Want Diversity in Your Workplace? Start with Recruitment
It’s pretty simple: If you want to increase your workplace diversity it must come through your recruitment efforts.
First let’s break down diversity. There are two main categories of diversity.
Inherent Diversity: things like race, sex, age, family status, sexual orientation and other demographic characteristics that are intrinsic to a person.
Acquired Diversity: factors such as experience, values, knowledge, skills, education and other factors you pick up along the way.
Workplace diversity is not simply a noble or a compliance related goal. There are a plethora of reasons why employing a diverse section of the population is good for business: it’s good for morale, good for productivity, good for profitability, good for your reputation, good for innovation and creativity, good for faster problem solving, good for decision making, and good for employee engagement.
It's pretty clear that companies who can effectively recruit and manage a diverse workforce have a clear competitive advantage.
So how do you do it? Today, let’s focus on Job Postings:
Language: Read your postings with a critical eye. Are you drawing in a certain type of person based on the language you use? If you are looking for your next “Rock Star” are women going to be drawn in? If you are looking for a “Warm, Pleasant and Polite” employee are you speaking to men? For a list of gendered words in job postings check out this survey from the University of Waterloo and Duke University: This goes beyond just job postings too: read over your job descriptions, memos, flyers in the lunch room, and performance review forms are a slippery slope of biased language. There can be unintended consequences to your choice of words, so choose carefully.
Requirements: Limit your job requirements to must-haves. Studies show a job seeker glances at a posting for less than a minute before moving on (49.7 seconds actually) Your job in a diversity focused posting is to cast a wide net, not to limit those who don’t see themselves in the role. Did you know that men will often apply for a job if they meet just 60% of the requirements listed? For women that number skyrockets to 100%! Make room for diversity by limiting your requirements to only those that are absolutely needed or by using buffer words like: nice to have, an asset, bonus points for, etc..
“67% of applicants are looking for diversity in their next role”
Brag a Bit: Emphasize your commitment to Diversity. Don’t make candidates guess what you’re up to; tell them outright. Brag about how committed you are, share the steps you’ve undertaken and tell them about your vision for the diversity in your organization. This is also where you call out the policies you have in place like parental leave or childcare benefits. Even the benefit doesn’t apply specifically to the job seeker reading your posting, it will tell them more about what you as an employer value. And if they are looking for an organization who values diversity you need to tell them that you are. According to this industry survey 67% of applicants are looking for diversity in their next workplace:
Representation Matters: Photos speak 1,000 words, right? So, what if all your photos on your website or in your job ads are of white men? Imagine if this blog was loaded up with photos of people who all looked identical? What would that tell you? The experience of seeing someone like you reflected back in an image is empowering, it fosters inclusion and increases awareness. When the existence of different identities, skin tones, body shapes and abilities is not taken into account, that is an act of the erasure of that community. This is why representation matters. When a person sees someone like themselves represented in pictures it actually increases their self-esteem.
