The Importance of Diversity in Recruitment

Key Takeaways:

• Enhanced Business Performance: Companies with diverse workforces see better financial performance and more effective decision-making. 
• Improved Employee Engagement and Retention: Prioritizing diversity and inclusion leads to higher employee engagement and retention. 
• Strategic Recruitment Practices: Implementing a comprehensive diversity recruitment strategy, including addressing unconscious bias and promoting an inclusive employer brand, attracts and retains diverse talent, benefiting employees and employers.

A diverse workplace is much like society as a whole. It includes individuals of different generations, races, ethnicities, gender identities, experiences, and ways of thinking. To foster diversity and inclusivity, organizations must prioritize diversity in recruitment, which offers numerous advantages. However, to realize these benefits, it’s essential to have a well-thought-out recruitment strategy for increasing the representation of diverse candidates throughout every stage of the hiring process.

The Benefits of Diversity in Recruitment

There are many reasons organizations have established goals for a more diverse workforce. Diversity and inclusion have become a priority for some organizations because “it’s the right thing to do.” For others, diversity is a matter of compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) reporting requirements or building a workforce that reflects their customer base. 

However, attracting diverse candidates and cultivating a diverse workforce delivers many tangible benefits to employees and employers. Consider these findings:

• • • Better business performance: Companies that are more ethnically and gender diverse financially outperform less diverse companies. 
    • More effective decision-making: Diverse and inclusive teams make better business decisions up to 87% of the time. They also make decisions faster and achieve more favorable decision outcomes.
    • Higher sense of belonging: Employees who see their companies invest in inclusion are three times more likely to feel included than employees in companies who don’t intentionally invest in inclusion.
    • Higher engagement: Organizations prioritizing DEI are 2.6 times more likely to engage and retain their employees.
    • A more compelling employee value proposition (EVP): 76% of job seekers and employees say a diverse workforce is essential when evaluating job offers and potential employers.

Tip: Creating a compelling EVP is crucial when attracting talent, as it helps candidates understand what they will experience as future employees. Organizations can realize greater hiring success by demonstrating their commitment to diversity and inclusion across all employer branding channels, including job ads, career sites, and social media.

7 Ways to Incorporate Diversity Into the Recruitment Process

Given the growing competition for talent, organizations continue to adopt new strategies for finding and attracting prospective applicants. By building a diversity-minded recruitment program, organizations can ensure they don’t miss out on opportunities to hire individuals of all backgrounds, ethnicities, and identities.

Here are seven actions talent acquisition teams can take to level up their diversity recruitment efforts:

1. Incorporate Diversity and Inclusion into the Employer Brand

An organization’s employer brand encompasses its vision, values, and culture, helping to form a positive reputation among candidates and employees. For maximum impact, the employer brand should also include diversity and inclusion, signaling to employees that diversity is truly valued within the organization. 
Every organization has a different diversity and inclusion brand identity. Some areas to consider when crafting a unique brand identity include:

• • • The mission statement for diversity and inclusion: Establish the organization's vision for a diverse workforce and the strategies to accomplish its strategies.
    • Career site and other channels: Highlight diversity efforts and celebrate diversity in job ads, on the career site, and in social media, ensuring recruitment content speaks to target audiences. 
    • Internal branding: Educate employees about the organization's diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) actions so they can take responsibility for diversity and be good ambassadors for the company.

2. Consider All Forms of Diversity in Recruitment

• • • Race
    • Ethnicity
    • Age
    • Gender
    • Veteran status
    • Neurodiversity
    • People with disabilities
    • LGBTQIA+ identity
    • Education and skill set
    • Religion
    • Life experiences and perspectives

3. Limit Unconscious Bias

Without even realizing it, organizations can make hiring decisions based on prejudgments or biased opinions about specific groups of people. For example, organizations may use gendered words in job postings or show a preference for hiring individuals from one race or ethnicity over another. 

Though many organizations have made efforts to reduce bias, some still have work to do. A recent University of Chicago study found that companies across industries tend to favor white applicants over black applicants by anywhere between three percent and 24%. 

Bias can creep in almost anywhere in the hiring process, from the resume review stage through the interview and job offer stages. However, recruitment teams can combat hiring bias by taking the following steps:

• • • Use inclusive language in recruitment messaging.
    • Acknowledge the possibility of recruitment bias in the organization and examine hiring metrics to identify its presence.
    • Use celebrations such as Juneteenth and Pride Month to educate recruitment professionals and hiring managers about the types and dangers of unconscious bias.
    • Consider a blind hiring strategy that obscures personal information on resumes, including name, school, and location.
      
      

4. Attract a Diverse Slate of Candidates

Organizations can “walk the talk” of diversity recruitment by deliberately seeking diverse candidates and meeting them where they are. Possible candidate sources include professional associations, niche job boards, and networking groups. Current employees may already participate in some of these groups and could be encouraged to refer people in their network. 

Additionally, recruitment teams can enlist diverse employees and managers to join hiring committees and share their perspectives and experiences.

Another way to find diverse talent is to drill down on specific areas by creating candidate personas. Each persona can describe the job search channels where target candidates congregate and the job opportunities that may be the most appealing to them.

Tip: Some job sites cater to specific niches, industries, and candidate types. Programmatic job advertising can help organizations uncover new talent sources and reach more active and passive candidates at the right moment.

5. Understand and Address Inequities in Pay Packages

Recruitment presents an ideal opportunity to address persistent gender and racial pay gaps. Women are paid 84 cents for every dollar a man makes, and people of color earn even less. However, routine compensation benchmarking and monitoring of average pay for new job offers can help close these gaps. Recruitment teams should also support more equitable job offers by:

• • • Ensuring compliance with state salary history bans
    • Promoting fair and transparent pay in brand messaging and job advertising
    • Listing salary ranges in job postings

6. Get Everyone On Board

HR and talent acquisition professionals shouldn’t be alone in promoting inclusive hiring practices. Unfortunately, many organizations need help. In a LinkedIn survey of recruiters and HR professionals, 77% said their organizations were committed to more diverse hiring, but only 47% held hiring managers accountable.

For diverse recruitment practices to take hold and continue long-term, talent acquisition teams must ensure senior leaders, hiring managers, and employees understand the organization’s diverse hiring goals and what they can do to support them. A combination of ongoing training and educational workshops can provide the reinforcement needed for continuous improvement. 

Tip: It can be challenging to make the business case for diversity recruitment and stay on top of related best practices. Recruitics helps organizations create and execute a diversity recruitment plan, optimize recruitment messaging, and incorporate applicable best practices.

7. Track Progress With Recruitment Analytics

Understanding how well the organization is tackling its DEIB goals requires diligent monitoring. Just as internal diversity teams track metrics such as workforce composition, pay increases, and promotions, recruitment teams can also use powerful analytics to measure progress against diversity recruitment goals. Examples of relevant metrics include:

• • • Recruitment by source
    • Candidate demographics
    • Diverse applicants per job opening
    • Conversion rate of diverse applicants
    • Offer acceptance rates

Tip: Recruitics’ Vision Analytics solution offers customized data and reporting to help organizations identify recruitment trends and track progress against hiring objectives. The solution also integrates with third-party data sources, enabling organizations to benchmark roles and job functions accurately.

Recruit and Retain a More Diverse Workforce 

In today’s dynamic recruitment landscape, embracing diversity is more than a compliance or moral imperative; it’s a strategic advantage that enables organizations to achieve better financial performance and build an engaged, high-performing workforce. By rethinking employment branding and other recruitment practices, organizations can attract more diverse candidates and make measurable progress on their DEIB and hiring goals.

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If you need help getting started, the team at Recruitics is here to help!
Recruitics’ branding, recruitment marketing, and analytics solutions help organizations create and execute a recruitment strategy that results in quality applicants and more conversions.