Today, most companies aspire to have a diverse workforce because of the numerous benefits: increased productivity, accelerated profits, enhanced creativity, improved company reputation, to name a few.
But what if you’re in an industry that relies on high-volume recruitment like BPOs and call centers? What can you do to meet your diversity hiring goals?
Turnover affects productivity, increases hiring and training time, interrupts schedules, demands overtime from other employees, increases frustrations and negatively impacts your company. To make matters worse, there are costs associated with each one of those challenges. So what can you do to hire a more diverse workforce? Properly Survey Employees During Their Exit Interview: What would be required for them to stay? Why did they really leave? What are their likes and dislikes that matter to them? You can also ask open-ended questions to get more of a dialogue, and perhaps get to the bottom of the honest reason for their departure.
Celebrate Employee Differences: Showing employees that you respect and value their backgrounds and traditions is a great way to be more welcoming as a company. Think about potluck lunches, gift exchanges during religion-based holidays such as Hanukkah and Kwanzaa alongside Christmas celebrations, but also noting Breast Cancer Awareness month, Veterans Day and more. Foster Workplace Friendships: Make the work environment more conducive to building friendships. Give colleagues a chance to converse, meet up, and hang out during work time.
For example, every so often you could end the work day an hour early and have a happy hour with your crew. That doesn’t mean you have to end up at a bar; it can simply be coffee and pastries around the company’s kitchen table. Such shared activities will foster more trust over time and make everyone more vested in other employees’ success.
An inclusive workplace is more important than ever. More than 42,000,000 workers voluntarily left their jobs in 2019. What does your current workforce look like?
How to hire more diverse candidates
Here are 5 practical tips to boost your volume hiring of diverse candidates:
Use social media to showcase diversity and inclusion
If you want to reach as many diverse candidates as possible anytime, anywhere, social media is the way to go.
Scale up your hiring of a diverse workforce by doing the following initiatives:
1. In your social media pages, showcase images and videos of your staff that belong to various groups in your workforce. See below categories of how you can represent them:
Ages: A range of ages from entry-level worker to your C-Suite employee
Genders: Women, men, transgender, non-binary, and other genders
Races/ethnicities: African/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, Middle Eastern, Caucasian/white, mixed-race, etc.
Abilities: People with a wide array of different physical and mental abilities or disabilities
Invite these employees from different demographics to share their company testimonials and stories on your LinkedIn, Facebook and IG channels.
2. Advertise your vacancies to help meet your diversity and volume hiring goals.
Facebook has a ‘Jobs’ feature to help recruiters target their job ads to reach as many qualified diverse candidates as possible. Applications are pre-populated with demographic details from applicants’ profiles like age, past job titles, educational background, employer information, and interest.
Use software specific to diversity hiring
High-volume recruitment of diverse candidates is a massive challenge for hiring managers. Fortunately, there are diversity recruitment tools available to address this concern:
Blind resume screening – hides candidate information that may influence unconscious bias like candidate’s name, age, gender, race, educational background, and location. With recruitment software, you can automate the hiring process, implement objective criteria for candidate selection, and eliminate the headache of manually sifting and screening through hundreds of resumes.
Blind interviews – ramp up your candidate interviewing process by emailing annonymized written Q & A. Other options include live messaging and chatbots, which save recruiters’ time and expand candidate outreach, ideal for hiring at scale.
Pre-employment assessments – evaluate candidates’ personality traits and cognitive abilities to respond in certain situations. These assessments make it easier for recruiters to assess applicants’ skills and competencies without introducing unconscious biases that might skew candidate selection. It also ensures each candidate is treated fairly — regardless of their background or work experience.
Global auditing giant KPMG worked with Harver to redesign its recruitment process for entry-level hires. Using our volume hiring software to tackle diversity recruitment, we helped KMPG increase the number of female hires by 44%. You can read the case study below.
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Create job descriptions that promote a diverse and all-inclusive workplace
You can use the following checklist to help you craft job advertisements that would attract diverse applicants:
1. Use gender-inclusive language. When referring to candidates, use ‘you’ instead of ‘he/she’ to avoid driving away qualified individuals from sending their applications.
For example, you may be wondering why you have very few female applicants for your software developer position. Maybe the job description was written with masculine language that makes it hard for female software developers to see themselves in the role and working for your company.
Use writing platforms like Gender Decoder, Textio, or Applied to make sure you use neutral language in your job adverts.
2. Unless they are crucial, don’t put too much emphasis on the educational background. While Ivy League institutions are known to produce the best and brightest students, there is no guarantee that students from these institutions will be your ideal employees.
3. Focus on the actual responsibilities of the role instead of publishing a laundry list of unnecessary requirements. Sometimes, having a lost list of conditions can be intimidating to some applicants, creating the impression that working for your company is a difficult experience.
For instance, avoid using phrases like ‘strong English-language communication skills’ when it’s not vital to do the tasks, like hiring locomotive engineers or elevator electricians.
4. Communicate that you’re an ‘Inclusive’ employer. Add sentences in your job description that shows your company is dedicated to being an ‘inclusive’ place to work.
Look at how Visa use ‘inclusive ‘statements in its job posting:
Visa: Universal acceptance for everyone, everywhere, is at the heart of our Company. We promote diversity of thought, culture, and background, which connects the entire Visa family. As such, Visa is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate based on race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state or federal law or local ordinance.
Join career fairs and networking events dedicated to diverse talent
The fastest way to find your diverse candidate is by meeting them face-to-face.
There are plenty of diversity job fairs and networking events happening around the world. You can connect with a large pool of applicants from various backgrounds and interview them for just a few hours by joining these events.
Virtual career networking is also an option. Companies are turning to these alternatives to look for more diverse candidates. These can lead to future opportunities and referrals, even if there is no initial match.
Cultivate an inclusive company culture
How do you attract diverse candidates to work for you? By creating and promoting an inclusive company culture.
Begin by practising the golden rule of treating people in a way you also want to be treated. Build relationships with your staff to get a sense of what would make them feel affirmed and respected. Consider holding seminars about unconscious bias and how it shows up in the workplace. Find ways to adopt and support inclusive behaviors in your business.
Ensure a productive and respectful team environment where all members can contribute ideas and suggestions. For example, encourage opinions of introverted team members, making sure that all voices are heard, or ensuring that individuals get credit for their ideas and work.
Next steps
To sum it up, if you want to attract more diverse candidates and scale up your talent acquisition to meet D&I goals, you should:
Use social media to showcase diversity and inclusion
Use software specific to diversity hiring
Create job descriptions that promote a diverse and all-inclusive workplace
Join career fairs and networking events dedicated to diverse talent
Cultivate an inclusive company culture