Riding the wave of globalization, we have come to evolve in a greater space empowered by diversity and inclusion – growing together as a progressive workforce. And while recruiters are greatly emphasizing on shaping a diverse and more inclusive organizational culture, a lot remains for us to get done.

Statistics have shown that diversity hiring is not just a good thing to do, but also a smart one – creating a resourceful and progressive space for professionals from all walks of life. Bringing in these diverse perspectives and experiences creates an inclusive work culture, broadening the range of innovation by ethical means. A diverse workforce propels teams to think outside-the-box – driven by varied values to challenge new thoughts and ideas.

The Right Stride towards Proactive Diversity Hiring

Now that companies are increasingly steering towards an inclusive hiring metamorphosis, the real challenge is getting things into gear. It is imperative for talent acquisition leaders to transform the entire recruitment process by looking at it objectively, thus attracting diverse potential candidates to create a collaborative, innovation-driven work culture.

Here are a few fundamental tactics that can be adopted by recruiters to promote the diversity and inclusion initiative:

Educating Your Team

The first step to accentuate diversity hiring is to understand diversity and inclusion itself. We need to identify and discuss common hiring biases like gender, race or religion, and also more underlying ones like the Confirmation Bias, the Heuristics’ Bias, similarity Attraction Bias among others.

These biases often overlook the candidates’ talent and proficiency, which can only emerge through a deeper and more open-minded assessment. It is essential to extend this learning amongst various other departments and not just with the recruitment team, to ensure a fair and inclusive screening across all levels; that too as a recurring process.

Analyzing Your Current Hiring Process

The second step is to analyses the current hiring process and identify any discrepancies, helping ascertain any potential shortcomings to be worked on. More simply, we can identify certain goals and their requisites, assessing the strengths and challenges of our diversity hiring, which in turn will determine the areas that need alteration.

Attracting Diverse Talent

To source and create a more diverse candidate pool, the first step is to expand the playfield with professionals from different areas and backgrounds, various educations, varied experience levels etc. Secondly, we ought to be more appealing, creative yet neutral in the language we use, as to not reflect such biases when putting across job postings.

Another significant factor here is to attract diversity with diversity, or even by endorsing the aspiration to build a more diverse workforce. This, of course, can be supported by workplace flexibility, added benefits, or simply exuding the aura of a healthy and employee-friendly workspace.

Flexible & Employee-Friendly Policies

One of the most significant things employees seek is work satisfaction, with a certain flexibility to work in their own way and at their own time. This is especially true of the newer and upcoming generations that prefer a work-life balance with flexibility in terms of work-from-home options or working hours, among others.

Diversity hiring is only the first step in creating an inclusive work culture: while it does attract diverse candidates, it certainly needs to be inculcated in the organizational culture itself. Employees need to enjoy their work and their time at the organization, by encouraging them to build their own positive spaces that respect and are sensitive to their personal and professional responsibilities.

To sum it up, diversity and inclusion isn’t just a practice that can be adopted, but a delicate approach that needs to be inculcated in our workspaces – right from hiring to transforming the organizational structure, it is a culture in its own right.

Build lasting relationships and stronger teams, empower the personal and professional growth of employees and create a healthy space for ideas to take flight – ultimately outperforming your competitor firms, with better products and services. Be it training, seminars, or events that help educate employees on the importance of diversity, all of these cater to building a diverse and all-encompassing work culture that can go a long way.