Conflict in the workplace throws a wrench into the works when team members aren’t on the same page. In the worst cases, they may form silos that hold back the efficiency of your organization.
While there are many solutions for workplace conflict, the best solution often lies in preventing it in the first place. One of the most effective methods involves implementing inclusive hiring practices to help keep every candidate on the same page.
What’s Inclusive Hiring?
Through fair and inclusive hiring practices, team members can cast aside their differences, avoid conflict, and focus on advancing shared organizational objectives.
You can achieve inclusive hiring by:
- Recognizing the diversity in talent pools and paying attention to differing views and concerns.
- Offering equal job and career progression opportunities to every candidate regardless of background.
- Eliminating discrimination and inherent biases from job descriptions and other hiring mediums.
- Regulating hiring and recruitment practices by assessing a candidate’s skills, experience, and merit.
This systematic process results in a positive workplace culture where every new hire can develop a strong bond with the organization, build healthy relationships with co-workers, and achieve career goals.
The Impact of Inclusive Hiring And Recruitment
An organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives enable them to represent people and communities fairly, particularly underrepresented groups. Through DEI policies, companies can optimize inclusive hiring efforts by focusing on merit, not a person’s background.
Inclusive hiring and recruitment offer equal job opportunities regardless of a person’s gender, abilities, race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation.
Inclusive hiring helps reduce conflicts at work by giving each hire a strong sense of belonging. Industry research shows that 86% of candidates worldwide consider diversity, equity, and inclusion an important topic.
With DEI efforts in place, employees can feel more engaged to go the extra mile and develop a stronger connection with their team. And biased hiring practices could result in poor job fit, employee disengagement, and high turnover.
However, this doesn’t mean organizations should diversify their hires just to showcase their inclusivity. Quality DEI campaigns require companies to constantly provide fair opportunities (i.e., leveling the playing field) for all hires while staying free from prejudice and discrimination to get the experience they desire.
Diverse Workplaces and Conflict Prevention
Inclusive hiring practices pave the way for a diverse workforce. Through diversity, organizations experience improved collaborations and greater productivity while minimizing conflicts.
By uniting various skills, perspectives, and experiences, diverse teams have proven advantages over less diverse competitors, which include:
- 35% more productivity
- 36% higher chance of achieving financial outperformance
- 87% better decisions
Companies that practice inclusive hiring and recruitment enjoy these advantages by striking a balance of multiple voices, opinions, and perspectives, accelerating thought processes and decision-making.
Improved Brainstorming
Diverse teams avoid conflict by maintaining workplace safety where individuals can freely contribute without the fear of censure, embarrassment, or career damage. These could lead to productive brainstorming sessions for discovering creative ideas and breakthrough solutions.
Better Service
Since team members come from different backgrounds, inclusive companies can provide more efficient customer service. Assigning staff who can connect with their communities more deeply creates greater engagement, satisfaction, and conversions.
Efficient Decisions
Diverse teams make better decisions 87% of the time. They generate more information and POVs to comprehensively view any situation. Efficient decision-making by diverse teams has led to great strides in terms of profitability.
For example, diverse organizations and executive teams generate 2.3 times higher cash flows than non-diverse companies, providing 33% more long-term value creation.
Effective Methods For Inclusive Hiring And Recruitment
Inclusive hiring and recruitment campaigns revolve around a conscious effort to seek applicants based on job-related knowledge and soft skills. The process creates the foundation of an inclusive work culture, where companies embrace varying perspectives and knowledge to potentially outperform competitors.
Setting Equal Pay Policies
An equal pay policy ensures that every workforce member gets paid the same amount based on their skills and experience. Employers must clarify this in their job descriptions and contract terms by avoiding jargon or vague language regarding payment and wage terms.
And hires should always receive equal employee benefits based on their contributions, without differences due to their background. These benefits may include time-off, performance bonuses, and gift vouchers (note that these count as taxable wages).
When it comes to maintaining equal pay policies, it is also important for your HR team to monitor starting salaries across all staff levels and provide the necessary training for team members handling the pay process.
Managing Inclusive Interviews and Job Descriptions
Interviews and job descriptions are oftentimes the gateway to a company’s work culture. Companies can hire the most competent talent by practicing inclusivity for both by leaving a positive first impression.
Standardizing Job Interviews
An inclusive job interview optimizes your candidate’s first face-to-face encounter with the company. Organizations can refine the job interview process by using a script with standard prompts that prevent interviewers from straying off-topic or catering to personal interests and preferences.
Sticking to an interview template also eliminates unnecessary requirements while keeping a consistent flow for each session.
Creating Impactful (and non-biased) Job Descriptions
Your job description is important as it serves as the starting point for guiding top candidates toward your interviews. Eliminating biased language from your job descriptions is critical to welcome all qualified applicants.
Using Ongig’s Text Analyzer software helps you avoid the errors of manual job description reviews. In a fraction of the time, you can detect gender and racial biases that cast your job descriptions in a bad light. The platform also suggests strategic content to help you appeal to specific communities, including flex work opportunities prioritized by women of color.
Look at our helpful blogs on writing inclusive JDs, like this one on writing race inclusive job descriptions.
Create An Inviting Career Website
An informative career website effectively introduces your prospects to a role within an inclusive workplace. Along with optimizing your site’s inclusive messaging, it is important to make its layout accessible for the best user experience.
According to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI):
“Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them.”
Some effective ways to make a website more accessible include:
- Adding alt text to every uploaded image.
- Designing the layout with color contrast sensitivity in mind. Providing a high contrast between the background and foreground of your sites makes your pages more viewable to candidates with vision impairments.
- Using large and prominent text for calls to action, like “apply now” or “contact us”
Based on CDC data, an estimated 1 out of 4 adults in the US face some form of disability. So, it is important to ensure your career website remains highly accessible to yield maximized outreach. It is also helpful to review your sites regularly as you add content to ensure that the accessibility of your layout syncs with website changes.
Ultimately, inclusive hiring practices set the stage for a peaceful and collaborative work culture. In a positive space where all are welcome and accepted, disagreements transform into fresh insights, and conflicts disappear.
Why I Wrote This?
Ongig’s AI-driven Text Analyzer helps companies refine their inclusive hiring practices by replacing dull and biased JDs with engaging alternatives. Ongig is on a mission to empower organizations across all industries to broaden their talent pool and make positive work culture commonplace.
Shout-outs:
- Monster – Diversity & Inclusion: How to build a more inclusive hiring program
- Centers For Disease Control and Prevention – CDC: 1 in 4 US adults live with a disability
- LinkedIn – Why Is Diversity and Inclusion Important?
- Washington State University, Carson State College – 10 Benefits of Diversity in the Workplace
- Jack Myers, MarketWatch – Opinion: The numbers don’t lie: Diverse workforces make businesses more money
- Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) – Introduction to Web Accessibility
