Inclusive hiring practices are in the spotlight as they have become increasingly vital to
every organization’s success.
Inclusive hiring translates to improved employee retention and productivity and a host of other
organizational benefits.
But more importantly, inclusive hiring practices help us level the playing field for all applicants
and fight against recruitment bias and any form of discrimination.
As reverend Jesse Jackson once said, “When everyone is included, everyone wins.”
This is undoubtedly the case when it comes to inclusive hiring.
Nevertheless, we tend to recruit people who are most like us or hire the same types of
people — in other words, falling into a comfortable pattern.
The good news is that there are many things your organization can do to establish long-term
inclusive hiring practices that benefit everyone.
Before we dive into the 7 inclusive hiring steps to implement immediately, in the first
comment below you can find the link to download our beautiful Diversity & Inclusion Survey
Guide which you can use to assess the level of Inclusion and diversity in your organisation.
*INTRO*
Hi, Neelie here again!
Before we jump to the 7 steps of an inclusive hiring process, remember to subscribe to the
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Let’s start with number 1.
Define what diversity and inclusion mean for your organization.
Remember that diversity can be based on different types of people and intersectionality within
those types.
Most often, gender and race are mentioned as defining diversity, but there are also
other factors to consider, such as:, neurodiversity, ability, veteran status, or age.
For example, the experiences of a gay Latina will differ from the experiences of a Black
Woman 20 years her senior, even though they are of the same gender and may have held similar roles.
Write inclusive job descriptions.
Use inclusive language for hiring, which includes leaving out gender-based language and terms,
as well as industry jargon.
Start with a job title that leaves out any hint at gender or industry preference.
Other factors to consider:
Use short sentences and brief paragraphs.
Use a larger font and embolden words you want to highlight
Emphasize job responsibilities rather than requirements,
In short, keep it simple and focus on the job at hand.
Have a career website that is accessible to all candidates.
Make sure language is inclusive and clearly states your workplace efforts to provide diversity
and inclusion for attracting the right candidates.
Instead of stock photos that trivialize diversity, use authentic images of your team (with permission).
Accessibility standards that you should implement include:
transcripts and close captions for video and audio files
alternative texts for images, color contrast standards.
When developing a career website, ask your website development team to adhere to Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Make inclusion a part of your employer brand.
Find ways to communicate your commitment to inclusion to different groups of applicants.
Be honest if your organization is not yet where you want it to be and share
what your plans for diversity, equity, and inclusion are.
For example, Chipotle Mexican Grill, a restaurant chain headquartered in California,frequently
shares how their employees with diverse background experience working there.
These people represent more than 2/3 of Chipotle’s workforce.
And over 70% of their general managers have been promoted to the role internally.
That’s a great way to show prospective employees what your culture is really like.
Establish diverse interview panels.
This effort can help your hiring team form a well-rounded view of each candidate and
gauge different qualities.
Having a diverse interview panel can reduce bias and help see candidates from different
perspectives.
No time for a formal panel?
No problem – gather the best and brightest on your team and conduct a group interview.
Intel implemented a requirement for each interview panel to include at least two women and/or
members of underrepresented groups.
Within two years, they managed to grow the number of hires with diverse backgrounds by 41%.
In fact, 75% of the highest scoring organizations in the Diversity Best Practices Inclusion
Index require the panel of interviewers to be diverse.
Measure your inclusive hiring program.
How can you guarantee that having an inclusive hiring process
will result in a more diverse workforce?
The proof is in the human resource data that you can collect and track.
Your applicant tracking system can help determine the characteristics of candidates that have
been hired vs. those who have not.
One great human resource metric you can focus on is employee retention rates per group,
for instance: gender, ethnicity, or disability.
It’s simple to calculate and monitor.
If you have increased retention, more employees are choosing to stay on
and work hard for your business.
Provide employees with vertical and horizontal career opportunities.
Finally, to increase the retention rate, make sure that your employees are aware of internal
growth opportunities and that you have an internal recruiting process in place.
Track internal mobility data across different groups of employees.
It will help you understand what the obstacles to career progression might be and come up
with strategies to address that, such as mentorship or sponsorship programs.
Internal mobility is extremely important to your retention efforts.
Notably, employees at organizations with high internal mobility stay nearly twice as long.
These were our 7 tips for creating an inclusive hiring process.
The benefits of an inclusive hiring process go well beyond hiring the best person for
the job.– When you focus on building inclusiveness into the organization as a core value, it
will trickle down into all departments, which in turn will provide more positive results.
Now the ball is in your court!
How many of these strategies do you already implement
to provide more diversity in your workforce?
And remember, you can analyse the current state of Diversity and Inclusion in your
workplace, by downloading the Survey Guide we’ve created.
You can find it in the link below.
Bye bye!