Cultivating a workplace and developing talent acquisition outcomes that take into account diversity and inclusion are the gold standard for many organizations today. Companies have demonstrated that effective programs can drive improvements across business operations and add significant financial value.
The reality of the workplace makes this much more complex to accomplish than it seems. Ill-planned programs can lead to ‘diversity fatigue,’ which has eroded progress in some organizations. Diversity fatigue describes the feelings of exhaustion, skepticism, and isolation that some people feel in response to lackluster results around diversity or the perception that the initiatives are disingenuous.
With the right conditions in place, professionals who come from a variety of different backgrounds will be attracted to companies that are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace. Once hired, these DEI policies for talent acquisition empower people to contribute their perspectives and insights to innovative new products or services. Consumers are also better served by employees who reflect the diversity in society and have a deep understanding of their needs. The contributions from a diverse workforce strengthen decision-making and generate higher profits and shareholder value than companies that neglect diversity and inclusion.
However, hiring diverse talent can go wrong for organizations if their presence is viewed as a strategy to fill a demographic need rather than for their skills. As BetterUp notes, hiring to fill a quota or for a cultural fit can make the work experience feel isolating and uncomfortable if people don’t feel like they can bring their whole selves to work. These employees are also unlikely to remain working for the company for a long time, which means frequent, costly job searches. Focusing narrowly on increasing diversity or inclusion can lead other workers to believe that selection processes for jobs or opportunities are not based on merit and contribute to exclusive workplaces and increased hostilities among colleagues.
Achieving a truly inclusive workplace means approaching hiring and workplace policies with sincerity and encouraging all employees to live up to the organization’s ideals. As a Josh Bersin study deftly points out, “The most powerful strategies to drive inclusion and diversity come from the business strategy, not HR programs. When the business has the right focus, the HR practices add value. When done in isolation, the practices have little or no long-lasting impact.”
If your organization has set talent acquisition goals to further DEI goals in the workplace and is committed to making the time and resource investments required to get there, it will only be a matter of time before new employees’ contributions are felt. What steps can companies take to attract candidates from diverse groups during the talent acquisition process?
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Start from within: Implement robust DEI initiatives
Before companies can achieve a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace, it is vital to look at existing policies to determine if current efforts are working as intended. This establishes a foundation for introducing new policies that include everyone and helps HR teams identify areas that need to be fixed from the beginning.
A significant issue is that many companies have DEI policies, but about three-quarters of them have no diversity or inclusion goals. What this shows is just how few companies are taking steps to hold themselves accountable or measure the impact of their programs in talent acquisition and employee management activities. This is concerning since programs without clear objectives are more likely to fail or generate unintended results. Companies would not invest in technology or a business transformation project without clear goals. DEI initiatives should be no different.
Tying diversity and inclusion efforts to business objectives reinforces its priority in the organization and pushes all employees to uphold these values. Without everyone getting involved - from the leadership team down to the most junior employee - no amount of investment will move the needle in the quest for more inclusive organizations. This begins with talent acquisition.
Some programs that have been effective in helping organizations cultivate a culture of inclusion include creating affinity or employee resource groups (ERGs), contributing to causes and engaging with external groups to improve issues that affect diverse communities, and taking an active role in professional associations committed to expanding diversity.
Younger generations - particularly Millennials - have been found to stay at their jobs for more than five years when they are satisfied with their employer’s progress in creating a diverse and inclusive environment. As workers from this and subsequent generations grow to become a larger share of the working population, they have grown more committed to working at organizations that reflect their values, and it will be harder to avoid transparency around DEI or deprioritize it.
Employees are likely to share their positive - and negative - experiences with family and friends, so it is important to ensure that their interactions with each other and management are positive. Opportunities for professional advancement must also be equitable, as an endorsement from a trusted individual can be more convincing than the company’s own statements about diversity. A poor reputation connected to these kinds of issues can be difficult to turn around without implementing significant changes and will have a powerful effect on a company’s ability to attract diverse candidates.
Check your biases at the door
Despite companies’ best efforts, DEI initiatives can be derailed by employees and managers who are not properly trained to convey the values of the organization in daily interactions. Humans hold biases - whether conscious or unconscious - that can undermine diversity and inclusion initiatives in even the best laid talent acquisition strategies.
They can also end up building bias into the structure of the organization if leaders are not proactively trying to minimize its impact. This is why training employees about inclusive practices and developing structures to judge people based on their competencies can be an important counter to ingrained human behavior.
While we can’t eliminate bias completely, people can be trained to identify when it is happening. Each negative encounter throughout the talent acquisition process can determine whether a candidate accepts an offer or not, which is why training interviewers in addition to standardizing interview questions and the recruitment process is essential.
After a candidate is hired, letting individual biases thrive in the workplace will also lead to an increase in turnover among employees. Training, however, should not be an activity that exists merely to check the box. It requires constant communication, refreshing, and connecting with business goals. DEI training should be part of employees’ career growth and be mandatory for the most senior levels of the organization.
Determine the source of diverse candidate applications
Today, the company’s career page is far from the only place where people go to look for jobs. Over the past decade, people have increasingly relied on online job sites, virtual career fairs, and social networks like LinkedIn to find their next position.
With so many sites to post job listings, it is necessary to make sure that you are casting a wide net with your job postings to ensure that it is reaching different groups. Maintaining strong relationships with professional networks and regularly placing listings on niche job sites showcase the organization’s commitment to diversity.
Referrals are also an effective way for organizations to acquire talent. If the goal is to increase representation at the company from specific groups, the HR team can broaden their referral sources to expand the applicant pool.
Professionals regularly obtain information about a company’s culture from employees and other candidates. Glassdoor research found that 76% of employees and job seekers say that a diverse workforce is an important factor when it comes to evaluating companies and job offers, while 32% would not apply for a job at a company that lacks diversity.
To build a successful strategy for attracting diverse talent, the HR team should collect feedback from applicants and analyze their talent acquisition activities to understand which sources have yielded the most lasting hires.
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Refine job posting language
In the talent acquisition process, it is important to know what aspects of your talent acquisition efforts are resonating with applicants - and the ways that your job listings could be deterring certain individuals from applying to jobs. As the first touchpoint with an organization, a job listing reveals so much to applicants about its culture and values. An example of this is the use of gendered language in job ads. Words that are perceived as masculine or feminine may lead a person to move on because they can’t envision themselves in the position.
Another common mistake is listing skills that are not strict requirements. By including unnecessary job requirements, qualified female candidates may not apply - due to a tendency to pass on jobs where they don’t meet 100% of the hiring requirements. It is because of these less than inclusive job descriptions that organizations miss out on the opportunity to sell the company culture through interactions with individual employees.
Therefore, it is critical for HR and talent acquisition teams to include statements on the organization’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as pay careful attention to the wording of job listings to make them more inclusive.
Identify issues that undermine talent acquisition goals
Before DEI initiatives can have a chance to succeed, HR teams must first figure out where their problems with recruiting diverse talent lie. One possible issue is an insufficient investment of time or resources into DEI programs, which reduces their overall effectiveness and stunts progress.
Another two related issues are a lack of diversity in leadership positions and a lack of buy-in on DEI initiatives from leaders. For many job seekers, seeing a multicultural leadership team with men and women involved can have a heavy influence on their decision to apply for a job. Anecdotes about frequent or inadequately handled incidents can also affect the company’s reputation and repel applicants. High employee turnover will also minimize any gains in hiring since new employees are only replacing those who have left.
Other specific areas to examine - in addition to current diversity numbers - are how many people from diverse groups are applying to jobs, how many of these applicants progress to the end of the interview process, and how many candidates either drop out of the interview process or decline an offer.
Leverage recruitment technology
Along with streamlining talent acquisition processes, recruitment technology can help recruiters identify the right talent from any background. Even without photos on resumes, hiring managers can unconsciously exclude the qualified applicant or discriminate against them.
This unfortunate fact was brought to light in a slightly embarrassing way when a job seeker changed his name on his resume from Jose to Joe, and responses from employers immediately began to roll in.
As online job sites broaden the applicant pool, companies must make sure that they are objectively assessing candidates without allowing bias to creep in. As the use of technology solutions increases in HR departments and talent acquisition strategies, so have the opportunities for teams to use it to source the most qualified candidates with as little bias involved as possible.
Instead of sourcing candidates based on an individual’s snap judgments, an ATS enables HR teams to filter searches based on specific skills and other valuable candidate criteria.
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ATS solutions also allow recruiting teams to manage multiple aspects of the talent acquisition process - like job listings, applications, marketing, and candidate management - while ensuring that diversity and inclusion practices are followed.
Tools like applicant tracking systems (ATS) support DEI hiring goals by helping recruitment teams measure the progress and effectiveness of their initiatives - through metrics such as turnover, applicant diversity, applicant sources, and the average tenure of employees. Learn more about how recruitment solutions can promote diversity for companies here.
As technology use evolves and is used for more HR tasks, data will be abundantly available for teams to analyze. In many ways, organizations that are successful in creating a workplace based on DEI principles need technology to support their goals. Solutions like Manatal make it easy to obtain the data teams need to support DEI initiatives, drive progress, and quickly identify gaps in representation or equity. As UKG’s Chief People Officer Pat Wadors said, “When we listen and celebrate what is both common and different, we become a wiser, more inclusive, and better organization.”
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