Diversity and inclusion (D&I) is a key topic in business right now, with organisations of all kinds and sizes working actively towards creating truly diverse and inclusive working environments. This is because those businesses recognise the bottom-line benefits of a diverse workforce, driven by the innovation and varied life experiences that only occur when people are from different backgrounds, with different perspectives, experiences and ideas.
After years of clone-hiring and the dangers of Groupthink, the benefits of diversity and inclusion are becoming clear. Businesses with a diverse workforce are better positioned to understand and serve their customer bases. They are more vibrant, more creative, more attuned to problem-solving… and they have a powerful employer brand that really resonates with talented individuals who want to further their careers in exciting, collaborative, supportive cultures.
Once, diversity and inclusion simply meant hiring women at a senior level, but now the definition is far broader; encompassing different ethnic groups, different ages, different gender and sexual orientations, different abilities and varied types of employment, where part-time work no longer needs to be reserved for low-paid, low-skilled jobs.
These businesses are struggling in many cases, however, to really embed their strategies to create a more diverse workforce and often hampered by outdated recruitment and selection practices which are still not optimised to embrace and welcome diverse applicants from different backgrounds.
So how do you create more diversity in your recruitment strategies?
- Check that your job advertisements are inclusive
- Use the latest tools to ensure inclusivity in your recruitment process – we can advise you on the best tools in the market
- Ensure your interview panels are diverse and representative
- Don’t insist that all roles must be full-time and in the office – this can exclude working parents and disabled workers, when they can bring fantastic talent to the table.
- Invest in unconscious bias training and awareness as necessary in your organisation 6. Work on your communications strategy and employer brand so that your diversity commitment is clear, articulated and visible.
How we can help?
At DataCareers, we work with clients from across all sectors to solve their diversity in recruitment issues. We have significant successes in areas such as:
- Recruiting women into technical and sales positions
- Supporting recruitment into a diverse leadership team – where previously leadership was driven by purely white, middle-class males.
- Recruiting candidates with diverse backgrounds and characteristics i.e. disabilities, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age and religion
- Reducing unconscious bias across recruiting managers
- Improving candidate experience in terms of the interview panels – making clients look like the inclusive employers they aspire to be, and better communicating these values to candidates.
At DataCareers, we can help you to create and implement an impactful D&I process into your business, and see rapid results. With our dedicated D&I and compliance lead, we can support your process end to end, from forming complete D&I teams and interview panels, to providing strategic marketing and branding advice which includes the ideas and recommendations of specialist advertising platforms, and the development of suitable scoring systems for candidates.
Our solutions work so well that one of our clients has been subsequently ranked as a Financial Times Top 100 ‘Diversity and Inclusivity employer’, something that we are extremely proud of and which represents the quality of our targeted, expert support.
Find out more
To find out more about how we can help you, please call us on 0330 0977 809 or email james.crawford@datacareers.co.uk today. Our team is flexible, experienced and delivers measurable results. We also work around your needs!
