78 per cent of talent leaders place diversity as being the most impactful factor in recruitment strategies in 2018. A more diverse workforce improves company culture, boosts innovation, and enhances financial performance.
However, while several of our clients share the desire to improve workforce diversity, they struggle to identify changes in their talent acquisition process.
Here’s our top five tips on improving your workplace diversity:
Talk openly about your diversity goals
With diversity programmes, real success comes from embedding them into your company culture. Leaders provide sponsorship, the business takes responsibility for delivery, and external partners offer expertise. Diversity reporting is important as it tracks progress, identifies areas of improvement, and maintains the momentum of your initiatives.
Understand and reduce unconscious bias
Training for hiring managers, gender neutral job descriptions, anonymised CVs, and a structured approach to interviews all help to eliminate unconscious bias in the recruitment process.
Challenge hiring briefs
For job vacancies with diversity challenges, insisting on hiring candidates with specific sector experience can limit talent pools. ‘Hiring for potential’ programmes identify transferable skills and open up diverse talent pools. Often, companies instruct recruiters to source a candidate currently working in a particular role – can we challenge this to identify return to work opportunities?
Embrace flexible working
There is a clear link between flexible working, including flexible hours, remote working, part-time, and job share opportunities, and the ability to attract diverse talent. Changing your default to ‘we are a flexible employer’ is a positive step.
Build and engage with talent communities
Building networks to attract potential diverse candidates is essential to long-term diversity strategies. This proactive method coupled with informal approaches promotes your EVP and is an effective way of engaging with candidates yet to change jobs.
Discover how Resource Management can help with your diversity requirements.