Why is hiring a diverse workforce important?

As we celebrate US Black History Month, we must take a look at our own organizations to see how we can improve our hiring processes, diversity strategies, and cultures to better support our black friends and colleagues. 

Employing a diverse workforce is more important than many companies may think. Having people with different backgrounds and perspectives helps to bring innovative ideas to the table, from solving problems to implementing new concepts into a business, resulting in a more inclusive workplace, but don’t just take our word for it. According to a 2021 McKinsey study, companies with diverse boards and executive leadership earn more in profits. [1]  

But it’s not all about profits and work. One of the main factors of having a diverse workforce is making your team members feel comfortable in their workplace, and over the years this has increased drastically as an important factor for job seekers. According to a report from Pew Research Center, nearly half of Gen Zers (people born between the mid-1990s to mid-2010s) are people of colour, and the study found 75% of people in Gen Z would reconsider applying at a company if they weren’t satisfied with their diversity and inclusion efforts.[2]  

Ultimately, diversity recruiting brings a wide range of skillsets and experience to your workforce. It improves cultural awareness in your teams and allows you to reach a broader candidate pool in your recruitment process. These are just some of the many reasons why organisations across the globe are prioritising diversity recruiting strategies. 

So you may be thinking, where can I start? We have put together our top tips to help you achieve your diversity hiring goals: 

Tip 1: Refine your language 

Seems simple, right? But if done wrong, can cause a whole lot of trouble for recruiters. This is something that should be spent time refining, from your job posts to your interview language. 

Your team likely spends a fair amount of time working on creating a good job description, so it’s important that they get the best response possible. A job description is a candidate’s first real look inside your company, so you need to ensure you offer the right insight into what your company offers, by ensuring the description is inclusive of all. 

So, the next time you write your job description or during an interview process, keep the following in mind: 

Tip 2: Organise unconscious bias training 

Unconscious bias is a crucial part of building an inclusive company culture, and so we need to make sure that it is something that is addressed so that people can recognize and overcome this. A good way for a company to do this is by organising training sessions for your employees. You can get speakers in to discuss their stories so that your team can hear first-hand what applicants would want to hear. This will also help people feel they are part of an inclusive workforce and help retain people from underrepresented groups.  

Tip 3: Work on your employee brand 

From a recruiter’s perspective, employee brand is a crucial factor in differentiating yourselves in the market, enabling you to attract, recruit, and engage the right people so, it is important to think about how candidates may perceive you from your posts. This can be everything from a picture to the language and terminology you use. Refining the language you use and ensuring you are posting for a diverse audience will drive candidates to apply and help expand your network to be more diverse.[4] 

Tip 4: Measure and celebrate the success of your diversity recruiting programs