- 10 Best Tips to Improve Your Diversity Hiring Strategy - September 6, 2024
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Having a variety of people from different backgrounds is important. It lets you find top talent from all around the world. If you’re not focusing on inclusive recruiting practices (or making diversity a priority), you’re failing to attract the best and the brightest to your business. So, it’s time to start focusing on your diversity hiring strategy.
Don’t make this mistake. Instead, create a good plan for hiring diverse people. And this is what will help your company grow.
Here are 5 tips to help you improve your diversity and inclusion hiring strategy.
1. Create Diversity Hiring Strategy Goals
To make your workplace more diverse and inclusive, start by setting clear goals for hiring. So, these goals should be easy to measure. This way, you can see how you’re doing and also find ways to make things better.
For instance, you could decide to hire more people from backgrounds that are not often represented. Or you might want to make sure everyone, no matter their background, has equal opportunities when applying for a job.
You can be as specific as you like with your goals. But when you create them, be sure to think about things like:
- The types of people working for your company right now
- the industries you are recruiting from
- the demographics of your target candidate pool
A solid understanding of these factors will help you choose the best hiring goals for diversity and inclusion by pinpointing specific problems in your company.
Also, don’t forget to check and change your hiring goals regularly. This way, you can make sure you’re heading in the right direction to make your workplace more diverse and inclusive.
2. Build a Diverse Hiring Team
It’s really important to have a diverse hiring team. So, that means having people from different backgrounds, jobs, and levels, such as HR, diversity and inclusion team, or even hiring managers. This also helps to make the hiring process fair and inclusive for everyone.
Be sure to use a guide to DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) during this process to make sure that everyone in your team understands these pillars and how to use them.
So, when your hiring team is diverse, you get to understand what people from different backgrounds need. This makes the hiring process fair for everyone. Having a diverse team also means your job ads and interviews are fair and you get to include everyone.
When building a diverse hiring team, do it through employee resource groups (ERGs). So, this means employees work together to make the workplace more inclusive. They focus on including people of all ages, genders, races, and backgrounds when hiring new employees. Thus, they make sure that everyone is considered and gets a fair chance.
And, go the extra mile to provide training and resources for your hiring team to help them understand the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
3. Create Inclusive JDs for Your Diversity Hiring Strategy
The words you use in job ads are really important for getting different types of people to apply. Your JDs can either help you a lot or cause problems, so choose your words wisely.
Inclusive JDs are free from bias, avoid stereotypes, and are written in a way that appeals to a broad range of job seekers.
If you don’t know if your current JDs cater to everyone (or has the right language), you can use Ongig’s Text Analyzer to quickly get rid of any language that might show bias from all pieces of hiring copy.
Some of the common mistakes companies make are:
- Using gendered language (e.g., “aggressive” sales mindset)
- Age restrictions (e.g., “recent graduates only”)
- Not including pay transparency in the hiring strategy (some salary info is better than none)
- Using potentially racist language (e.g., “brown bag sessions” or “native English speaker”)
- Using language that discriminates against people with disabilities (e.g., “Walking the warehouse floor” or “Typing internal documents”)
- & more
So, stay away from words like ‘young’ or ‘energetic’ in job ads, as older people might not want to apply. Ongig’s tool points out 12+ words that might exclude people. And we also suggest better, more inclusive words (including gender-neutral ones).
To get a deeper understanding and make your hiring strategy better, you need to know what your current employees think about the company culture.
Are they engaged with your brand? Do they feel appreciated? Create a survey and make sure to ask the right questions. Make sure the answers are anonymous. This will boost honest replies.
You can then use this data to optimize your job descriptions and empower your hiring teams.
4. Use AI to Eliminate Bias
Many leaders in different businesses are using artificial intelligence (AI) to make tasks easier. You can also use this technology to make hiring fairer and more diverse. So the first step is to start by removing unfair treatment.
For example, companies use AI to analyze resumes and identify qualified candidates, regardless of their backgrounds.
This strategy helps create a more fair selection process for all job seekers. Using AI to get rid of bias makes sure that all candidates are given equal opportunities. And it also make sure that the recruitment process is transparent.
It’s also important to note that the right AI tool can help you manage teams with different backgrounds and identify best practices to build a positive company culture. This method is really vital when creating groups led by employees.
5. Educate Your Team on Your Diversity Hiring Strategy
Educating your staff on diversity and inclusivity is important so you can welcome new hires into an inclusive work environment and live up to your brand’s promises. This approach includes offering training and resources on best practices to create a more diverse workforce, and promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
By investing in employee training and development and educating your staff on these important issues, you can create a workplace culture that is inclusive and welcoming to all. If you don’t have the internal staff to handle this task, bring in consulting educators or invest in inclusivity seminars.
This way, more people will know that your company is inclusive and supportive. It will also make different kinds of people want to apply for jobs, no matter where they come from.
6. Research Diversity Benchmarking Data
Diversity benchmarking data helps your organization understand if it’s fulfilling its goal of hiring people from different backgrounds. So comparing your internal hiring data with external available demographic data can help your hiring team discover any hidden unconscious bias in your diversity and inclusion hiring strategy.
For instance, you may discover that the number of black candidates hired into your manager roles in the entertainment business is below the industry standard where your organization is located. So this way, you’ll set up measures to optimize your hiring process to increase the number of black candidates in manager positions.
Plus researching the diversity benchmark data helps you understand the strategies other organizations use to increase their diversity candidate percentage. And this way, you can easily build your diversity recruitment strategy using the data you’ve gotten.
7. Go Where Underrepresented Candidates are
Expand your sourcing net and go to the places where specific groups of underrepresented groups are to improve your diversity and inclusion hiring strategy.
For instance, you can contact schools like Historically Black Colleges and Universities(HBCUs), and Latinx-serving schools to get details of qualified candidates.
And you can also search for organizations that support the specific groups of people you want to reach.
Here are examples:
- Jopwell: This platform empowers underrepresented professionals and students to grow in their careers.
- Out & Equal: This non-profit organization’s goal is to advance workplace diversity and equality.
- Association of Latino Professionals for America: An organization that empowers Latino men and women as leaders. And hence prepares them for the global work environment.
- Women Who Code: A community that helps women grow in their tech careers.
- Noirefy: This platform connects diverse talent and organizations for career opportunities.
- National Association of Black Accountants: This organization’s goal is to help Black professionals in accounting, finance, and business careers.
Lastly, after searching some of the above platforms and organizations, go to Linkedin and search for groups related to them. And advertise your job postings on more diversity job boards.
8. Encourage Employee Referrals from Your Diverse Employees
Chances are high that your diverse employees will have networks of people with backgrounds similar to them. So building a diverse candidate referral program in your organization is an excellent way to encourage your diverse employees to refer the people they know.
For instance, if you’re looking to increase the number of black female candidates, encourage fellow black female candidates to refer the people they know.
And just like any other employee referral program, ensure there’s a benefit your employees get by referring their networks. Also, provide them with the tools they need to promote your organization for you.
Not only will this help you fill the positions for the specific group of people you want, but it’ll encourage the current employees to work hard because they can see your organization values diversity.
9. Open Up Remote Work
The location of your organization might limit your access to diverse candidates. And also having a strict requirement for your employees to live in a certain geographical area and report to the office onsite daily will prevent more underrepresented candidates in far locations from applying.
For instance, only 5.2% of the population is Black in San Franciso City compared to 13.4% of the United States population.
So opening up remote opportunities in your company will allow you to improve your diversity and inclusion hiring strategy and access diverse talent. And you’ll get top talent pool that you’d have never found in your local area.
This move will also allow your organization to support all working parents who will need flexible working days. Plus it will give your employees with disabilities a chance to work from their comfortable homes without coming daily to the office.
10. Measure and Improve
Putting in place ways to improve your diversity and inclusion hiring strategy won’t be effective if you’re not tracking your progress to know whether the strategies are working or not. So check your organization’s software diversity analytics to determine areas where there’s bias and address them.
And ask yourself questions such as was there a boost in the number of diverse candidates recruited? Are the diverse candidates staying in your organization for long? How about the promotions of diverse candidates?
Plus set realistic DEI goals and measure them against your hiring team’s actual performance. And hold hiring managers and leaders accountable for their performance. Conduct surveys to also understand the experiences of your underrepresented groups and work on their concerns.
Lastly, review and update your organization’s DEI practices to reflect any changing priorities of your organization.
Why I Wrote This:
Making your workplace fair and welcoming to everyone is really important. It helps your company grow and brings in talented people. These tips are like a guide to help you do that. Thus, it’s not just about finding good employees; it’s about making your company a place where everyone feels important.
By using these tips, you’re not just hiring better, you’re also making your company a better place for everyone. So, use these tips, and see your company become even better. And if you want software to support your inclusive JD efforts, please request a demo to learn more.
Shout-outs:
- 7 Actions HR Can Take to Help Create an Inclusive Environment at Work (by Andrea Boatman)
- Diversity and inclusion: the complete guide (by Martina Di Gregorio and Rebecca Anderson)
- What is Employee Training & Development? Learn Here! (by Kyriaki Raouna)
- Employee Training: Why Companies Should Encourage Employees’ Self-Improvement (by Semos Cloud)
- 7 Best Practices for Managing Teams With Different Backgrounds (by Anastasia Matvieieva)
- Employee engagement surveys: A comprehensive guide and examples of questions (by Stefan Debois)
- Attract & engage top talent by increasing pay transparency (by fetcher)
- What are employee resource groups (ERGs) (by mentorcliQ)
- The Step-by-Step Guide to DEI (by Nailted)
This is a guest post from Nikola Sekulić of Content Wizards:
Nikola is a seasoned brand developer, writer, and storyteller. Over the last decade, he’s worked on various marketing, branding, and copywriting projects – crafting plans and strategies, writing creative online and offline content, and making ideas happen. When he is not working for clients around the world, he is exploring new topics and developing fresh ideas to turn into engaging stories for the online community.
