a result, customers are happier and products and services are improved. 

A report by PwC reveals almost 60% of people considered the diversity of the leadership team when deciding to accept a position with their most recent employer.

Creativity levels will increase.

The more diverse a team is, the more skills, backgrounds and experiences your organization can draw from when needing to problem-solve or innovate. In bringing together different and diverse minds, various perspectives can combine in novel ways. This often leads to more creative solutions and ideas.

More money for the Organization.

Increased cultural diversity in the workplace can lead to greater profits for your organization. This may be partly due to the benefits of language diversity, for example. If your company is increasing its business in other countries, hiring employees who are fluent in many languages will boost your company’s reputation and business abroad, leading to improved profits.

Diversity keeps employees happy.

In addition to drawing from a larger pool of potential employees, cultural diversity also lowers employee turnover. Those currently working will feel less inclined to leave their positions as job-seekers are drawn to organisations with varied workforces (the diversity indicates to applicants that the company doesn't practise discrimination).

According to a Women Ahead research, encouraging employee networks for particular demographic groups — including those based on gender, sexual orientation, race, and religion – helps employees advance their careers, which in turn makes them happier and more effective.

Diversity Hiring Strategies

Here are some diversity hiring strategies that you can try to inculcate to inculcate the habit of a non-bias approach towards your candidates or employees:

Launch a mentoring program for diverse talent when they join:

 Just hiring a diverse team is not enough to make them feel inclusive and equitable at your organization. 

Conducting a diversity mentoring program connects the juniors and seniors across the company. These leaders act as guides, advisors, and critical pillars of support for diverse candidates.

Reach out to underrepresented candidates: A study shows that BIPOC employees have fewer opportunities in the workplace than white workers. 

In order to create a diverse workplace, you can try to proactively reach out to these sectors without making it seem like you’re coddling them. Take to LinkedIn and invite underrepresented individuals for a chance to work for your company. 

Use blind resumes and interviews: Blind resumes are just like conventional resumes, they just lack any personal information. This information includes the applicant's name, address, gender, age, and ethnicity. It only concentrates on the candidate's academic qualifications, abilities, characteristics, and prior employment history. There is software available that removes personal information from resumes of applicants.

Blind interviews, on the other hand, are interview procedures in which the applicant responds to questions via text while remaining anonymous. Employer prejudice in interviews is eliminated by the lack of a physical presence. An applicant is only contacted for an in-person interview after they have been shortlisted.

Create a safe space at work: Not all workplaces that are diverse are safe and welcoming. If your organisation views various groups of people as invasive creatures, all of your diversity hiring efforts will be for naught. A diverse workplace is intended to foster learning and personal growth in its workers.

Diversity Hiring Checklist 

While you already know the strategies for diversity hiring, we went ahead and made a checklist which you can use as a guide for diversity hiring. 

Ensure that every member of your hiring committee has participated in an implicit bias training by Human Resources.

Plan together as a committee as to what your hiring process will look like, to avoid bias.

- Write a job posting with inclusive language.

- Create evaluation criteria that reflects the job posting and avoids bias.

- Circulate the job posting via diverse hiring websites, and networks.

- Before the interview, identify and define the most important competencies for this specific position.

- Questions matter. Develop interview questions to assess each candidate’s qualifications.

- Include at least one diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) question for the interview and confirm components of a “quality” answer for each question.

- Ensure you are auditing and mitigating your bias throughout the interview process (e.g. questioning assumptions or conclusions made, considering your privilege, etc.).

- Utilize the Candidate evaluation form to minimize bias and assess each candidate equitably.

- Once new hire has been approved, prepare for employee onboarding: New Employee Onboarding, Onboarding Toolkit, Example Checklist

Diversity Hiring Best Practices

Now that we’ve seen what diversity hiring is and why it’s so important for your business, let’s take a look at diversity recruitment best practices. These diversity hiring best practices and recruitment tips will help you establish a reputation as an inclusive employer so that you can attract the best possible talent to your business.

Set SMART Goals

It's crucial to make sure your inclusive recruitment objectives are clear regardless of whether you're hiring for manager jobs, recruiting internally or externally, hiring to address an understaffing or overstaffing issue, or looking to take on boomerang employees. 

You won't be able to become the inclusive employer you want to be without defined goals. This is perhaps one of the most important best practices for attracting diversity.

The best way to do this is to set SMART goals. This means your objectives need to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Create an Accessible Website

You should also make sure you create an accessible website if you don’t already have one. Use your website to promote your commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Make sure you use inclusive language and a variety of content types such as videos and downloadable information sheets. These activities make the web accessibility perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.

You should also make sure you state that you comply with the EEOC guidelines for diversity and hiring for inclusiveness. Use this statement in all your job advertisements, too.

Attract More Diverse Applicants

There are a number of adjustments you can make in order to attract more diverse applicants.

First of all, take a look at your recruitment team. Is it diverse? Are your recruiters representative of a range of ages, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and genders? If, for example, all your recruiters are white females between the ages of 25 and 30 then you will be much more vulnerable to unconscious bias.

What about your job descriptions? Do you use neutral and inclusive language in all your postings? Are you using any words that might communicate gender bias? Wherever possible, you should also try to shift your focus from non-essential requirements to job training and transferable skills. 

Finally, focus on promoting workplace policies that appeal to a range of people with different backgrounds. For example, you could add floating holidays to your paid time off so people of different ethnic backgrounds can spend holidays with their families.

Concluding Thoughts

Although this is by no means a complete list of the benefits of recruiting for diversity, it should still provide a relatively accurate picture.

The time for diversity hiring has come. With more and more millennials occupying the leadership positions, hiring for diversity will become a standard – that will benefit both the employee and the employers. 

The devastating news stories from the previous year have brought racism and prejudice to the fore of our collective consciousness. The advancements gained by women in the workforce have also been reversed by the pandemic. 

Your business needs to reaffirm its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion right away.

What are your strategies for diverse hiring? Do comment and tell.