How to recruit underrepresented talent to build a more efficient workforce

What is diversity and inclusion, and why does it matter?

Before putting a plan in place to build a more diverse workforce, it’s important to actually understand why you’re doing it and why it matters. To define diversity and inclusion, Caroline explains that ‘diversity’ refers to what makes your workforce different, for example, gender, race or background. Inclusion refers to the how–how do you ensure that everyone feels valued and included, what tools or processes do you have in place to achieve this? These two things combined are what create an environment where differences are celebrated.

Once you understand what diversity and inclusion is, it’s then important to understand why it matters in the workforce, Caroline highlights three key reasons why companies should be focusing on diversity:

• Economic value: A team that’s more diverse is actually more creative, which will lead to a better product and ultimately, more profit.
• Innovation: People who come from different backgrounds and have had different experiences will lead to more universal products and solutions.
• Legal compliance: For a lot of organizations, there are legal diversity requirements that they must meet.

Each of these factors bring their own importance to the overall argument of building a more diverse workforce, proving that it’s not just about meeting a specific quota, but creating a more innovative and inclusive workplace, which will lead to more value for the business as a whole.

How to attract and retain diverse candidates

Having experience with recruitment herself, Caroline has a lot of experience in sourcing and retaining underrepresented talent and breaks down how to do so in a few proven strategies:

Attracting diverse talent:

• Workshops: Train your internal team on how to source diverse talent. Caroline shares an example of how she assisted a company train its recruiters and hiring managers, increasing its hiring of underrepresented talent from 10% to 42% in only six months.
• Be intentional: It’s important to be intentional in your recruitment efforts. By using Boolean searches with gender-specific pronouns and leveraging tools like ‘Amazing Hiring’, Caroline was able to quickly find the right hire for a tech company wanting to hire a female senior data engineer on their team of all men.
• Simplify job descriptions: Don’t create overly clunky job descriptions. Men are more likely to apply for a job even if they only meet 60% of the requirements, whereas women will tend to only apply if they meet 100%. Caroline stresses that reducing unnecessary information or criteria on your job description can encourage more women or underrepresented talent to apply.

Retaining Diverse Talent

• Leadership training: Again, it goes without saying that training your internal team will have one of the biggest impacts on your overall process. Make sure you train managers to be inclusive in their leadership style, so that all team members feel supported regardless of their background.
• Eliminate hostile environments: Caroline stresses that companies should have a zero-tolerance policy for behaviour such as sexist, racist or homophobic jobs in the workplace. Issues like this can lead to a loss of diverse talent if not rectified.
• HR policies: Lastly, Caroline insists companies develop HR policies that support diversity and inclusion, for example, ensuring age diversity is respected by offering training to keep older employees up to date, or providing support to LGBTQ+ employees.

The future of diversity and inclusion

With upcoming legislation, such as the EU Pay Transparency Directive, requiring companies to disclose salary information, Caroline feels optimistic about the future of diversity and inclusion. Requirements like this will help reduce pay discrepancies between age groups, genders and other underrepresented talent.

Despite progress like this, there’s still the acknowledgement that change can be slow and that a lot of companies still have a lot to do to move their efforts towards diversity forwards. Caroline always mentions that aligning leadership with goals for diversity is one of the most important things for driving this change and that arguments should be backed up with data and concrete insights from success stories as this can help get leadership on board.

Takeaways

Building a more diverse workforce isn’t a quick or simple change and requires ongoing commitment, however, equipped with the understanding of why it matters, companies can begin to put the effort in place to make the change.

Being intentional in your recruitment and more importantly, training your internal teams are both key to fostering more inclusive environments.

Caroline recommends resources like Mind the Gap by Susy Levy and Reconstructing DEI by Lily Zheng for further insights into the world of diversity, equity and inclusion. For this and even more advice, listen to her episode of Happy Recruiting! On your preferred platform below.