Boost workplace diversity

How to boost workplace diversity – and why it matters

‘Diversity’ has unquestionably been one of the HR buzzwords of recent years. However, some hiring managers can be guilty of forgetting the immense benefits that a more diverse workforce could bring to their organisation, brand and bottom line.

Even if you are in no doubt of the considerable gains that await your company when a diversity of opinion, outlook and background is embraced, you may fall prey to the natural human tendency to hire people who are similar to you.

How, then, can you overcome any understandable attraction you may have to candidates and workers that resemble those already at the firm, instead embracing a truly diversity-oriented hiring strategy? Plus, why does it all really matter?

 

Diversity can take many useful forms

Zooming in on just one potential aspect of the diversity of your workforce – its gender diversity – is likely to bring invaluable insights into how a more varied staff base could make your entire company more effective.

Quite simply, studies consistently back up the notion that more diverse firms perform better. A study by Gallup, for instance, found that gender diverse businesses delivered superior financial outcomes to businesses led by a single gender.

Furthermore, the theory that a more gender diverse business can be expected to outdo a less gender diverse one is supported by other research indicating that female managers tend to be more creative and open-minded, which makes them more likely to look at all potential approaches to a problem. The same research also found evidence of women being more dutiful and methodical than male managers, which reinforces the idea that they may be more level-headed in the workplace.

Naturally, gender is just one element of diversity, with such others as sexual orientation, religion and even neurodiversity also all important to consider. Diversity of thought – sometimes referred to as personality diversity or cognitive diversity – is another crucial factor.

 

What steps can you take to improve your firm’s diversity now?

There is a series of measures that can be adopted to help your HR team to overcome its hiring bias in its efforts to achieve greater employee diversity. You might arrange unconscious bias training for your managers, for example, or encourage referrals by employees who represent the demographics that you would like to see become more prominent in your workforce. After all, people are more likely to refer potential candidates who are from the same background as them.

You may also decide to make the achievement and celebration of employee diversity part of your company mission, or even start implementing psychometric tests.

Finally, it’s also well worth asking ATS providers how their respective software solutions could enable your firm to better monitor its diversity efforts, drawing upon suitably advanced metrics. There are so many steps that could make a major difference to your organisation’s drive to bolster its workplace diversity, and a platform like our own Webrecruit ATS could be one of them.

 

Book a demo of our sophisticated, efficient and cost-effective recruitment technology today, and your business could soon be in a much stronger position to attain and maintain diversity throughout its hiring campaigns and retention efforts in the months and years ahead.



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