​Diversity hiring isn’t a passing fad — it’s a smarter way to do business in the global market. A diversified workforce is more than just an item to be checked off from your employer branding list — it is a real competitive advantage.

Hiring managers and senior decision-makers are investing time and budget into ensuring they can attract and retain staff that can positively contribute to business success.

There’s more to diversity than making your company more appealing to work for; bringing in people from different genders or socioeconomic backgrounds could mean a different appetite for risk, for example; diverse employees might be better able to relate and retain a wide range of diverse customers….or teams with different educational tracks might come up with more innovative solutions to business problems!

Talent Acquisition teams across the globe are putting serious resources into optimizing their diversity hiring strategy and setting metrics around diversity hiring of the order of 20-40% of their total hiring. However, all of this makes sense only if you are sure that you are set up to measure the right metrics.

Many companies are using various tools and processes to help decrease built-in bias. Automated screening processes are helping with this in setting up workflows that only look at qualifications and achievement, and mask irrelevant data like age, gender, or nationality.

Accessible platforms for skill development, which enable entry/re-entry into the workforce, combined with counselling and mentoring programs, are becoming critical for women looking for avenues to bridge the gap in their employability. 

Given your team understands your intended diversity and inclusion initiatives, there are many ideas to improve gender diversity in the workplace.

Do you have an inclusive workplace?

Before attempting to hire for gender diversity, look within and evaluate your company culture. Is your company a good place to work, regardless of gender? Consult your employees to learn how you can build a more inclusive workplace, and put in the work to continually improve your company culture. An inclusive culture will help build your employer brand, so you can attract and retain a diverse workforce.

Write better job descriptions

Improve gender diversity in the workplace by removing gender biases from your job descriptions—before you even speak with a candidate. Data states that men will apply if they are 60 percent qualified, whereas women will only apply when they are 100 percent qualified. Rather than writing job descriptions with a list of qualifications, craft performance-based job descriptions which focus on what the person hired would be responsible for accomplishing.

Create a diverse pipeline

Many sourcing platforms and diversity hiring sites have options to source women candidates through social media accelerators, Alumni and returnee programs. Go that extra mile and start building your pipeline proactively rather than waiting for the talent to come to you—even if it requires a little creative thinking and extra legwork.

Training on unconscious bias

Unconscious biases exist in all of us, and recognizing them is the first step toward overcoming them in the hiring process. To overcome hiring biases, interview teams should learn to recognize them, and fairly evaluate candidates on a predetermined set of criteria.

Create a diverse panel for interviewing

With a diverse interview panel, candidates from underrepresented groups will likely feel more comfortable, instead of feeling like the odd one out. In India of course it will be good to have atleast one woman employee as a part of the interview process.

There are several hands-on practices and approaches available to ensure that your organization can find and retain diverse talent. No system will be perfect; consistently prioritizing diversity is a dynamic process, so it is worth revisiting your methods and processes routinely.

This article was originally published here. 

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