What does a candidate look for in a role? This question has evolved, particularly in the past three years, with work-from-home and mental health-related benefits becoming part of what makes a potential employee say yes. Applicants nowadays are also concerned about diversity, inclusivity and belonging. Everyone is looking for safe spaces where they are free from bias. For modern professionals, an inclusive workplace is a top priority.
Organizations should communicate to prospective candidates that they champion diversity and aim their hiring efforts to create and grow a workforce that celebrates peoples’ backgrounds. Diversity must be emphasized, even at the start of the hiring process, to attract candidates looking for career opportunities in an inclusive workplace.
We’ve discussed before why a potential employee would say no to a job offer. For this post, let’s talk about why organizations need to practice inclusive recruiting so that each prospective candidate will not only say yes to the job offer, but will also stay for a long time.
What Does Inclusive Hiring Say About an Organization?
Being an employer that accepts and supports professionals with different backgrounds has become the hallmark of popular organizations to work for. When candidates become aware of your diversity and inclusion efforts, they’ll flock to you for the following reasons:
1. Diversity means the organization advocates for a better society.
Many organizations are making sure they are not at the other end of the public’s pointed fingers. Avoid issues that stem from poor inclusion efforts for good business optics. The best way to protect your organizations image is to do good and advocate for diversity and inclusion in your efforts. Take Apple, for example. They’ve taken steps to celebrate the diverse talent within their workforce by increasing their hires of women globally. They have also included more people of color and members of under-represented communities in the US.
2. The organization can attract the best talent out there.
According to Monster, 62 percent of employees won’t accept offers from organizations that don’t practice diversity and inclusion. With the rising support for women’s rights and people of color, the global community has become more aware of under-represented groups. This is where top candidates thrive, since they have the freedom to be themselves and are supported for it. They’ll stay with an employer who promotes and protects this freedom. Potential hires want to feel included, so they’ll apply in droves.
3. Inclusive hiring leads to happy employees.
There are a lot of attributes when it comes to employee satisfaction, and diversity hits all of those points. Anyone can speak their mind, no one is afraid to be judged, they can express their authentic selves freely, and the list goes on. A safe space is one where anyone would like to be in, and for a long time. Create this safe space through inclusive hiring.
What Inclusive Hiring Practices Should Companies Integrate into Their Recruitment Efforts?
At the start of an encounter with a potential employee, it’s important that they feel welcome. The organization’s openness to diversity should be well-communicated up front. This begins from the time an applicant reads the job description all the way to the good news that they’ve been accepted. To foster diverse talent, it should be clear and evident within the hiring process that your organization is a safe and welcoming space. Your human resources or recruitment team must review the recruiting process, to see if these inclusive hiring considerations are well-covered:
Use inclusive language. Whether it’s the interview process or announcement of vacancies on job boards, be careful with how you talk to potential candidates. To start you off on the right foot when it comes to diversity recruiting, get rid of gender bias. Inclusive language doesn’t only stop at eradicating masculine and feminine pronouns or describing positions as “chairperson” or “crew member.” Coded language is phrasing that may appear harmless and neutral but is actually alluding to implicit bias connected to gender, cultural background, and so on. For example, the phrase “rockstar” employee could have a masculine undertone and indicating “Christmas holiday time-off” may not sit well with non-Christian applicants.
Since getting used to not using coded language may take a while, taking small steps at a time will lead your recruitment team to be more aware when their language is swaying towards bias with a demographic. Soon, your job postings and interviews will be part of your efforts as an inclusive employer.
Train your team to let go of biases. Did you know that there are job applicants who purposely remove any sign of race or ethnicity in their resumes, out of fear that anything that shows they’re not “of white descent” might cut them off from career opportunities? A Harvard Business School study supports this observation. Two sets of the same resumes were sent to employers, one with no changes, and the other with “whitened” content editing. Unedited resumes from Black applicants got calls from only 10 percent of submissions, but the edited ones received 25 percent. As for Asians, only 11.5 percent of unedited resumes received calls. “Whitened” resumes got 21 percent of calls.
Inclusive hiring is not limited to prompts that a potential candidate may see or hear. Diversity recruiting is also about being conscious of one’s biases and letting them go. Consider having a conversation with your recruitment team to discuss this issue head on. As one team, recognize that biases exist and create a collective effort to remind everyone of the company’s commitment to inclusive hiring. Also, recruiters must take their time in evaluating submitted credentials. They need to ensure the applicant’s gender or cultural background will not influence the assessment of their professional experiences or the breadth of their education.
Keep tabs on your own company’s diverse workforce. What’s the best way to show your organization practices inclusive hiring? Look inward. Job seekers are keen at checking data that prove a company is really inclusive and if their actual workforce makeup reveals a diverse workforce. Many organizations have been publishing their inclusion and diversity demographics on their websites to prove that they are walking the talk when it comes to diversity.
A clear way to track the diversity makeup of your organization is by filing the EE01 report, especially if your organization is required to do so according to set guidelines. This annual report allows to you review how you are doing when it comes to inclusive hiring. The numbers this report generates can be used in job posts, websites, or social media accounts. You can also mention this in your conversations with applicants interested to know how diverse your workforce is.
ACS PROFESSIONAL STAFFING PRACTICES INCLUSIVE HIRING.
As an Equal Opportunity Employer, ACS Professional Staffing is committed to hiring diverse candidates and helping them feel safe to be the best in their own careers. Our high-touch service helps them feel taken care of, which is key in making sure that every employee is seen, heard, and guided toward success. At ACS Professional Staffing, we stay true to our people-centric approach, which is why we are the top choice for excellence in recruitment and in advocating for inclusivity and diversity.
Let’s work together to make the professional world as inclusive as it can be, one employee at a time. Contact ACS Professional Staffing now.