2020 could be immortalized as the year of a global pandemic, but more importantly, it is the year when diversity and inclusion are seen as a necessity instead of just fulfilling certain organizational criteria.
The past few months have brought to the fore the social injustice black people face every day. This singular event sparked a global response where the way we see, treat and behave towards underrepresented groups (or URGs) in our daily lives, especially in the workplace, has come under scrutiny. meticulous examination.
As CEOs and leaders of big brands and organizations strive to demonstrate how truly inclusive their organizations are, we need to focus on the start-up phase where most companies are already failing at D&I driven recruiting.
The hidden problem of out-of-the-box hiring
As humans, we are conditioned to seek out people who look like us, look like us and behave like us. It’s a form of pack mentality where we connect better with individuals who are like us. This urge usually manifests itself in the form of “unconscious bias”, where you discriminate against someone because of their differences with us without knowing it.
When we talk about hiring for diversity, recruiters like to portray or rather believe that every possible candidate is treated equally. But here’s the problem: You’re probably not as inclusive in your hiring efforts as you might think.
Even the simple effort of posting a seemingly innocuous job description could ultimately hamper your diversity efforts. Some companies think that hiring for diversity is as easy as posting those job descriptions to a larger talent pool and don’t anticipate the curve that goes with it.
Remember the question of connecting with like-minded people we talked about earlier? This same principle applies to the candidate who also reads the job description.
The language, pronouns, and tone used in the job description can have a significant impact on whether the diverse candidate you are targeting is intrigued, correlated, and eventually applies for the job.
To put it in a simpler perspective, it’s not about casting a wider net while focusing your efforts on hiring a diverse workforce. This involves throwing several small nets targeted at specific groups of people.
How data drives better D&I hiring
Data is undoubtedly the digital currency for any organization in today’s scenario. Collecting and analyzing the right set of data can reveal fundamental patterns, trends, and outliers that impact day-to-day business processes.
When it comes to D&I-based recruiting, companies tend to follow what others are doing instead of harnessing the power of data. Doing things the same way will only give poor results because no two organizations are the same and therefore also require different solutions.
Companies must redesign their D&I strategy according to their needs and adopt a systematic approach to drive the necessary changes. Without a doubt, data plays a vital role in ensuring that your hiring process remains fair, equitable, and unbiased.
The most effective way to do this is to get direct feedback not only from the intended audience, but also from your employees. Minority employees in your own organization will often be able to highlight issues and barriers to entry with your D&I-based hiring process that they have faced or noticed.
Find the right talent driver
Regardless of the candidates, it is essential to understand which organizational factors will be critical in attracting the right candidates.
The drivers of talent to your organization can vary widely depending on the individual. Multiple factors such as educational background, earning potential, living conditions and even corporate culture can influence a candidate’s decision to join an organization.
A person from a privileged background would have the freedom to occupy a position favoring innovation. In contrast, it is often found among under-represented minority groups that a high income factor or professional development might be a more important motivator.
Data can be central to discovering the difference in the motivators that various groups of people are looking for. You may find it beneficial to customize the delivery methods and messages that a diverse group of candidates receives from your organization. Inviting job seekers to take a survey is a cost-effective option for collecting relevant feedback, but will limit the data of people who have not applied. A possible but more expensive way to address this problem could be to combine some form of incentive with a survey targeting the pool of applicants you are considering.
Discover the demographic constraints
A major mistake that organizations could make in their D&I-based recruiting process is not to consider the existence of subgroups. Even among minority groups, certain sub-demographics are often overlooked in D&I hiring strategies.
For example, organizations tend to lump all women into one demographic group without considering the implications of black, Latin, or Asian women. An organization can present X percentage of female employees on paper, but it quickly becomes apparent that the actual percentage of diversity is relatively low. Even in companies with a larger workforce, like Google, only 0.5% are black women.
For hiring for specific purposes, using the right data tools and techniques can help you reach beyond the larger demographic and model your hiring efforts towards minority subgroups as well. An effective way to track this data is to:
- Introduce demographics of specific subgroups into your hiring plan
- Calculation of the percentage of sub-demographics that respond to a job offer
- Calculation of the ratio of the demographic subgroup to the main demographic group applying for a position
- Calculation of the ratio of sub-demographic that is selected over the total number of applicants
Limited data only gives you a sample of how your diverse target audience is feeling. Accumulating such data sets is more crucial to your future D&I plan than your current plan. With broader and varied data analysis, you can work on a hiring plan that makes data-driven decisions instead of arbitrary decisions.
Follow the sources
Another convenience that the data brings is tracking the sources of job seekers, whether it be where they saw the job posting, the medium they applied through, or the person who referred them to your organization.
This data presents you with a clearer picture of your visibility in the market and the best ways and tactics to use while targeting your target audience. This will allow you to determine the sources that attract a higher rate of diverse applicants and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your candidate reach strategy.
Analyze your new hiring data
Over time, as you accumulate a significant amount of data, you will be better equipped to understand the unconscious biases that influence your hiring decisions. Like it or not, a considerable part of your recruiting process is governed by people and is therefore open to discriminatory practices. Interestingly, even automation is not free from discrimination, as the Amazon hiring fiasco posted where the AI recruiting tool was ‘taught’ by discriminatory data sets against bias against female candidates. Thus, the analysis of your hiring data and the identification of problematic areas make it increasingly crucial in the recruitment of diversity.
It is often difficult to assess the effectiveness of your D&I recruitment process without the input of affected parties. Whether it’s your own model for evaluating the data collected or in the form of onboarding feedback, data after a diverse hire arrives in the organization is as critical as data analysis. before hiring.
Take, for example, an organization that has an admirable diversity hiring percentage. But do these recruitments from diversity leave the organization for less than a year? Do new recruits rarely come up with their own ideas? Do they have a high absenteeism rate?
While the above issues may not be viewed as a diversity hiring issue per se, low levels of engagement can hurt employee advocacy, brand value, and ultimately. counts, in the number of diverse candidates who choose to apply for a position.
All useful employee survey These tools will help you determine the level of employee engagement in your organization and the factors that negatively affect job satisfaction. Additionally, most survey tools give you the ability to analyze demographic engagement score.
Using such data tools to identify reasons for turnover can be monumental in designing an inclusive system. employee experience which, in turn, portrays your organization as being diversity-friendly.
In summary
The right data at the right time can help you design the ideal D&I recruiting strategy for your organization. It is a consistent accumulation, analysis and application that will help you eliminate ineffective measures and optimize effective measures.
About the Author
Anjan pathak is the co-founder and CTO of Observation circle, a cloud-based employee engagement platform, and Advantageous cut, an all-in-one corporate wellness platform. He is passionate about HR technology, very passionate about the well-being of employees and actively participates in the growth of the corporate culture. He is an avid reader and likes to be up to date on the latest Human Resources know-how.
Interesting related article: “Why Data Intelligence is the Future”