This is a guest post from Rowena Wilding, Head of Marketing at Boden Group, as part of our Recruiting Weekly Series. Rowena shares her thoughts on Diversity, Inclusion and Equality being the hot topic in recruitment.
Diversity, inclusion and Equality is a hot topic in recruitment right now. In fact, blogs seem to be littered with posts about the importance of having a diverse team, or women in leadership, or specialist development and support for minority groups.
And while all of them are very clear on why it’s important to develop good DEI strategies, very few of them spend much time on the nuts and bolts of how to create fairer recruitment policies.
The statistics have been bandied about plenty – a diverse leadership team leads to 19% higher revenue[1], teams with a wider diversity make better decisions more of the time (87% of the time, in fact), and they’re 70% more likely to capture a wider market share[2] – which isn’t surprising, as the more diverse your team, the more of your potential client share you can identify with.
Having women on your leadership can lead to a happier workforce, and improved retention rates. Employees feel 12% more supported when they have a female team leader[3], their productivity is higher, and they become more open to change and trying new things.[4]
So many benefits.
And yet still there seems to be a barrier to increasing diversity at the top levels in many companies.
So what can companies do to improve their diversity? Well, let’s start off with three things NOT to do (though these have become extraordinarily popular in recent years).
White-washing mentorship
First off, don’t set up mentorship programmes for women, where they get to “learn” how to be a leader from the men in the organisation. It’s great to set up a buddy system, or have role models for leadership within your business – but these should represent the diversity that you’re trying to create.
Even if you have to look outside of your own business, make sure you are offering your diverse talent support and role models who share their lived experience.
Closed minded interviewing
Second, don’t go to a recruiter and ask for a women-only or a POC only shortlist, and then reject every candidate they put forward for not having the perfect experience.
If you’re looking to improve the diversity of your team, especially at executive levels, you need to be more flexible around the experience they have. They may come from a different sector, but that doesn’t mean their knowledge, experiences and transferrable skills can’t bring something new and exciting to your organisation.
Ignoring diverse voices
If you’re encouraging grassroots groups to encourage and support diversity within your company, it’s important that you make space for those groups to feedback to your leadership team, and then to listen to and act on that feedback.
It’s easy to set up groups, but much harder to make changes based on the experience of the people within those groups.
So, what steps can you take to improve the diversity of your leadership team?
- Top down commitment
The starting point is to make a commitment. Make that commitment from the top levels of your organisation, and then articulate and cascade that commitment through the business. Put numerical targets alongside that commitment. Make sure all management levels understand the importance of those targets, and the role they play in helping the business to hit them.
- Inclusive culture
Next, you need to address your company culture. If diverse talent isn’t rising to the top of your organisation, there may be a reason for that.
Tackle micro-aggressions (like the assumption that the decision-maker in a meeting is white and/or male or making jokes based on stereotypes).
Make sure your appraisal system is evidence-based – aligned to employee goals and contribution, rather than traits.
Look at your internal talent development programme. Is it transparent? Is it standardised?
Or is there room for unconscious bias to influence the outcome?
Do you give clear feedback to unsuccessful candidates?
Do you give them a development plan to ensure they succeed next time?
Creating an inclusive culture means interrogating all your processes to identify areas where bias might have an opportunity to impact.
- Recruitment
The next step is to overhaul the recruitment process. Right from the top. Weigh up what the actual necessities are for the role.
Is that degree actually needed, or is that an unnecessary barrier to people from a different socio-economic background? Would relevant experience in similar field suffice instead?
Think about the words you use in the job description and subsequent advert – are you showing gender bias? Or ableism bias? There are online bias decoders you can use to replace words that might be off-putting to female candidates or disabled candidates.
Consider any adjustments you might need to make to the role to make it more diversity-friendly. Could the role be remote or hybrid? Can you offer flexibility in working hours to support school drop-offs and pick-ups?
- Blind applications
There are different levels to blind applications – starting from removing names, dates and contact details from a CV, right the way through to setting up anonymous application forms and grading applicants on their answers alone.
Blind applications are a great way to cut unconscious bias. Not knowing someone’s name, work history, or place and method of study can lead to a more diverse list of people taken through to interview stage.
- Diverse interview panels
If you’re trying to attract a more diverse range of candidates, a great way to help them see you’re serious about that commitment is to make sure your interviewers aren’t all white men.
Make the effort to display diversity when interviewing – not only because it will help the candidates to see you’re serious about diversity, but also because your diverse interviewers will be able to offer a different perspective on the candidates and what they bring to the table.
One final thing to remember
As recruiters, we have a tendency to look at advice on DEI as something that we can give to our clients to help them attract a wider talent pool – but it’s not something that recruitment companies necessarily bother with putting into practice themselves.
But if you’re not “practising what you preach”, why would your client or candidate trust that your company has any expertise in the area? The more you model best practice, the more authentic your advice, and the better the relationship of trust you will build with your clients and candidates.
So sure – take this advice and give it to your clients. But first, take a look and see how much of it you’re implementing at your own organisation.
Sources:
[1] Forbes, 2019
[2] McKinsey, Delivering through Diversity, 2018
[3] McKinsey, Women in the Workplace, 2021
[4] Harvard Business Review, 2021
Author Bio:
Rowena Wilding is the Head of Marketing at Boden Group, a specialist Facilities Management and Property recruitment partner. She’s got a bee in her bonnet about making b2b marketing less boring, and has a passion for Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion. She represents Boden Group as members of the LBTQ+ in FM Steering Group, and provides mentorship to women who are starting out on their marketing journey and aiming for leadership. If those are the kinds of things that interest you, you can connect with her on LinkedIn for lots more!
