There has been a lot of talk about the importance of diversity and inclusion in recruitment recently, and it’s something that a growing number of businesses are paying attention to. According to a recent report, 85% of employers say that increasing diversity in their workplace is a priority. However, 46% of employers don’t currently have a programme in place to help them attract diverse candidates. Though a lot of employers know that prioritising diversity and inclusion in recruitment is important, close to half are still without a plan to do so. This could be holding them back.
The Advantages of Diversity and Inclusion in Recruitment
There are a number of benefits that come with having a diverse and inclusive workforce, as a lot of employers are coming to realise. By creating a team of people from different backgrounds, a business can gain access to a wide variety of perspectives, views and opinions. This isn’t always the case when everyone has had a similar upbringing and life experiences. By recruiting a diverse range of employees, a business also becomes more creative and innovative and has the ability to embrace new opportunities. With a wider range of people, the team is likely to have a wider range of skills, abilities, and talents. It has also been proven that diversity can lead to increased productivity and happier employees.
How to Embrace Diversity and Inclusion in Recruitment
To truly embrace the benefits of a diverse workforce, businesses need to recruit in a way that attracts a wide range of candidates. This means embracing candidates of all genders, disabilities, sexual orientations, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. This also means addressing unconscious bias among staff and ensuring that everyone gets a fair chance at securing the role. Unconscious bias is when someone makes an assumption about a candidate based on their age, gender or background. These things are not related to the role, but they could prevent someone from getting the job due to unfair bias.
To build a diverse workforce, employers need to counter unconscious bias and make decisions fairly. There are a range of ways to do this, such as removing certain information from CVs. It’s a lot harder to pass judgement on the suitability of a candidate without their name, gender or address. It’s also harder to be biased against someone if you don’t know the name of the school they went to, only the grades they achieved. Unconscious bias can also be tackled by having a wide range of stakeholders assess CVs, taking a number of perspectives into account on how suitable a candidate is.
There is no denying the benefits of having diverse employees, which is why hiring managers, recruiters and employers need to embrace inclusion and start to build a diverse workforce.
If you are looking to improve the diversity of your team get in touch with Dovetail HR today.