How do you ensure your talent pool is diversified and inclusive?

Over the past two decades companies have realized the importance of diversity and inclusion in recruitment strategy. A diverse talent pool will make the company more productive, efficient and open to various innovations. In this blog we explore the main challenges that are creating barriers for diversity hires and discuss efficient strategies that can refine recruitment processes with actionable insights.

Introduction 

Today, many businesses and organizations have realized the importance of having a diverse and inclusive workforce. As a culmination of various perspectives and ideas can influence innovation, better decision making and efficient problem solving. Diversity also influences how companies can improve their customer service, expand their business and get an advantage over the competition.

But building your workforce to be more diverse and inclusive can be quite challenging. There are a lot of barriers like communication barriers, cultural differences, discrimination, and inefficient decision making can add up to make the process difficult.

Challenges in making the workforce diverse 

There are two main questions that need you need to ask yourself while trying to ensure you have an unbiased process of hiring diverse talent.

• How to source diverse talent?

A strategic approach should be taken while sourcing diverse talent. To attract diverse talent, your company’s messaging should be inclusive, welcoming and objective. The company’s social media presence should highlight diversity through pictures, videos of company events with a diverse crowd and provide information about the diversity resources that are available. Sourcing diverse talent is a drawn-out process as you consistently need to build and position your company’s workforce as diverse and inclusive of all kinds of individuals.

• How to objectively hire based only on talent?

The easiest way to objectively hire based on talent is through structured assessments and customized assessments such as Hackathons or Codathons. An assessment platform like Yaksha can objectively offer insights about the right candidate for the right roles through in-depth, customizable assessments tailor-made for your organization. These are effective in removing any human bias and helps you zero in on the right fit.

Industry insights

Here are some statistics and insights from around the world about diversity and inclusivity

• 48 percent of Generation Z are racial or ethnic minorities
• Diverse companies enjoy 2.3 times higher cash flow per employee
• Diverse management has been shown to increase revenue by 19 percent
• More than 3 out of 4 workers prefer diverse companies

Now that we have a good idea about the various challenges to having a diverse and inclusive workforce, let us look at the best practices that are commonly used around the world by successful businesses.

5 strategies to improve the talent pool   

1. Revamping your recruitment strategy

If you are looking to restructure your recruitment strategy, you need to define the exact requirements of your company as a whole – including managers, various departments and even the top brass. Collaborate with department heads and come up with a job role description that uses inclusive language and is appealing to the applicant, making sure the copy cannot be interpreted otherwise. Hackathons or Codathons are an efficient and objective method to identify desirable candidates without any human bias. An assessment platform like Yaksha can assist you here.

2. Provide proper training and resources to hiring managers

As human beings, we are usually victims of our own natural biases where we might hire someone who is like us rather than what is required for the role. Proper training to hiring managers or creating a diverse panel with senior and junior employees will make the process more aligned to the diversity objective. When applications get a fair process of interview during recruitment, they are inclined to feel more inclusive and loyal to your company.

3. Structured onboarding process

An on-boarding plan not only provides the candidates with vital information but also company mission, vision, goals, company culture, values, various diversity and inclusivity policies. It is important to note that with the diverse crowd you are bringing in, you need to have an inclusive onboarding policy in place already for a smooth transition. For example, providing all gender options, disability options make employees feel more inclusive.

4. Balanced work life harmony

Empathizing with employee needs and providing them proper benefits will propagate a healthy balance between work and personal life. Parental leave, flexible work timings and abundant leaves all factor into employee satisfaction, makes them feel cared for, and increases their productivity as well as makes them feel like valuable assets to the company. This approach will make your company highly appealing to diverse candidates at the same time.

5. Focus on individuals

The process of recruiting diverse talent requires a wholistic approach that ensures that new talent is identified, onboarded and successfully retained. Using artificial intelligence and various tools to zero in on the right candidate can nullify biases while providing actionable insights to pick the right candidate. Anonymous CVs is also a method to choose candidates without any discrimination where the name, age, photo and personal information is blocked so hiring managers can pick the right candidate without bias.