Here’s the thing: a recent LinkedIn poll by Hung Lee of Recruiting Brainfood posed an intriguing question to recruiters – have they ever encountered a ‘no white men’ policy? The results are eye-opening:

In short: one in five respondents say they have received explicit instruction for a ‘no white men’ policy. Another one in five say they’ve been implicitly instructed to follow this kind of a policy.

When nearly 40% indicate explicit or implicit experience in being discouraged from hiring from a specific demographic group, that becomes a conversation we need to have. Obviously, it’s more nuanced than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

In the comments that followed, some did call it discrimination – and explicitly so:

“There are large corporations that are prohibiting white applicants from access to training or promotion, basically sanctioned discrimination. It has been ongoing for a long time. Definitely an issue.”

Others pointed to the good intentions in establishing balance in the hiring process – but called out the legal challenges:

“Yes, we do want to diversify the talent pipeline. No, we do not have a ‘no white men’ policy. But it is extremely hard to create opportunities for women in a male-dominated profession, especially because we operate in a male dominated industry. So how to communicate in a legal way ‘We want more female engineers cos we think it’s gonna be really good for the business and all.’ without being discriminative? ”

“How to communicate in a legal way ‘We want more female engineers cos we think it’s gonna be really good for the business and all.’ without being discriminative?”

Other commentators suggested that policies are not the way to ‘solve’ gender imbalance – instead, they noted the challenge of diversity hiring in specific sectors and industries:

“Positive discrimination is still discrimination. Just hire based on skills. Whether you’re male or female, should not matter. And it just happens so that men tend to like certain professions/sectors more than women and vice versa.”

Another noted that the existing imbalance in the talent market should be addressed at the grade school level, not in the hiring stages for a company. Ultimately, it’s about the long game and it’s not something employers can realistically solve:

“We’ve got to be realistic, you can’t strive for a 50:50 split for male and female engineers in your organisation until the number of engineers in the industry is evenly split. We need to take a medium-to-long term approach and encourage our female engineers and our engineers that are ‘non-white’ to go back to the schools they went to, not universities or colleges, but the schools they went to and talk about engineering as a career there. Until we have an equal amount applying to colleges and universities for these courses then the numbers will be always skewed towards the white male candidate.”

One commentator suggested focusing on fostering equal representation in the form of allyship – and having strategies in place to ensure that:

“There’s a difference between explicitly excluding groups versus making efforts to promote diversity. I have worked for a company that mandated a shortlist [that] had to have at least one ‘diverse’ candidate. Nobody was excluded, but extra efforts were made where necessary to ensure that the slate presented to the hiring manager had at least 1 qualified person who was from an under-represented group. This was only a part of the organisation’s drive to increase diversity, there was also focus on developing internal talent and succession planning, and leadership and HR focus on teams and managers that were not meeting the organisation’s own internal benchmarks for diversity.”

Ensuring a diverse range of candidates was also highlighted as an important strategy:

“I always recommend recruiting strategies that enforce diverse pools (beyond just race; inclusive of experience level/similar skillsets or industries/internal talent etc) before proceeding with final interviews. This intentionally creates space for a wealth of experiences and perspectives for the interviewers consider in making their decision, while also avoiding favoritism for one group or demographic over another.”

And finally, diversity is nuanced beyond gender and race:

“I’m a white male. I’m also a diverse candidate when it comes to several parameters (neurodiverse, bisexual and no longer living in the country I was born). I never say that to pick in a spot for other diverse candidates, because I’ve had it easy. But in the hope it makes people think differently about diversity, what makes us different and how we can talk about diversity.”

How do you establish diversity, then?

So, when your organization emphasizes the importance of diversity and it falls on you as a recruiter to make a difference, what can you do? The many nuances and variations in hiring strategy already are a lot to unpack, and it gets more complex when diversity enters the picture.

Let’s agree on one thing from all the noise in LinkedIn: most do think that diversity is important. Not only is it a clear moral imperative, as 50.6% of respondents in a recent Workable survey say, there’s also a clear business case for diversity, particularly in leadership according to McKinsey.

But, obviously, an up-front ‘no white men’ policy isn’t going to cut it morally or legally. That beign said, you can still progress with good intentions and results if you establish some clear guardrails. Let’s look at a few of those now.

What you CAN do as a recruiter:

Embrace diversity: Prioritize hiring from various backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives without sidelining any group. Focus on the actual diversification – not on restrictions.

Blind or anonymized screening: More firms are moving towards this model, where personal identifiers are removed to combat unconscious bias. The Canadian government, for instance, saw a measurable increase in screen-in rates for minorities via an anonymized recruitment pilot project.

Continuous learning: Just as the workplace evolves, so must our knowledge. This means L&D for inclusive leadership, unconscious bias trainings, and other initiatives designed to establish a more level playing field.

What you CAN’T do as a recruiter:

No blanket exclusions: It’s unlawful to exclude a group based on race, gender, religion, etc. EEOC regulations are no joke.

No strict quotas: While targets can guide, hiring solely to fill a quota can be both ethically and legally problematic.

No assumptions: Every candidate is unique. Making assumptions based on background or identity is counterproductive.

We’re all in the game together

Championing diversity does have a consensus across the board – 93% of respondents say DEI is important to them, according to the above-mentioned Workable survey.

But Hung Lee’s poll shows us the complex quagmire we’re working through right now. While diversity hiring is not necessarily a new concept, it’s not matured to the point where we can all agree on best practices (yet).

One thing’s pretty clear, though – no group can be sidelined, regardless of whether they’re overrepresented or not. It’s a mess you don’t want to get yourself into.

Instead, focus on the big-picture goal – and establish a recruitment process that’s fair, transparent, and beneficial for all involved.

The post ‘No white men’ policy: what you can & can’t do in diversity hiring appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

However, the invention of Barbie was a game changer – literally.

Barbie was introduced by Mattel, Inc. at the American International Toy Fair in New York back in 1959. She was created by Ruth Handler and named after her daughter, Barbara. Ruth aimed to create a doll that would inspire children to “dream dreams of the future.”

Throughout the years, this famous doll has evolved in various ways, surpassing the notion of just being a beautiful girl. Now, Barbie can teach us better hiring practices.

From controversial Barbie to a diversity icon

Over time, Barbie has faced a slew of negative criticisms, many centered around her representation of women and the potential influence on young girls.

Critics argue that early depiction of Barbie could perpetuate harmful beauty standards, potentially leading to negative body image and self-esteem issues.

Additionally, Barbie’s early roles and accessories, often centered around fashion, beauty, and domestic scenarios, were criticized for reinforcing traditional gender roles and limiting girls’ aspirations.

The lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the Barbie range, especially in the early years, also drew criticism for not providing inclusive representation.

All these negative judgement turned to valuable feedback for the company and over the years we saw Barbie better reflects our multifaceted society.

Barbie becomes workaholic

Barbie has worked hard, becoming the first astronaut to go into space before the first (hu)man landed on the moon. She took a huge interest in dinosaurs as a paleontologist before deciding to devote herself to science, becoming first a nurse and later a surgeon.

Barbie has already transformed from a housewife to a workaholic woman, reflecting the need for gender equality in the first two decades of her existence. Until today, she has followed almost 200 career paths.

It is not surprising that every aspect of Barbie has both inspired and been inspired by world culture.

If you’re still wondering how a popular toy relates to recruiting and human resources, doll yourself up and keep reading.

Drawing parallels between Barbie and Human Resources

From diversity and inclusion to adaptability and professional growth, Barbie can correlate with the modern workplace and provide insights to HR professionals for better hiring practices. The hit movie itself has led to changes in perspectives, with a ResumeBuilder.com study finding that three out of four self-declared conservative men say the movie has improved their view of women in leadership positions, and that two out of three respondents say it’s made them more aware of patriarchy in the workplace.

There’s many more takeaways from the Barbie phenomenon, especially for hiring teams. Let’s delve into how Barbie can teach us better hiring practices:

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Over the years, Barbie has evolved to represent various ethnicities, body types, and professions.

From different ethnicities such as African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern to a range of body types including petite, curvy, athletic, and those using wheelchairs, the spectrum of representation has broadened.

This mirrors the importance of DEI in the workplace, emphasizing that talent comes in all forms.

No matter the ethnicity, religion, appearance, or gender, the best employee for your company could be waiting for you to give them a chance.

Understanding the importance of a diverse workforce means that you pay attention to innovative ideas and growth.

Adaptability

Just as Barbie has taken on numerous roles from astronaut to teacher to president, HR professionals must be adaptable, recognizing the multifaceted nature of potential candidates and the various skills they bring.:

Related: Famous career transitions: 6 real-life lessons for employers

Every candidate should be treated as a unique personality, bringing their soft and hard skills to meet the expectations of the job position, and sometimes combining their different skills in unexpected ways can truly assist in the company’s growth.

Continuous evolution

Barbie’s continuous reinvention over the decades teaches us the importance of staying updated with current trends and needs. Similarly, HR and recruiting strategies must evolve to stay relevant in a changing job market.

Who knows? We may soon see an AI Barbie offering voice recognition features and augmented learning capabilities, making the game personalized for each kid.

In the HR world, following workplace trends can enhance talent acquisition, which will boost your company’s efforts in evolution.

Branding

Barbie is not just a doll; she’s a successful brand. In recruiting, employer branding is crucial. How a company presents itself can determine the kind of talent it attracts.

Easy. You don’t need a $150-million marketing budget like Barbie’s movie to build your employer branding. You can do it with less by utilizing affordable tools and composing a structured strategy.

Skill development

With Barbie’s myriad of professions, there’s an emphasis on continuous learning and skill development. In recruiting, it’s essential to not just look at where a candidate is now, but their potential and willingness to grow.

Be sure to explore this potential from the screening interviews.

Cultural impact

Barbie has, for better or worse, influenced societal norms and expectations. HR professionals must recognize the cultural impact of their hiring practices and strive for practices that promote positive societal change.

Also, the culture of a brand can determine the hiring process and the way that employees are working together. Being clear about your vision and your goals can help you attract people that could be a culture fit to your company.

Although lately, we have been seeing a growing tendency to escape from the narrow confines of culture fit and embrace the concept of culture add.

Generation gap

This is a very common topic of discussion inside the HR circles. We will just say this. In Mattel there are currently four solid generations of employees working on making Barbie relatable to everyone.

Ageism can become a daunting situation within a company, but instead of focusing on the differences between generations, HR professionals can focus on similarities and specific skills that each generation can bring. Furthermore, providing proper training and communication, this gap can be narrowed significantly.

Feedback makes everyone better – even Barbie

Constructive feedback and a healthy competition could lead to the generation of new ideas. It can also help a company to have better control of the workflows and more satisfied employees. Barbie’s example can teach us once again better hiring practices and offer tips for better employee engagement.

HR professionals can ask for feedback after candidate interviews and run regular employee engagement surveys to gain valuable insights from their existing personnel.

Barbie came with the message that if you follow her suit you can be perfect.

Later, this message became that everyone is perfect as they are.

The movie set it right for everyone: we often underestimate our potential and self-worth, and we become obsessed with trying to be perfect.

Workplaces don’t need perfectionism. They need adaptability, potential, and different voices to reach greater heights and make an impact.

The post What Barbie can teach you about better hiring practices appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Some big businesses – including American Airlines, Apple, Bayer, Ikea, Paramount, Starbucks, and Hershey – submitted an Amicus Curiae brief to the court saying that prohibiting universities from running their affirmative action programs would negatively affect businesses. These businesses (called Amici in legal terminology) state:

“An essential part of the diversity Amici seeks is racial and ethnic diversity. Given these priorities, Amici have a significant interest in how universities consider and admit applicants: they rely on the nation’s schools to educate and train their future workers.”

Because the court rule against the universities (specifically Harvard and University of North Carolina, but applicable to all universities that accept federal funding), are these businesses correct that this will have a negative impact on their companies? If we assume that the Amici are correct, here’s what businesses must do to overcome this problem and keep increasing their diversity.

Expand your entry-level recruiting

While people panicked about the effect this would have on Black students, they ignored a reality of American higher education: Everyone with a high school diploma can attend college somewhere. There are many schools with open admissions policies. Some schools will even help you get your GED or high school diploma so that you can attend college.

Another truth is that anyone admitted to Harvard or UNC, even with a boost from affirmative action, could gain entrance into another good school. Very few students get into Harvard, regardless of race or background. Every single one that has could easily excel at another school.

In other words: companies that focus their recruiting only on the top schools limit who can get a job. Rather than relying on schools to seek out diverse students, businesses can recruit diverse candidates at more schools.

Because you can do recruiting virtually, you don’t have to increase your college job fair costs by sending recruiters to every school you want to consider. Arrange video conferences and fly in top candidates.

Make your business a place people want to work

You will never increase your diversity if you strictly rely on recruiting people from universities. Getting people in the door is only a temporary fix if you don’t create an environment where everyone feels welcome.

A Workable survey found that businesses do focus on demographic diversity but need action plans once they get people onboard. What are you doing to make employees of all races and backgrounds feel equal and included?

Do you focus on building strong teams, or do you focus on pointing out differences? A recent episode of Freakonomics looked at whale hunting in the 19th century. Michele Baggio, an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Connecticut, looked at whaling ships to study crew diversity’s impact on performance.

Baggio found something interesting that businesses can learn from today: the U shape involved in diversity. He said:

“We find that the relationship between racial diversity and performance measured by revenue has a U-shape. So that means that very homogeneous teams, they perform well. The revenue is high. As diversity increases, the revenue decreases, so there’s a cost to diversity until it’s just a minimum. And then a higher level of diversity, the performance increases again, and basically overweights the initial costs.”

In other words, when you have a group of similar people, adding a few outsiders makes the situation worse. But when you have a genuinely diverse crew, they learn to work together and bring an increase in strength.

As long as you focus only on getting a few people in the door rather than building an environment where people can use their strengths, you won’t be a great organization for all people.

Provide opportunities at the high school level

If it’s important to you to hire candidates from certain high-ranking schools, then help high school students achieve the grades, test scores, and experience burdens necessary for admittance. Instead of waiting for universities to find and train diverse students, find them yourselves.

Offer summer internships to low-income students – regardless of race – who wouldn’t necessarily have the parental relationships to get such opportunities. Provide donations to struggling schools for things like AP classes that wouldn’t otherwise be available. Ask school districts what they need.

Is a college degree necessary for success?

Do the jobs you struggle to fill need college degrees? If yes, do they need to be from specific schools? Do they need to be recent? Can you look at people with some life experience instead? What about people with alternative forms of training and education?

College is valuable, but it’s not the only experience of value. And pay attention to people who perhaps didn’t have the opportunities to do unpaid internships because they had to keep working fast food to feed themselves and their families.

Evaluate what you need in a role before using a university degree as a proxy for capabilities. This is more difficult, but you’ll value looking beyond big-name schools if you value diversity.

Remember Title VII

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of race. This means you cannot hire someone because they are Black any more than you can hire someone because they are White. You can seek out people from a wide variety of backgrounds, make your application process easy for all to apply, and advertise jobs on niche job boards, but you have to hire the best candidate, regardless of race.

That’s been the case for many years, and this ruling doesn’t change that. It only changes your traditional pipeline, so expand that pipeline.

The post Affirmative action in hiring: challenges and solutions appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

As we strive to push the boundaries of innovation, it’s increasingly evident that diverse perspectives and inclusive environments are key drivers of creativity and progress.

This article delves into four insightful reports: Snap Inc. diversity annual report, Buildin’s state of DEI in Tech, Google diversity annual report, and VMware diversity, equity, and inclusion report.

Each provides a unique lens into the current state of DEI in tech, offering valuable insights into the triumphs, challenges, and future directions of DEI initiatives within the industry.

The importance of DEI in tech

DEI is not just a moral imperative; it’s a business one. Tech companies thrive on innovation, and diversity fuels this by bringing together individuals with different experiences, ideas, and perspectives.

A diverse workforce fosters creativity and innovation, leading to the development of more comprehensive and inclusive solutions.

Inclusive environments, where everyone feels valued and included, boost employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention.

Employees who feel included are more likely to be engaged, motivated, and committed to their organization. They’re also more likely to feel comfortable sharing their ideas and perspectives, further driving innovation.

Equity ensures fairness, which further enhances employee morale and commitment. When employees see that opportunities, resources, and rewards are distributed fairly, they’re more likely to feel satisfied, committed, and motivated to perform at their best.

Together, diversity, equity, and inclusion contribute to better decision-making, problem-solving, and ultimately, improved business performance.

Current state of DEI in tech

Despite the recognized importance of DEI, the tech industry faces significant challenges. The four reports highlight that while strides have been made, there’s still a long way to go.

For instance, Snap Inc. reports a modest increase in the representation of women in tech roles, while Google has seen a 30% increase in leadership representation of Black+, Latinx+, and Native American+ Googlers.

However, the 2023 State of DEI in Tech report reveals that 51% of tech professionals feel their company needs to improve its DEI efforts, indicating a gap between efforts and employee perceptions.

These statistics underscore the need for continuous improvement in DEI efforts. They also highlight the importance of aligning DEI initiatives with employee perceptions and experiences.

After all, the success of DEI initiatives ultimately depends on how well they resonate with employees and how effectively they address their needs and concerns.

DEI strategies in tech companies

Each company has implemented unique strategies to enhance DEI. Snap Inc.’s strategy revolves around three pillars: Inspiring Empathy, Redesigning Systems, and Driving Accountability.

These pillars reflect a comprehensive approach to DEI that addresses not only the representation of diverse groups but also the creation of an inclusive culture and the accountability of leaders and managers.

Google, on the other hand, focuses on building a representative workforce, centering inclusion in their products, and strengthening investments for educational, economic, and health equity.

This approach reflects Google’s commitment to integrating DEI into all aspects of its operations, from its workforce and products to its broader societal impact.

VMware emphasizes business-led DEI initiatives and provides resources and support for business leaders to implement them. This approach recognizes the crucial role of business leaders in driving DEI and provides them with the tools and resources they need to succeed.

Despite the different approaches, a common thread is the commitment to creating an inclusive culture and increasing representation.

All companies recognize that DEI is not just about numbers; it’s also about creating an environment where everyone feels valued, included, and able to contribute to their full potential.

Progress and challenges

Progress in DEI is evident but varies across companies. Google’s leadership representation of Black+, Latinx+, and Native American+ Googlers has increased by 30%, while Snap Inc. reports a 1.6 percentage point increase in the representation of women in tech.

However, challenges persist. Retention of underrepresented talent, unconscious bias, and the need for continuous improvement in DEI efforts are common themes across the reports.

These challenges underscore the complexity of DEI and the need for a multifaceted approach.

They also highlight the importance of continuous learning and adaptation. As companies implement DEI initiatives, they need to monitor their impact, learn from their successes and failures, and adapt their strategies accordingly.

Future of DEI in tech

Looking ahead, companies plan to increase their DEI investments. The Builtin’s State of DEI in Tech report indicates that companies plan to increase the budget for current DEI initiatives and implement new ones, such as flexible work opportunities and wage transparency.

Google plans to continue transparently sharing its data and progress, and to refine and strengthen its most impactful efforts.

These future directions reflect the ongoing commitment of tech companies to DEI and their willingness to innovate and adapt their DEI initiatives in response to changing needs and expectations. They also underscore the importance of transparency and accountability in driving DEI progress.

Role of leadership in promoting DEI

Leadership plays a crucial role in promoting DEI. Leaders set the tone for the organization, and their attitudes and behaviors can significantly influence the organizational culture and climate.

Leaders must demonstrate a commitment to DEI through their actions and decisions, and hold themselves and their teams accountable for progress.

They must also foster an environment where everyone feels valued and included, and where diverse perspectives are not only welcomed but also sought after.

The importance of data transparency

Transparency in sharing DEI data and progress is crucial for collective action and improvement. It allows companies to hold themselves accountable, identify areas for improvement, and measure the impact of their DEI initiatives.

All four companies emphasize the importance of data transparency in their DEI efforts.

The journey towards DEI is ongoing, but with commitment, transparency, and collective action, we can create a tech industry that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

The post DEI in tech: an opportunity for innovation, say giants appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The struggle of workers with disabilities

Even since the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), people with disabilities have struggled to get the accommodations they require to work and live independent lives. They face many types of barriers to work including, but not limited to:

• Conscious or subconscious/unconscious bias in the workplace
• Discrimination in hiring
• Fewer educational opportunities
• A support system which in many ways is designed to keep them in poverty
• Safe and accessible transportation for work and daily necessities

In the United States, 45% of the population have no access to public transportation systems. By and large, getting to work in America requires driving a car, often for long distances.

This especially presents a problem for those with disabilities.

How remote work boosts accessibility

One major reason remote work is so revolutionary is that it removes transportation, this major obstacle to work, from the equation completely.

Remote work allows workers, disabled and able-bodied, to work from an environment that they can carefully curate to best fit their personal needs and preferences.

For example:

• A diabetic person can administer insulin whenever necessary, rather than worrying about the optics of doing so at their desk or in a meeting.
• A person with ADD or another disability that causes difficulty focusing may work using a standing desk without disrupting others.
• People who are Deaf or hard of hearing may be able to use real-time closed captioning or other technologies during meetings rather than relying on an interpreter.

Though disabled employees are entitled to receive these accommodations whether they work on-site or at home, many people find that the skepticism, casual dismissal, and discrimination that can come with requesting accommodations deter them from doing so. Remote work isn’t a solution to this systemic ableism, which needs to be confronted head-on. But it is a helpful tool for disabled people, who deserve practical solutions in a timely manner.

The flexibility and benefits of remote work are also extended to able-bodied people as well as those limited in ability who for their own reasons prefer not to disclose their disability to their employer.

Remote work: the great accessibility equalizer

Part of the equalizing influence of remote or hybrid work is that it allows employees to make the choice to work where (office, home, cafe, library, community center, etc) and how (late at night, with music playing, with noise-canceling headphones, while exercising, while caring for a child or parent) they choose without justifying their situation and choices to their employer.

We spoke with Dr. Nika White, DEI consultant and expert, to better understand the unique advantages and challenges remote work presents for employees.

“If it’s done right, hybrid work can be a great tool in eliminating bias and discrimination in the workplace,” she tells us.

“It gives employers full liberty to recruit diverse talent from around the globe. Employees who prefer to work remotely due to cost of living, family obligations, or for their own psychological safety have the flexibility to do so.”

“If it’s done right, hybrid work can be a great tool in eliminating bias and discrimination in the workplace … It gives employers full liberty to recruit diverse talent from around the globe. Employees who prefer to work remotely due to cost of living, family obligations, or for their own psychological safety have the flexibility to do so.”

Challenges to remote work still exist

But just as remote work can make work more accessible, it also presents its own unique challenges. Many surveys, including Workable’s Great Discontent research in 2021, have shown that employees from underrepresented backgrounds also prefer remote work at greater rates. For instance, those identifying as a minority are more likely to value work flexibility than those who don’t identify as a minority (32.3% vs. 23.5%).

Research from McKinsey found that employees with disabilities were 11% more likely to prefer remote work than their able-bodied colleagues.

While this data is a great reason for employers to lean into remote and hybrid work options as a way to recruit more diversely, it presents challenges for women, people of color, those with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ community, and other underrepresented employees.

Remote work can exacerbate existing inequities in the workplace. Four out of 10 (42%) say they sometimes forget about remote workers when delegating work, a consequence of something called proximity bias. This presents a serious problem when considering the wide margins by which disabled and other underrepresented employees may choose to work remotely.

“To prevent bias against remote employees, I encourage managers to consider who on their team faces greater barriers to participation,” Dr. White says.

“If we don’t pay attention to the systemic prejudice employees face, we miss out on the opportunity to ensure that all employees have access to the support they need.”

“To prevent bias against remote employees, I encourage managers to consider who on their team faces greater barriers to participation.”

At the heart of this and every attempt to fight injustice where we find it must be empathy and compassion. It is devastating that disabled workers struggle to get the accommodations they need, especially when you consider that 26% of the population in the US have at least one disability, a number which is likely an undercount given the number of people recently disabled by Long COVID.

Disability intersects with every aspect of a person’s experience, be it race, gender, sexual orientation, or something else.

When our institutions fail to support the vulnerable and dismantle systemic bias, they hurt all of us. The success and stability of our future depends on full contributions from all people. Remote and hybrid work is one small but effective strategy employers can use to break down barriers to work for disabled employees.

The post Bridging barriers: how remote work enhances accessibility appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

This rate of joblessness among the formerly incarcerated can contribute to a downward spiral of mental health issues, drug use, and even often reincarceration. Unfortunately, it is a cycle that many formerly incarcerated individuals often cannot find their way out of.

But by including this marginalized group in the wider DEI discussion, a spotlight can be given to their unique needs, and a plan can be developed to address those needs and break the cycle many find themselves caught within.

Reintegration challenges for formerly incarcerated people

Upwards of 700,000 people are released from prison every year in the United States, with a staggering 9 million people released from jails after stints ranging from a few hours to over a year. Every one of these people is released needing direction, a plan, and some assistance to get back on the right track. Many of them face the same reintegration challenges and find themselves unsure of where to turn for the help they so desperately need.

Employment, as we saw from the statistics above, is one of the biggest barriers to post-incarceration success. In statistics provided by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, it was found that 93% of those who were able to secure employment following their time in prison were able to follow that up with a successful reintegration back into their communities and did not return to prison. From these numbers, it is clear that helping formerly incarcerated individuals find gainful, meaningful employment is a significant stepping stone to their ultimate success.

Education is another challenge for reintegration. For instance, an Omnibus Crime Bill passed in 1994 stripped away access to Pell Grants for incarcerated students. This access was not reinstated until 2021, leaving incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals 27 years behind others who had better access to higher education.

Furthermore, almost 40% of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals over the age of 18 have not graduated from high school. The problem comes down to accessibility and educating the public on what has been kept from these individuals, as well as what can be done to bridge the gap.

In addition to education and employment, housing is also a concern for formerly incarcerated individuals, as public housing authorities and managers are allowed to consider the criminal history of someone before agreeing to rent to that person. Although this allowance was meant to keep people safe from dangerous criminals, many public housing managers have adopted policies that apply blanket rules to tenant screening, leaving many formerly incarcerated individuals out in the cold literally and figuratively.

Other issues that contribute to formerly incarcerated individuals feeling discriminated against include the stripping of voting rights and the social and community stigma attached to having served time. All of these factors take an immense toll on the mental health and wellness of these individuals, who frequently begin to lose hope for their future after facing such inequality.

The impact of incarceration on mental health

Incarceration and the hardships experienced post-incarceration can lead to mental health concerns or exacerbate concerns that were already present. Because incarcerated individuals are removed from society and their families — and forced to live within a formed community built around corrections and punitive measures — they can often experience depression, anxiety, and hopelessness.

Common occurrences within prisons, such as periods of solitary confinement, overcrowding, violence, and squalid living conditions, can make these mental health issues far worse. Were that not enough, they also tend to follow formerly incarcerated individuals as they leave prison behind and attempt to start a new life on the other side.

Experts have likened the mental health issues experienced by formerly incarcerated individuals to PTSD, dubbing it “Post Incarceration Syndrome”. A keen understanding and education on these issues unique to previously incarcerated individuals is integral to changing the trajectory for many of these people, as they often require mental health resources fashioned around their particular needs and experiences.

Advocacy and inclusion

To change the way formerly incarcerated individuals experience life beyond prison, there must be community-based support for their needs. DEI initiatives need to be expanded to include this community, and blanket approaches to housing and employment policy need to be changed to account for personalization and individualized nuance.

Communities and advocates should promote programs that help formerly incarcerated people ease back into society with job training, access to educational opportunities, and resources to find available, affordable, and safe housing. Much of the mental health and wellness concerns with formerly incarcerated individuals come hand-in-hand with the uncertainty of securing the basics of living within a community, including food, shelter, and employment prospects.

There is absolutely a clear cycle that can pull formerly incarcerated individuals down just as they attempt to rebuild their lives. One wrong turn or missed opportunity begets another, until many begin to experience the serious mental health issues that plague this marginalized group or end up reoffending.

More education and advocacy is needed to shine a light on the particular needs of formerly incarcerated people. Through these avenues of better information and opportunities, more people can live full lives post-incarceration and turn the tides on instances of mental health issues, substance abuse, and reincarceration.

Trent Griffin-Braaf is the CEO & Founder of Tech Valley Shuttle and GB Logistics. His mission is to combat poverty through transportation solutions and employee empowerment. As a former incarcerated person, he is leading the way for other employers to learn how to become an employer of choice for formerly incarcerated persons, single parents, and veterans.

The post DEI for formerly incarcerated people: reintegration & wellbeing appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

While these commitments are encouraging, translating them into effective action is another thing altogether. Even those who see DEI as the future of work often find it challenging to truly integrate DEI into their operations.

One effective way to ensure that DEI is integrated within your organization is to consider it part of your business systems optimization efforts. DEI has been shown to accomplish many of the same goals that businesses seek through system optimization, so bringing the two together can create a synergy that further drives your business’s effectiveness.

Audit operational processes as part of your business analysis

The first step in my framework to optimize your operational systems is to establish a solid DEI foundation. It’s important for leadership to be clear about the company’s vision for DEI and understand how it aligns with the overarching company mission. The DEI foundation will serve as a north star to guide all future DEI efforts and goal development.

Once you’re clear on that north star vision, the next step is conducting a holistic systems audit. To bridge the gap between DEI and systems optimization, leadership should review each step within the organization’s key operational procedures and processes across all departments with a lens of equity, accessibility, and intersectionality.

This involves analyzing key operational processes, such as information management, human resources, and quality management, and also reviewing qualitative data, like exit interviews and survey results, to get a full picture of the experiences of all major stakeholders.

By identifying and addressing gaps, your organization can ensure every process and policy is optimized to meet the diverse needs of all employees. This approach integrates aspects of DEI into a company’s operations, streamlines business systems, and promotes inclusive growth and sustainable success.

As companies audit their systems and processes to thoroughly integrate DEI, they often overlook the role of their communications department. It’s crucial to ensure that the processes within your communications department are transparent and clear.

They should reflect a diverse representation of your company’s workforce and customers, use inclusive language consistently, and align with your company’s DEI vision and goals.

Other factors that should be noted when auditing communications include:

• Accessibility: Ensure your communications channels are accessible for everyone, including those who require additional accommodations, such as individuals who are neurodiverse or have hearing or visual impairments.
• Cultural sensitivity: Ensure your communications practices promote a culture of understanding and respect for diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, practices, and preferences to foster inclusion and mitigate biases. A good way to achieve this is by incorporating different cultural and ethnic perspectives in your internal and external messaging. It’s important that the language and imagery used respect and include diverse cultural contexts.
• Gender inclusivity: It’s important to consider diverse gender identities and expressions not only in communication practices, but also in efforts both internally and externally. This could involve using gender-neutral language and encouraging the use of pronouns in communications, coupled with educating others on the importance of doing so.

Include DEI in organizational goals and metrics

Goal setting and strategic planning is a key driver of business optimization. As you define the goals for your company, it’s important to use the information and data you collected and assessed during your audit, to develop DEI-related goals and metrics that will fill those gaps.

Studies show that racially and ethnically diverse organizations outperform those who fail to establish diversity by 36%, and companies in the top quartile for gender diversity at the executive level are 21% more likely to generate higher profits, meaning companies can enhance performance by committing to goals that increase diversity. This can include goals that seek more diverse hiring and recruitment practices, as well as promoting diversity in leadership positions.

Statistics from McKinsey also show that organizations with a commitment to DEI have higher levels of employee engagement, which in turn leads to better employee retention.

Thus, companies struggling to improve their retention can do so by setting goals for increasing equity and inclusivity in the workplace. Establishing employee resource groups and ensuring equity in compensation and promotion are ways to drive improvement in those areas.

Leverage DEI effective change management

Optimizing systems and integrating DEI into your operational systems means you’ll have to introduce some changes. To help all stakeholders navigate change effectively, it’s important to use one of the many change management models to guide your efforts.

Managing change is a process that combines several skills we’ve mentioned earlier in this article, like communication, problem-solving, and conflict resolution (in other words, removing barriers), and requires the involvement of all of the company’s major stakeholders.

Before starting the processes mentioned above, the leadership team must be comfortable with change and confident in making difficult decisions. This could include things like parting ways with stakeholders who no longer align with the direction the company is going.

Middle managers should be ready to handle pushback from their direct reports and team members while also managing their own responses to the changes. It’s important for the leadership team, including managers, to maintain open lines of communication, promote accountability for themselves and others, and be transparent.

This ensures that all stakeholders are informed of the changes ahead and have the opportunity to gain clarity if needed.

Employees should be given enough time to mentally adjust to the changes, and be open and compliant with new policies and procedures.

Finally, when it comes to navigating change, it’s important to include diverse perspectives from all levels of the organization in the decision-making process. This inclusive approach fosters commitment and investment from all stakeholders, and allows for a smoother integration of DEI into your company’s systems.

Allow DEI to be the channel for continuous improvement

Systems optimization is an ongoing process that involves gathering and assessing data, evaluating progress, and considering relevant feedback from both internal and external stakeholders.

Gathering insights from all stakeholders, provides richer data, and will paint a comprehensive picture of how well the company is meeting its goals or if there are areas of opportunities.

The most effective business systems optimization techniques will be those that consider the entire organization. By allowing DEI strategies to inform systems optimization, your organization can ensure a comprehensive approach that results in optimal results.

Dr. Sam Rae, EdD, MPH, is a DEI Strategist and Systems Analyst with over a decade of experience and the Founder and CEO of DSRD Consulting. She is also the founder of DEI Offload, an app developed to bolster mental health and foster community within the DEI industry. 

The post Bridge the gap between DEI and business systems optimization appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The importance of DEI is observed not only by employers but also by employees. A recent study showed that 72% of workers believe that DEI-related policies and resources have had a positive impact on their workplace.

Diverse workplaces can drive innovation and significantly enhance business performance.

Understanding the importance of a diverse workforce

Verna Myers, a leading voice on diversity and inclusion, once said, “Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance”. The crux of the matter is this: diversity isn’t just about having different types of people; it’s about leveraging those differences to create a better, more innovative workplace.

When diverse perspectives are valued and included, problem-solving becomes multidimensional, leading to robust and innovative solutions.

Related: Diversity in the workplace: how to use Workable to boost D&I

The three key steps to recruiting for diversity

Diversity, equity and inclusion play a major role in your organization’s growth. The best strategy to recruit diverse candidates begins with a great job description, followed by unbiased sourcing practices, and ends with an objective evaluation of potential candidates.

Let’s delve into these three key steps:

Creating an inclusive job description

It all begins with the job brief. Creating an inclusive job description is the first crucial step to attracting diverse talent. Textio’s research showed that job postings that used gender-neutral language filled 14% faster than those that didn’t. It’s important to carefully consider the words you use.

Language that is perceived as aggressive or overly competitive may dissuade some female applicants. An effective job description should be welcoming to all, regardless of gender, race, or background.

Sourcing diversely

When it comes to sourcing candidates, diversification and planning are essential.

The CEO of Society for Human Resource Management, Johnny C. Taylor Jr, stated in an interview, “All of the progress that people are hopeful about will somehow not work out because you didn’t put the right people and the right strategy in place.” By saying this, he indicates the need for a well-structured workforce strategy and not just making diverse hires without believing in it.

Before sourcing, you need to be clear about your hiring strategy.

Objective evaluation

Structured interviews and standardized assessment techniques can help limit unconscious bias. As noted by Harvard Business Review, an unstructured interview can lead to snap judgments, confirmation bias, and potentially, discrimination. By implementing structured interviews, the hiring process becomes more objective and gives every candidate an equal opportunity.

Eliminate bias using applicant tracking systems (ATS)

A well-implemented ATS can be an instrumental tool in recruiting diverse candidates. ATSs can help eliminate human bias by anonymizing applications, screening resumes based on predetermined criteria, and offering data-driven insights for recruitment decisions.

Related: Unconscious bias in recruitment: How can you remove it?

Josh Bersin, a global industry analyst, came up with this output from his research: “Virtual hiring tools, automation, talent intelligence platforms, and even AI and chatbots do drive key metrics like your ability to attract and hire great candidates or maintain a quality talent pipeline.”

Requesting diverse candidates: the right approach

Asking for diversity can be a sensitive issue. However, with the right approach, you can actively seek diverse applicants without crossing ethical or legal lines.

According to the EEOC, employers can encourage individuals from certain groups that are underrepresented in a job category to apply, as long as all individuals are considered equally regardless of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Interviewing diverse candidates

Reducing unconscious bias in interviews is key to a fair recruitment process. To ensure your interviews are inclusive, it’s essential to ask all candidates the same questions and rate their answers on a standardized scale.

Training interviewers on diversity and bias can also help limit their influence on the hiring process.

In conclusion, recruiting a diverse workforce goes beyond merely filling a quota. It’s about fostering an environment where different perspectives are not just included but valued. As HR professionals, we need to stay committed to fostering diversity and inclusion in the recruitment process and beyond.

The post How to recruit diverse candidates in three steps appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Which bears the question: how do businesses recognize Juneteenth in a way that shows substantive support both now and in the future? And more importantly – it’s not just for the actual holiday itelf. Consider this a primer on how to ensure a truly inclusive working environment throughout the year and to recognize the day going forward.

Let’s start from the beginning:

What is Juneteenth?

A portmanteau of the words “June” and “Nineteenth”, Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to announce the abolishment of slavery in the state under President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Also called Jubilee Day, Black Independence Day and Emancipation Day, Juneteenth is regularly celebrated across the United States but until Biden’s announcement was only a paid holiday in eight states including Massachusetts, New York, and Washington.

Five ways for employers to offer substantive support

While it’s important for employers to recognize this federal holiday, it’s also critical to strike the right tone considering the day’s historical significance and gravitas. Striking the right balance between celebratory and serious is essential.

With that in mind, here are five ways for employers to effectively show their support:

1. Offer paid time off

While employers aren’t obligated to offer time off — or holiday premium pay if staff work on federal holidays — this is the gold standard of support. If this isn’t logistically possible given the short time between the presidential announcement and the holiday itself, consider adding an extra day’s paid leave to staff accounts for them to use later this year, and subsequently recognizing Juneteenth as a paid holiday every year thereafter.

This is the approach taken by Workable. According to a recent email from CEO Nikos Moraitakis to US-based employees, “Workable will honor Juneteenth in 2021 by adding 1 bonus day to employee time-off balances. Going forward, Juneteenth will be observed following the federal holiday calendar.”

2. Create corporate events

Another way to show support for Juneteenth is by creating corporate events. These could include in-person information sessions or digital webcasts featuring guest speakers and experts who can help explain the history of Juneteenth, why it matters and how it relates to other U.S. holidays such as the Fourth of July. Here, your best bet is creating a healthy mix of fun events that celebrate the impact of Juneteenth while also paying respect to its more painful legacy.

3. Invest in worthy causes

Investment in causes such as fundraisers, charity drives or memorial races can also highlight the impact of Juneteenth and help corporate team-building efforts. If your company takes this approach, two components are critical: Finding the right cause and ensuring staff buy-in.

Before spending on any support effort, do your research so you understand the backstory of the event, are confident in where donations are going, and are clear about the expectations. Once you find the right cause, encourage staff participation by making it a full-day event during the regular work week that’s focused on both social recognition and socializing, rather than asking staff to show up on their own time.

4. Connect with black-owned businesses

Money talks. And with a host of black-owned businesses operating in every state and city across the United States, companies can show their support for Juneteenth by supporting black businesses owners that are instrumental in their communities.

While it doesn’t matter what product or service your company chooses to support, it does matter that this is an ongoing relationship — if you’re only supporting these businesses in June, expect some backlash.

5. Share staff stories

You can also recognize the federal holiday by highlighting the stories of your own employees and what Juneteenth means to them. Sharing these stories (with permission) across both internal networks and external social media accounts can serve to showcase your support — but must be done with caution. While posting on social media is quick, easy and offers substantive reach, this approach will appear self-serving unless it’s paired with more substantive support efforts.

Ready to show your support for Juneteenth? Just remember the three Rs — relevant, responsible and respectful — and you’re on the right track to highlight this federal holiday.

The post Juneteenth: 5 ways employers can recognize the holiday appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Here is what you can do to foster a truly inclusive workforce in your organization.

Making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive

Let’s start by looking at the numbers. A Human Rights Campaign survey found that:

• 46% of LGBTQ workers are closeted at work
• Half of non-LGBTQ employees reported there were no openly LGBTQ employees in their company
• 1 in 5 LGBTQ workers have been told or had coworkers imply that they should dress more feminine or masculine (compared with 1 in 24 non-LGBTQ workers)
• 54% of non-LGBTQ workers said that they would be very comfortable working with an LGBTQ coworker; of those who wouldn’t be very comfortable, a majority said it was because they “didn’t want to hear about their coworker’s sex life.”

LGBTQ employees are not comfortable everywhere they work, and there are some misperceptions out there. No one wants or needs to hear about their coworker’s sex life, which shouldn’t even be an issue on the table regardless of preference.

We share five tips on how to make your workplace more LGBTQ inclusive:

1. Speak with your pocketbook, not your rainbow logo

It’s easy to change a logo, put up a flag, or tweet about happy Pride Month. But LinkedIn took a step further and started paying the heads of their affinity groups $10,000 a year for the extra work. This demonstrates their desire to support all diversity groups, including LGBTQ groups.

Nothing says real support and inclusion like cash which recognizes the hard work these employee resource group leaders put in.

2. Be thoughtful about pronouns

This is a hot button issue at work, and you need to tread carefully. For example, look at the following exchange on Twitter:

Katrina Kibben: One of my Pride wishes this year is to ban the phrase “preferred pronouns.” They are not preferred. This isn’t steak or shrimp. It’s a human’s identity.

Dr. “Coach” Dawn Reid #ReidReady: I respect how you feel and I ask if you can consider preference is about a label choice. I.e., My son is non-binary. He has a pref of they/she/he depending on his affect. It’s his pref of a social label in the moment. Not who he is as a person.

Katrina Kibben: Every experience is different. I respect it. For me? My first thought is that your child may be code-switching for their safety (I do it too), not changing pronouns.

Dr. “Coach” Dawn Reid #ReidReady: Agreed. It’s different for each person. Code switching is another topic. We all do that for communication clarity. The original term/use is from linguistics. And that’s not it for them. It’s his preference. We are talking about this now.

In other words, there is no way to get it right. An October 2020 survey by Tallo found that 88% of Gen Z candidates think it’s important for recruiters to ask them their pronouns. But many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers find it offensive to ask their pronouns. This leaves you to guess, but there are some things you can do.

Listen to what people want to do. Respect and use their pronouns. (But it’s not reasonable for an employee to expect everyone to follow regular pronoun changes.) Allow people (but don’t require) to list their pronouns on email signatures and other work-related things.

3. Don’t make assumptions

Does someone look gay? Is that person trans? Whisper, whisper, whisper. This type of thing makes for a very unwelcoming environment for everyone.

Instead, make sure your staff understands employees treat every other employee and client equally across the board. Everyone gets respect. If you allow people to bring personal items to decorate their cubicles, then everyone gets to bring a family picture – regardless of what their family looks like.

Make sure you schedule and provide promotions and perks based on performance and seniority, not the perception that so-and-so needs a bump in pay because his wife just had a baby. If an employee announces the impending birth of a baby, don’t speculate about just how that baby was conceived or carried. Instead, just say, “Congratulations! Let me get you the FMLA paperwork!”

4. Remove bias from your recruiting process.

EPM Scientific gave five tips for reducing bias in hiring. These are:

• Anonymizing resumes in the review process
• Encouraging validated pre-employment testing
• Pre-employment testing, such as work samples, predict job success.
• Encouraging a diverse interview panel and hiring committee
• Challenging bias in recruitment and hiring decisions

All these things help you ensure you hire the person who is best for the job regardless of their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or national origin. Letting candidates know you do through these processes helps them feel like they have a chance based on their skills.

5. Educate your leadership on the benefits of diversity

You can only increase LGBTQ candidates when you have a welcoming environment. But, to make a welcoming environment, senior leadership needs to be on board. Presenting the business case for making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive will help.

People who have to hide their identities at work experience more stress. Higher stress results in more days off and an increase in medical costs. It’s saving you money to have a welcoming environment.

Consulting giant McKinsey reported in May 2020 that companies with diverse leadership have higher financial returns than those that don’t. While they looked only at gender and race, it stands to reason that bringing in people with different sexual orientations would bring additional viewpoints that would help the company reach different audiences and support all employees.

Finally – candidates, especially Millennials and Gen Z, want to work for inclusive organizations and leaders. They’ve made that clear. So make sure you let them know what your company is doing to ensure everyone feels comfortable.

The critical point of all this is that everyone deserves a job based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Everything else should be irrelevant. This means ensuring that everyone is welcome in your company. A simple concept that goes far.

The post 5 tips on making workplaces LGBTQ inclusive appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

However, a new challenge is coming: your company has decided to incorporate AI into its overall workflow. You’re under a lot of pressure from the higher-ups to get everyone on board the AI train, but when you look at your team, you’re worried about the range of reactions you’ll get from your talented team members.

In short, you know this can make your team more productive and competitive, but you also understand it’s a change. You are determined to navigate this transition smoothly.

So, how do you do it?

Introducing your team

Let’s identify five distinct personas who may be in your team and what motivates them.

1. Traditional Terry

Traditional Terry is your company’s historian, having been with the company for over 15 years. He’s a senior project manager known for his methodical approach and rich industry knowledge. Everyone knows Terry and everyone respects Terry. He’s a good egg.

Terry aspires to retire in this company, and his goal is to maintain the reliable and efficient work processes he’s developed over the years. He’s driven by a sense of duty and a strong belief in the company’s mission – and colleagues look to him as a stabilizer whenever things get a little hectic.

2,. Eager Enrique

Eager Enrique is fresh out of school. You just hired him last year as a junior developer because he’s incredibly keen and brings an absolute smorgasbord of nascent tech skills. He’s always on top of the latest tech trends and isn’t shy about voicing his ideas.

Enrique’s ambition is to become a tech influencer someday – heck, he even has his own YouTube channel with more than 10,000 followers. The chance to work with AI might just be the exciting break he’s looking for.

3. Cautious Chloe

Cautious Chloe is your meticulous and dedicated data analyst. She joined your team five years ago and has consistently demonstrated her ethical and thoughtful approach to work. She absolutely crushes it every time she has a data project on her desk, and she’s your go-to anytime you need to pull insights out of those nascent data sets.

In your 1-1s with her, you’ve come to learn that Chloe’s career goal is to move into a leadership role where she can influence company policy, particularly around ethical use of technology.

4. Strategic Sven

Strategic Sven is the team’s product manager. When you interviewed him for the open role, you knew he was the one. He brings with him a huge background in tech startups, plus an MBA from a top-tier business school.

Sven’s ambition is to improve the company’s strategic planning and he’s motivated by driving impactful change. He doesn’t like just getting the job done and going home – he wants to do a lot more than that.

5. Tech-Averse Thanh

Tech-Averse Thanh is your administrative assistant who has been with you for more than two years. Thanh’s goal is to excel in administration – and stability and harmony in the workplace are huge motivators.

Thanh prefers traditional methods and isn’t as comfortable with technology as the rest of the team. In fact, they prefer to do things the way it’s always been done (and proven to work, too).

At this week’s Monday meeting, you deliver the news from the higher-ups: the company wants to incorporate AI into everyone’s workflows. You highlight the benefits of AI – greater productivity, optimized processes, the ability to scale faster – and underscore its importance for meeting the company’s ambitious goals.

You reassure the team that you will support them throughout this transition.

Watching your team’s reactions

You see your team murmer and look at each other across the table. Yes, AI has already been in the news and this was somewhat expected, but you see that reactions are mixed and varied. Some nod and roll with it, others look a little more hesitant.

Let’s look at the five personas again and see how they react to the news.

1. Traditional Terry

Traditional Terry looks taken aback during your announcement, his brow furrowing. You’re not terribly surprised at this – he’s not necessarily averse to change, but you know he’ll see the “big picture” in everything that happens at the company.

In your 1-1, Terry expresses fear that AI will change the way he does his job or, worse, make him redundant. You can see the genuine concern in his eyes. Sure, his kids are grown up, but he still has his mortgage to pay and it’s not like he can easily migrate to a new job.

2. Eager Enrique

Eager Enrique, on the other hand, is visibly excited. As an early adopter of many technologies, even so far as to approach you regularly with new recommendations for your tech stack, there’s no question he sees this as an opportunity.

He’s practically brimming with ideas when you meet him, speaking rapidly about potential applications of AI. His enthusiasm is contagious both for you and the larger team, but you’re worried that he’s a bit too optimistic and not thinking about the realistic challenges that could surface.

3. Cautious Chloe

Cautious Chloe listens attentively during the meeting, her face thoughtful. She’s never been one to wear her heart on her sleeve, and to be fair, that’s one of her strengths – she’ll process new developments internally and meticulously, and then make decisions later.

In your 1-1 later that week, she voices concern about AI’s ethical implications and how job security will be ensured. You appreciate her frankness and careful consideration and, especially, the time she’s; taken to think it over rather than react strongly.

4. Strategic Sven

Strategic Sven listens attentively, nodding occasionally. You can see his MBA background whispering in his head, and of course, he’s seen a lot in his career in tech startups. This isn’t his first rodeo.

When meeting privately with you, he notes that he agrees with the strategic importance of AI in your 1-1 but admits he’s unsure about the execution. This needs to be carried out properly in order to succeed and, when you ask, he lists out the potential obstacles worth thinking about. You’re grateful to him for being pragmatic.

5. Tech-Averse Thanh

Tech-Averse Thanh looks nervous during your announcement. You’re not terribly surprised, but you’re worried. You know Thanh really needs to be a bit more flexible, but their administrative and organizational skills more than make up for that – so you really need them to be on board.

In your 1-1, they confess that the thought of using AI is a major stress inducer. It’s literally another thing they need to learn in order to do their job. They’re clearly anxious, worrying about whether they can keep up with the changes.

After hearing your team’s reactions, you realize that you have a critical task ahead. Everyone brings unique strengths to your team, and it’s vital that their voices are heard.

You know you must engage them individually to help them adapt to the new changes.

Engaging your team

Now that you’ve met with each of your team members, it’s time to put in an action plan for each one of them. It’s your job to bring the best out of them – and part of that involves getting them to adapt readily to AI’s entry in their day-to-day work and continue to flourish.

1. Traditional Terry

For Traditional Terry, begin with open conversations about his fears and reservations. Those hesitations are legitimate and understandable and you want to help him work through them. For starters, reinforce that his years of experience and established skills are invaluable to the team.

Show him – don’t just tell him – how AI can take over repetitive tasks, freeing him to focus his time and energy on complex, high-value work that draws on his experience. Provide real examples from other organizations that have successfully adopted AI without any impact to their actual team structure – and emphasize that job roles at those companies have actually evolved rather than disappeared.

And to further support him, work with HR to set up a personalized training program for him that helps him integrate AI, and touch base with him regularly to monitor progress.

2. Eager Enrique

With Eager Enrique, the prelude has already been covered. He’s already on board. Now, you have the opportunity to channel his excitement constructively in a way that benefits him and the team. Set up regular meetings to discuss his ideas, urge him to consider potential challenges, and ensure a balanced perspective on AI.

Encourage Enrique to join AI-focused groups or events to broaden his understanding. Given his aspirations to become a tech influencer, suggest that he document and share his AI learning journey, turning him into a proactive AI advocate within the team. Invite him to host lunch & learns every month – if he’s keen to be an influencer, he’ll jump at the idea.

3. Cautious Chloe

Cautious Chloe doesn’t like unknowns, so transparency is key here. Get her involved in discussions about the ethical framework within which the AI will operate. Invite her to decision-making meetings regarding AI deployment, allowing her the opportunity to voice her concerns.

Like Terry, you can also reassure Chloe that roles will evolve rather than be replaced and encourage her to think about how AI can boost her own work. Her concerns can be converted into a mechanism for constructive feedback, helping your team and company foresee and mitigate potential risks.

4. Strategic Sven

When dealing with Strategic Sven, focus on business strategy and execution because that’s what speaks to him. Give him the resources to design a clear and effective AI implementation strategy – after all, you’ll be needing one anyway, so let him play a leading role in that.

He can also be a great sounding board during your 1-1 sessions. Encourage him to pose questions, discuss doubts, and explore solutions. And bring in external AI consultants where needed, to provide expert opinions and recommendations. This will bolster Sven’s confidence in navigating the change and benefit the team as a whole.

5. Tech-Adverse Thanh

Tech-Averse Thanh needs an approachable introduction to AI. Explain the technology in simple terms, direclty linking benefits to everyday tasks. Pair Thanh with Enrique, as Enrique’s enthusiasm can be infectious.

Offer additional support, such as optional training sessions or learning resources. Make sure to frequently highlight their progress, praising them for each successful step – and regularly provide reassurance that the job won’t be tech-first but rather, tech-supported. The human is still core to the job.

This engagement doesn’t happen in a vacuum, nor is it something you can strike off as ‘done’. You need to continue working with your team to ensure success – you’re their manager, after all. That’s no different when bringing AI into the picture. It’s an ongoing process.

So, how does your team respond? Let’s look at the results of your work (and make no mistake, you’ve worked hard!).

Gauging your team’s results

A few months have passed, and you’re seeing positive changes. Let’s look at what those changes are.

1. Traditional Terry

With your encouragement and reassurance, Traditional Terry has started to warm up to the AI tools. He’s really appreciating how they free him from those annoyingly repetitive tasks – and you can see how much more relaxed he is when he shows up for work.

Plus, he now has more time to mentor younger team members, sharing his invaluable experience and sage advice with them.

2. Eager Enrique

Eager Enrique is thriving, regularly sharing his AI learning journey and experiences with the team. He’s even turning to blog posts on the company’s internal platform, and those have been receiving positive feedback from people at all levels in your company.

He’s now a go-to resource person for AI-related questions and his YouTube channel is now accumulating more and more subscribers – positioning him to be the tech influencer he always wanted to be. And because of his fan base, he’s able to bring in fresh candidates whenever your company needs to fill important tech positions.

3. Cautious Chloe

Cautious Chloe’s pragmatic, level-headed approach has positioned her as a key player in ensuring that the AI deployment aligns with overall ethical standards and with the company’s own values.

Because her work is producing results that are very much in tune with her own personal priorities, she’s become more confident in her work. She appreciates that her concerns were heard and addressed, and her insights have proven invaluable in foreseeing and mitigating risks.

4. Strategic Sven

After several brainstorming sessions and expert consultations, Strategic Sven has designed a comprehensive AI implementation strategy that incorporates all the elements that must be considered to see it succeed. He’s learned a lot from watching other tech startups succeed and fail and knows the importance of having a thoughtful, well-planned plan that executes smoothly.

Not only is Sven motivated by finally being able to put his MBA learnings into action, the team has also responded positively to the well-planned rollout. This boosts Sven’s confidence as a strategic leader.

5. Tech-Averse Thanh

Tech-Averse Thanh is slowly but surely learning the ropes of AI. Paired with Enrique, Thanh is making steady progress and showing less resistance to using the AI tools. You’re even seeing them hanging out in the lunch room together talking animatedly about tech.

It turns out Thanh is a people person, not a tech person. They’re motivated by human connections and teamwork, not weird tech things and robots and paperwork and stuff. But now that Thanh has put a ‘human’ face on AI in the form of Enrique, there’s a sense of familiarity and achievement as they become more comfortable working with the technology.

Not bad, not bad. You, Alex, have done a good job. The team is in sync and they’re driven to succeed.

Watching your team thrive

As you look at your team, you feel a sense of accomplishment. Despite initial resistance and fear, every team member has adapted to the incorporation of AI in their own way that works for them.

Your belief in each individual, open communication, and personalized strategies have all paid off. You’ve mastered the fine art of inclusive leadership here, by bringing out each individual’s strengths and setting each one for success.

The team is now more productive, and they’ve evolved professionally in the process. AI is no longer a foreign concept; it’s now just another tool that your team uses to thrive in their work.

The post Lead a team through AI: an inclusive approach to change appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Picture yourself as a job hunter. Maybe you’re even job hunting as you read this. Job hunters will always research a company, whether it’s about its history, culture, or the industry it’s in. Jobseekers will also get curious – we, after all, are naturally curious creatures, and curiosity just happens to spill over into job hunting.

Jobseekers also want to make sure they are interviewing with and potentially joining a company that may be a good fit for them whether it is aligning with their personal values, career goals, and a culture where they picture themselves thriving in.

And apart from being curious about facts about a company, jobseekers get curious about the people.

It takes just seconds to look up a company and click on that tab that says ‘people’ on LinkedIn. Naturally, a jobseeker will take a look to see if anyone in a company is similar to them.

They’re drawn in to see if there are different groups of people, people that identify from the same group as them, and to see if the company they are interested in includes people like them.

But why do they do this? Let’s add a bit of psychology 101 into this. Naturally, humans have what is called an unconscious bias. Unconscious bias refers to the attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes that affect our judgments and decisions without us even realizing it. These biases are often subconscious and are formed based on personal experiences, cultural background, and social context.

Unconscious bias can also creep in for the jobseeker. Candidates are drawn to similarities. If they do not see someone that is similar to themselves, this sends a message to that jobseeker that diversity, equity, and inclusion is low or nowhere to be found – or even conveys that they may not be welcomed in that organization.

This can be problematic for both jobseekers and employers.

Unconscious bias: a two-way street

This works both ways. Recruiters have unconscious bias too, where it influences the impression of a candidate.

You, as an HR professional, must be careful with that unconscious bias. You must try to block out these unconscious biases within yourself and try not to let them cloud your judgment.

Otherwise, that clouding could result in you missing out on high-quality candidates because biases can affect your judgment of that individual’s candidacy for the position. When it comes to your day-to-day work in your job – for example, when you’re screening candidates – try to put yourself in the shoes of the jobseeker above.

Ask yourself: would you rather see more people like you or more diversification? Wouldn’t you like to be at a company that promotes the sense of welcoming, the promotion of diversity enriching the culture – and see that the sense of diversity, equity, and inclusion has a permanent strategy there?

Often, diversity, equity, and inclusion is dismissed or just refined to being a training or another difficult conversation. In recruiting, it’s confined to being just another metric. In fact, just 30% of companies have DEI as part of their permanent strategy, according to our survey on DEI in the workplace.

On the contrary, it’s more than just a training. It’s more than just an ‘HR thing’, and certainly more than a metric recruiters have to pay attention to.

DEI is beyond all of this. It’s about bringing new perspectives to the table. It’s about diversity having the power to spark creativity, innovation, and problem-solving skills that may not have been possible or achievable with a homogeneous workforce.

The sense of belonging in the workplace trumps many things for people. Recruiters should leave bias hiring behind and think about this particular view of DEI.

The value of culture add

As recruiters, we must think about not just ‘culture fit’, but rather ‘culture add’.

Culture fit focuses on the harmony between an individual and the company culture. The individual shares similar values, behaviors, and attitudes as the company where they can blend seamlessly into the company culture.

On the other hand, culture add takes a different shift in focus. With culture add, there is an embrace of fresh and new perspectives, uniqueness, and differences that the individual can bring forward to enhance the company culture.

Looking at these differences, culture add can increase value to an organization. Culture fit confines a person to fit particular characteristics, while culture add embraces and allows the individual to break that confinement and to redefine what it means to ‘fit in’. This uniqueness, fresh perspectives, all stems from diversity.

This is important to keep in mind as a recruiter when scouting for talent. We want to plant culture add in our organizational garden because, remember, a diverse garden can open many opportunities.

Growing the DEI garden

True gardeners or those interested in gardening know that gardens should have a diverse species of plants to flourish. For the reason being that underneath the surface, diverse planting can create a promotion of sustainability, success, and life for the beautiful garden that most gardeners aim to have.

Now think of the company being the soil, candidates being the seeds, DEI being the water and sunlight. Imagine what beauty could grow out of this, and what could blossom. This is the beauty of DEI, how it collectively brings wonderful minds together to blossom into something bigger. This is the promotion of bringing a more sustainable, successful, alive culture to the surface.

And then think about your part in all of this. It all starts with the recruiter. Besides the company, the recruiter holds the power to bring forth those wonderful minds and enrichen the company’s diversity. This could then inspire others to do the same, to plant more of the importance of DEI.

Imagine the garden that can be grown. A garden of fresh ideas, talent, innovation, and most importantly, belonging. It is important to recognize and address unconscious biases to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace.

Think about the difference that can be made in hiring and how to couple diversity, equity, and inclusion with recruiting. Start that garden, give it the water and sunlight it needs to be healthy and to blossom. Contribute to the nature of the curious garden of DEI.

Iliana Ramos is Workable’s Talent Acquisition Specialist. In her own words: “My passion for talent acquisition first stemmed from an internship I did in college. Since then, I am doing what I love where I get to meet tons of new people everyday and staying on top of trends in the industry. When I am not recruiting, I am an avid gym-goer and a huge lover of music. My favorite artist of all time is Tiësto and have been listening to him since I was 12 years old. I almost fainted when I saw him live in person for the first time.”

The post Embrace diversity: cultivate a thriving workplace garden appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Striking a balance between harnessing the power of AI and addressing its challenges is possible. Many are driving that conversation – and you, in human resources, are part of this as well. Your work directly involves human beings, so it makes sense that you want to approach AI ethically as well.

We’ll help you out here. We share examples of how ethical use of AI has been established in various circles, and then we’ll guide you in how to ensure ethical AI standards are met in your own work.

Real-life examples of power and responsibility

Uncle Ben’s famous quote to Peter Parker rings loud and true here: “With great power comes great responsibility.” In that spirit, we have real-life examples of organizations and individuals who are driving the importance of balancing the power of the latest technologies with the challenges they present.

Ethical Intelligence founder Olivia Gambelin is one such example. In a LinkedIn post, she discussed the potential risks associated with generative AI, including security, bias, patenting and more – and emphasized that there’s an opportunity at play here: the opportunity to build an ethical AI framework from the start so that we can maximize the good that we can do with it.

There are also formal organizational and individual projects that have already happened over the last few years – let’s look at three of them right now:

1. IBM: Trusted AI Initiative

IBM made significant efforts to ensure ethical and responsible use of AI through their Trusted AI initiative. In that, IBM has developed AI solutions that prioritize fairness and transparency while minimizing bias.

By establishing a set of guidelines, best practices and tools, IBM ensures that their AI technologies are developed and implemented ethically. Their AI Fairness 360 toolkit, for example, is an open-source library that provides metrics and algorithms to help detect and mitigate bias in AI systems.

That’s more for developers who want to maintain high ethical standards in their AI work. However, it’s a powerful example of a leading brand that values ethical development of groundbreaking technology such as artificial intelligence.

2. Accenture: Responsible AI Framework

Like IBM, leading professional services company Accenture developed a Responsible AI Framework to address the ethical challenges that AI presents.

This framework outlines six core principles, including transparency, accountability and fairness, to guide the development and deployment of AI systems.

Accenture also established a dedicated AI Ethics Committee, pulling together experts from various disciplines to ensure that their AI solutions adhere to these principles and promote responsible AI use across the organization.

3. Dr. Timnit Gebru: Black in AI

Widely regarded AI researcher and ethicist Dr. Timnit Gebru has led the charge of advocating for responsible AI use for years. Her focus is on mitigating bias and ensuring fairness in AI systems – a growing concern with the surge of ChatGPT usage across all disciplines.

As part of her focus on AI bias mitigation, Timnit co-founded Black in AI, which aims to increase the representation of people of color in AI research and development. She continues to play a leading role through her research and advocacy.

Actionable tips for HR pros in ethical AI

Now, how about yourself? If you’re working in human resources, you’re likely already incorporating ChatGPT and other AI tools into your workflow through the automated creation of job descriptions, interview questions and other things.

But there is a risk of relying too much on AI to steer processes as Amazon learned the hard way in late 2018.

Also, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging is likely a major priority in your work. So how do you combine the undeniable benefits of AI-driven optimization with maintaining fairness, decency and ethics in your work?

You can start right now with these seven focal areas:

1. Prioritize fairness and transparency

It’s likely you have already emphasized the importance of fairness and transparency throughout your organization in terms of communication, opportunity and collaboration. You’ll need to apply that same thinking to your AI systems. Here’s how:

Establish clear evaluation criteria

Develop a well-defined set of criteria for assessing the fairness and transparency of AI systems. This should include considerations such as data quality, explainability and the impact of the AI system on different employee groups.

Vet AI vendors thoroughly

When selecting AI solutions, carefully evaluate vendors based on their commitment to ethical AI principles. Inquire about their efforts to minimize bias, promote transparency and ensure data privacy.

Implement explainable AI

Choose AI systems that provide explanations for their recommendations, allowing you and your team to understand the reasoning behind AI-generated decisions.

Communicate AI usage with employees

Inform employees about the use of AI within the organization and the specific areas where it is being applied. Clearly communicate the goals and benefits of AI, addressing any concerns or misconceptions they may have.

Conduct bias and fairness assessments

Regularly assess your AI systems for potential biases and fairness issues. This can involve analyzing the training data, validating AI-generated decisions, and monitoring AI system performance across different employee groups.

Establish an AI ethics committee

Create a cross-functional team of stakeholders responsible for overseeing the ethical use of AI in your business. This committee should monitor AI implementation, enforce ethical guidelines, and address any ethical concerns that may arise. This team can consist of representatives from different teams including HR, IT, legal, and other relevant departments. That diverse approach is crucial here.

Provide training on AI ethics

Offer training and resources for HR professionals and other employees involved in AI implementation. This can help ensure that your team understands the importance of ethical AI use and is equipped to make informed decisions.

There’s no reason fairness and transparency should exist solely within human-driven processes. Your AI tools can absolutely be fair and transparent as well, but as the manager of those tools, it’s your job to ensure that your technologies don’t fail in this area.

2. Diversify AI development teams

The infamous ‘racist soap dispenser’ is a perfect example of the risks of non-diverse teams when designing products – since they are the brains behind the design and are the first testers of the product.

That thinking applies to AI development teams too. If you’re in the software development field, you want your teams to be diverse so as to avoid design faux pas like the one above. Here’s how you can ensure that diversity thrives where you are:

Expand talent sourcing

Broaden your search for AI talent by exploring diverse channels, such as niche job boards, online communities and professional networks that cater to or specialize in underrepresented groups. Or, if you represent one of those networks or communities, consider building your own branded job board.

Review job descriptions

Ensure that your job postings are inclusive and free of gendered language or other biases that might discourage diverse candidates from applying.

Implement blind recruitment

Utilize blind recruitment techniques, such as anonymizing resumes, to reduce unconscious bias in the hiring process.

Foster an inclusive work environment

Create a workplace culture that values and promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion. This will not only attract diverse talent but also support their retention and career development.

Offer training and development opportunities

Provide training, mentorship and career advancement opportunities to underrepresented employees, helping them grow professionally and contribute to AI development.

Set diversity goals

Establish clear DEI objectives for AI development teams, and track their progress over time. This can help ensure that your organization remains committed to fostering diverse AI development teams and continues to focus on this area going forward.

Diversity may feel like a richly covered topic for many teams, but there’s a reason for that – it’s not just about the teams. It’s about the results of their work – a diverse team means an inclusive software, because unique experiences and perspectives are pulled together into a single production.

3. Regularly audit AI systems

We touched on the importance of setting goals in the last section. You want to be sure those goals are met regularly – to do that, you need a system in place that properly tracks and audits your AI systems so you can jump on any potential biases or unethical processes that your tools may churn out.

Regular audits not only ensure that you’re on top of anything that may happen – they also give you an opportunity to refine your AI implementation strategy to make sure your tools align with your business’ mission, vision and especially values.

Follow these guidelines for a failsafe audit process:

Establish a schedule

Create a regular schedule for auditing your AI systems, based on factors such as system complexity, usage frequency and potential impact on employees.

Define performance metrics

Identify relevant metrics to assess AI system performance, such as accuracy, fairness and explainability. This will help you tangibly evaluate and measure AI systems during audits.

Monitor AI system outputs

Keep a close eye on AI-generated decisions and recommendations, looking for any signs of bias, discrimination or other unintended consequences.

Review training data

Periodically examine the data used to train your AI systems. AI learns from real-life human experience and therefore skews AI-generated decisions – so it’s crucial to ensure that the sourced material itself is diverse, accurate and free of bias.

Engage external auditors

Consider working with external auditors or third-party organizations to conduct unbiased evaluations of your AI systems. The additional layer of scrutiny that this expertise provides can be invaluable.

Implement a feedback loop

Encourage employees to share their experiences and concerns about AI system usage. This feedback is indispensible in identifying potential issues and areas for improvement.

Update and refine AI systems

Based on your audit findings, make necessary adjustments to your AI systems, addressing any biases or performance issues uncovered during the audit process.

Nothing necessarily happens without proper oversight. To ensure that your AI tools and processes run free of bias, implement the above tips so that your company can reap the full benefits of AI in its workflows while mitigating and even eliminating potential risks coming from bias and prejudice.

4. Develop ethical AI policies

Now, you need clear ethical guidelines and policies for your colleagues to follow when they use artificial intelligence in their day-to-day work. Rulebooks mean structure, and structure is crucial to success. Not only do you need to establish these – you also must enforce them, with clear information on potential risks, ethical considerations and especially compliance requirements to ensure that AI is implemented responsibly.

Related: Our AI tool policy template can come in handy here.

Get started with these action items:

Conduct a risk assessment

Evaluate the potential ethical, legal and social risks associated with AI implementation in your organization. Consider factors such as data privacy, algorithmic fairness, and employee impact.

Consult relevant guidelines and frameworks

Refer to industry-specific guidelines, frameworks and best practices for ethical AI. You can check with professional organizations and even government agencies for examples of such guidelines.

Involve stakeholders

In line with the AI ethics committee recommendation above, you can collaborate with multiple stakeholders and leaders from various departments, including HR, IT, legal and executive teams, to develop comprehensive AI policies that address diverse perspectives and concerns. This can include policies unique to specific teams and functions.

Define AI usage boundaries

Clearly outline the permissible and prohibited uses of AI within your organization. Take into account different ethical considerations and regulatory requirements as you do so.

Incorporate transparency and accountability

Ensure that your AI policies highlight the importance of transparency in AI processes and decision-making – and establish clear lines of accountability for AI system performance and outcomes.

Communicate policies organization-wide

Be uniform and thorough in your communications. Share your ethical AI policies with all employees. Provide training or resources to ensure that everyone understands that they have a role in upholding these guidelines – and that they know what they must do to maintain standards.

Regularly review and update policies

Again, tracking and auditing is a must. Review your AI policies consistently to ensure that they remain up-to-date. Adjust accordingly to stay in line with evolving ethical considerations, industry standards and technological advancements.

Ensuring ethical use of AI – and also that the AI you use is in itself ethical and fair – will not happen in a vacuum, nor can it happen simply because you’ve advised your employees and colleagues to do so. You need to prescribe ethical AI throughout your organization and that can only happen with a clear prescription. That’s the value of building guides and policies – not just for AI, but for anywhere.

5. Foster collaboration

The workplace is by nature a collaborative environment. You can work this to your advantage when ensuring that ethical AI practices are consistently implemented and maintained throughout your teams.

Some tips to get you started:

Promote knowledge sharing

Encourage employees to share their expertise, experiences and insights when using AI in their workflows. This can be done via anonymous surveys and in-person workshops to foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement in the area.

Create internal communication channels

Another aspect of sharing knowledge is providing a space for employees to actively discuss AI-related topics in your organization. This can be a new chat channel, an intra-company forum, or even emails and regular meetings, giving employees multiple avenues to voice concerns, share ideas and collaborate on further AI initiatives.

Partner with AI vendors

Since you’re already auditing the AI systems being used in your company, you can also build strong relationships with AI vendors to address any ethical concerns that may arise, You can then optimize and fine-tune your systems to ensure fairness and inclusivity.

Engage with external experts

You can consult with external experts such as Dr. Timnit Gebru and other AI ethicists and industry leaders to gain insights and advice on ensuring ethical AI use and overcoming challenges.

Participate in industry events and forums

Likewise, you can learn from others in the ethical AI space (such as IBM, Accenture and more). Go to industry events, conferences and forums and actively engage in discussions. Learn from other organizations’ experiences and contribute to the shaping of best practices all around.

Again, ethical AI does not happen in a vacuum. Use the existing knowledge that’s out there to your advantage, and also contribute your own experiences. We can’t progress in isolation from one another – a culture of continuous learning through collaboration has tremendous value here.

6. Engage in industry-wide conversations

Following on the above, your peers are likely as engaged in the overall conversation around ethical AI as you are. For example, this LinkedIn post from Caroline Fairchild explicitly expresses concerns around the greater threat of AI on marginalized groups:

When you get involved in these conversations, be it in LinkedIn or at industry events, you can stay informed about best practices and experiences that will shape the future of AI in HR.

Follow these tips to advocate for responsible use of artificial intelligence and contribute to shaping AI policy and regulations as an HR professional:

Raise awareness

Educate employees, management, stakeholders and peers about the importance of responsible AI use. Shed light on the potential risks, ethical considerations and best practices as part of those interactions.

Promote ethical AI champions

Encourage and support employees who demonstrate a strong commitment to ethical AI practices. You may even incentivize them with public recognition and rewards. Empower them to lead the charge as advocates and role models throughout your company.

Collaborate with industry peers

Again, collaboration is huge here. You can network with other HR professionals to share insights, experiences and actionables related to responsible AI use. Your commitment is stronger as a collective than as an individual.

Share success stories

Everyone likes a success story. Those stories are inspirational and informative and deserve celebration. Put a spotlight on moments where your company has successfully implemented AI in an ethical and responsible manner – and more so, show the results and benefits.

When people share knowledge and success stories about those triumphs and accomplishments, that’s powerful information. Equally powerful is sharing challenges with your industry peers and seeking out best practices in overcoming those challenges. That dialogue is crucial to ensuring ethical AI across the board. The reasoning behind a moratorium on AI is understandable, but deeper within that is the call for conversation and understanding. That’s the value of industry-wide conversation.

You can be part of the ethical AI conversation

The primary takeaway from all of this for you as an HR professional is this: establish a culture of continuous learning. AI is growing exponentially and will continue to do so – it’s understandable if you’re struggling to keep pace with all the new developments and information around AI.

When that technology grows and evolves, the orbiting opportunities and challenges will grow with it – and that includes the ethical use of artificial intelligence.

It is crucial for you, as an HR professional, to embrace the opportunities that AI presents while ensuring smart and equitable use of the evolving tech. You don’t want to shy away from it altogether because it does have a place in your work – but you also don’t want it to get away from you either. Striking a careful balance between harnessing the benefits of AI and mitigating potential risks is what you’re aiming to do here.

Be proactive, driven and optimistic as you do so. Look at the real-life examples above – IBM, Accenture, Dr. Gebru, Caroline Fairchild, Olivia Gambelin – they’re all directly contributing to the conversation around ethical use of AI at work and at play. You can be part of that conversation too.

The post Ethical AI: guidelines and best practices for HR pros appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

This discussion between two women at Workable highlights what that means for them and how you can flourish in your own career.

Featured are Workable Sales Consultant Chiara Giampietro and Workable SVP of Customer Services Jess Meschino.

In this video, Chiara and Jess discuss:

The importance of being an “other” in the workplace

Being heard in meetings

Mentorship at work

Gender diversity in leadership

Pursuing opportunities

Being flexible in your career

The value of continuously learning

The post VIDEO: Inclusion, growth, and the value of ‘Otherness’ appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Featured is Female Founders co-CEO Amelia Suda, who shares insights on:

Current trends in VC funding in Europe
Why a gender imbalance exists in European startups
Why this matters, including at the bottom line
How you can restore balance
What you can do about it at the organizational level
What you can do about it at the personal level

The post VIDEO: Build balance and strengthen your teams appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The spike in departures comes as employees re-think what they want from their careers after COVID-19 lockdowns, with more women selecting flexibility and well-being.

Women are already significantly underrepresented in leadership. Now, companies are hanging on by a thread to hold onto the relatively few women leaders they have. These dynamics are even more pronounced for women of color.

Why this matters: According to McKinsey, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile—up from 21 percent in 2017 and 15 percent in 2014.

Bottom line: Gender diversity pays dividends.

Why women are leaving

Women are tired of running against headwinds. At every corner, it feels like the wind is picking up. When considered for a promotion, women are more likely to be questioned about their qualifications than their male counterparts. Assumptions are made that now is not a good time for them to take on more responsibility. This assumption is never a consideration for men.

Women leaders are being discounted. Imagine someone else getting credit for some of your best ideas? Women leaders don’t have to imagine this. It’s their reality. According to the report, women leaders are twice as likely as men to be mistaken for someone less senior, and are more likely to see a co-worker get credit for their ideas.

Women leaders are exhausted and undervalued. Women often volunteer to take on roles at work, like leading a company’s diversity initiative, which is rarely considered when raises and promotions are given out. When people don’t feel appreciated, they look elsewhere for opportunities where they will be recognized and rewarded for their efforts.

Choice is critical: Women want and need flexibility. Yet companies like Disney and JP Morgan are sending out messages to their employees that say butts in seats or no work. Women are choosing to sit their butts down elsewhere. They’re going to organizations where they control how and when work gets done.

Getting women leaders to stay

Managers play a vital role in terms of the retention of talent. When organizations invest in developing their people, employees are more apt to stay. When employees see people who look like them in senior leadership roles, they know what’s possible.

If you don’t want the women in your organization to participate in The Great Breakup, give them a reason to stay. Show them that the best partner is the one they’re with.

Here’s where to start:

• Rethink systems and challenge norms
• Support the advancement of women
• Give women the flexibility they need to be successful
• Hold managers accountable and acknowledge and reward those fully committed to helping women succeed in your workplace
• Look at your pipeline and identify areas where women may be seeping out of your organization
• Take steps to fix problem areas

Breaking up is hard on companies and will have a lasting impact on your organization. Do everything in your power to retain those women leaders you’ve worked extremely hard to attract, and if you’re lucky, they may give you a second chance.

The post The great breakup: Why are female leaders leaving in droves? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But to do better, we need to pinpoint exactly where we’re going wrong. Ready to pull off the band-aid? Below are four common mistakes teams make when it comes to people data. Luckily, once you target these issues, you’ll start working towards a better employee experience and stronger employee lifecycle.

1. You’re not gathering information during the onboarding process

One of the top reasons candidates choose to accept an open role is the chemistry they have with their prospective manager. The issue there is, in a volatile economy and rapidly changing job market, people move to new positions all the time. The solution? Collect pertinent data in the onboarding process.

Simply put, a robust onboarding process – which includes gathering information to help support new hires in their first 90 days and beyond – signals your values and investment in your people. Furthermore, by tracking your onboarding in tangible ways, you’ll understand why your new hire and manager clicked in the first place, and use that information to create stronger employee experiences across the board. And the better your employee experience, the higher your retention rate.

Alternatively, if you don’t collect the right data during your onboarding process, your new hires could be among the 33% who quit their job within the first 90 days.

While there’s various pieces of information you can collect during the first few weeks of your onboarding process, consider adding the following to your strategy:

Self-ID data

Encourage new hires to fill out self-ID forms (remember, these campaigns should be voluntary) to help measure DEIB efforts across your organization. For example, you can use this information to better plan your employee resource groups and holiday celebrations.

‘How to Manage Me’ forms

When new hires share how they best like to be managed – such as receiving praise or needing help goal-setting – they’re more likely to feel supported by leaders. If your organization sees steady workforce changes, this practice helps reduce risk and uncertainty for your people.

‘Get-to-know-me’ information

Other pieces of information – like t-shirt size and dietary restrictions – help you plan welcome packages, personalized social events, and on-site experiences for new hires.

2. You’re not tracking the right metrics

It’s easy to get bogged down by day-to-day tasks and forget big-picture strategy. But in stressful times, people often work in the business instead of on the business.

When you work on the business, you focus on your overarching people strategy and track metrics to help ensure employees feel supported in reaching their goals. You need to track employee data throughout your entire employee lifecycle to help make the right decisions and plan future initiatives.

Consider collecting the following data, but if this task seems too daunting, determine which part of your employee lifecycle needs the most improvement and start there.

Attraction and recruitment: Track your recruitment efforts to assess how much time, money, and resources you’re investing. In this stage, calculate Time to Fill and Cost per Hire.

Onboarding

The data you collect in this stage isn’t only a reflection of your new hires, but a reflection of your onboarding process. It’s therefore important to calculate time-to-productivity and new-hire-turnover to determine potential changes for the future.

Development

After your employees’ first 90 days, it’s important to collect a variety of data points – such as the employee net promoter score (eNPS), engagement surveys, and promotion rates – to analyze employee satisfaction and areas in need of further improvement.

Retention

In order to keep your top talent, you’ll want to track employee retention rates, turnover rates, and engagement rates to pinpoint any potential risks down the line.

Separation

While people’s reasons for leaving your organization may differ, it’s important to track responses to discover themes to help make your employee experience even better.

3. You’re not using data to develop your people

One of the biggest challenges with data isn’t in collecting it. It’s actually in using that data to make a change.

Therefore, one of the smartest moves you can make is to invest in your greatest asset: your people. To make people-first decisions, use your data to pinpoint areas of weakness and sources of strength. Next, plan initiatives to help create a stronger employee experience and retain top talent.

Some places to start are:

Identifying skills gaps

Many people leave their organization due to lack of development and career advancement – and to use a more specific example, 58% of tech workers cite skills development as their top motivator when choosing a new company. When you understand individual employees’ skills gaps, you can proactively offer professional development opportunities.

Furthermore, understanding the team’s skills gaps helps inform headcount planning scenarios so you can hire the best fit. In the end, you’ll have a well-rounded team, ready to collaborate and tackle any challenge ahead.

Tracking individual performance plans.

If only executives are privy to your people data, you’re missing out on empowering your managers. By granting middle managers certain access to their team’s data, you can enable them to track performance plans and OKR progress to better support their people.

Creating succession plans

You’re bound to experience expected and unexpected departures from your workforce, so it’s best to have plans in place so business is disrupted as little as possible. Luckily, you can use your people data to determine who has or needs the skill sets to become potential successors.

4. You’re not continuously analyzing your people data

You’ve collected the data. You’ve implemented your findings. Now what?

You guessed it: time to dive back into your data, regularly and often. It makes sense. How else would you really know if your initiatives are working or conditions are improving?

However, just because it makes sense doesn’t mean it always happens. In fact, out of 5,000 People leaders surveyed by Sapient Insights Group in 2021, 0% said they looked at diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics monthly. Yes, you read that right. Zero. This, in spite of the moral imperative that drives the majority of businesses according to a Workable survey on DEI also in 2021.

Therefore, in order to make data-driven and people-first decisions, develop a regular cadence to look over your metrics. Once you develop this habit, you’ll see a resounding difference in the impact you make on your entire organization.

Use your people data to create a stronger organization

It’s easy to make mistakes when it comes to your people data. Unfortunately, these errors – not collecting information during onboarding, tracking the wrong metrics, letting them go unused, and looking at data sporadically – put more than just your employee experience at risk.

When you don’t prioritize your data throughout the employee lifecycle, you also jeopardize your organization. And as we know, negative experiences can lead to disengagement, attrition, and missed goals, especially if you find issues in multiple stages of your employee lifecycle.

However, by implementing the tips above, you’ll be on your way to using your metrics effectively and make people-first, data-driven decisions to help your organization thrive.

The post 4 people data mistakes you’re making in the employee lifecycle appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Check out the official press release at PR Week

With Workable as a new partner, DMC is now able to offer six free months of Workable’s software to all past, present and future clients of DMC. This includes the ability to manage all hiring and recruitment in a centralized workspace from job posting to final offer letter, find and attract more candidates through advanced job board integrations and AI-powered sourcing, and automate replicable tasks to optimize the recruitment process and make an even more seamless experience for both the candidate and hiring team.

True to the DEI spirit, Workable also has a number of features to ensure a consistent and equitable hiring process through inclusive job descriptions and extension of job ads to premium diverse job boards. Workable also supports mitigation of unconscious bias through anonymized screening tools, standardization of interview questions and scorecards, and uniform, centralized assessments.

Finally, our Candidate Surveys allow users to collect anonymized applicant data to track DEI progress throughout the hiring process and to enable a fully EEO/OFCCP compliant application process, including voluntary surveys and reporting.

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion is critical for any business’s success, and it’s especially important for early stage startups to consider as they are building the foundation of their teams,” said Chris Gorsuch, Senior Manager, Partnerships at Workable.

“Workable recognizes the necessary and tremendous value that diversity brings to an organization – diverse perspectives lead to better outcomes for product, support, leadership, and critical innovation. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to help more startups achieve their DEI and business goals through great hiring software, support, and education.”

Leveling the playing field

Becky Honeyman, Managing Partner at SourceCode Communications and co-founder of the DMC, is always looking to grow support to her clients both current and future.

“While bringing on additional marketing agencies has been and continues to be a priority focus for our expansion, we have spent the last year really thinking about how we can increase our impact to our clients in an even more robust way,” she said.

“It’s no secret that hiring great talent – especially in the early stages of your business – is absolutely crucial to a company’s growth. So as we work to level the playing field for diverse founders, we thought what better way to offer them additional support than to provide access to a great talent pool, as well as the tools to efficiently carry out the hiring process.”

Becky added that DMC has been a customer of Workable for years, and that Workable’s offering to DMC’s clients at zero cost will have a huge impact on their ability to hire and retain top-tier talent at scale.

DEI is important to 93% of respondents to our 2021 survey on DEI in the workplace. Both Workable and DMC are in that 93%. And, as we write in the survey report, we aim to “reconcile the chasm between ‘talking the talk’ and ‘walking the walk’ when establishing a tangible and sustainable DEI strategy in your organization.” This partnership with DMC makes that an even more attainable goal.

The post DEI is in Workable’s eye in a new partnership with DMC appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

As of July 2022, the average wage for an American to switch jobs (the “reserve wage”) was $72,873. Averages skew toward the high end. All it takes is Bill Gates saying he’s willing to change jobs for $3.6 billion, and the average number goes up. Most Americans earn less than $72,873. A median figure would probably give a more accurate picture of what people look for.

But what’s more interesting is when you break it down by gender. The average reserve wage for men has gone up to $86,259 from the previous quarter, while the reserve wage for women dropped to $59,543.

That’s right. Men want more than they did in March, and women are willing to settle for less than they did in March.

What is happening here that women feel like they are worth less in July than they did in March?

The Fed does this survey three times a year, and the July numbers, released in August, are the latest. Maybe it was a blip. It doesn’t seem logical that with inflation soaring, women should be looking to settle for less. What’s going on here?

Settling for less to re-enter?

Caroline Fairchild, Editor in Chief of BFF, a website focused on cryptocurrency news for women and nonbinary people, has a theory that makes a lot of sense. She writes on LinkedIn:

Caroline writes: “My hunch is that the women who were out of the workforce during the pandemic are willing to accept less to get back in. Also, there is no understating the impact of no work or stressful work during the pandemic (women who stayed employed during COVID took on more responsibility) on the ability of women to negotiate for higher pay.”

She’s got a point. More women than men left the workforce in 2020, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. And they didn’t come back when businesses started to reopen and ramp up.

Eden King, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Rice University, explains that this isn’t purely preference. Societal pressures meant that when childcare became near impossible to find, women felt pressured to stay home while their husbands and boyfriends worked.

“Instead of opting out,” King told the American Psychological Association, “women are being pushed out.”

Additionally, women in 37% of families have most or all childcare responsibilities. So when schools and daycare centers closed, women left the workplace to care for their children.

Workable’s Great Discontent survey report found similar results, with twice as many women as men to cite family priorities to be the reason they’re not working (39.4% vs. 19.3%). That’s just for the US – in the UK, females are more than six times as likely as males to cite family priorities as the reason why they’re not working (41.7% vs. 6.7%).

Hiring biases

Because more women left the workforce than men and, therefore, have more significant gaps on their resumes, it is harder for them to land new opportunities.

An Indeed study in 2021 found that 70% of people in “hiring positions … believed that an unemployed person would make a less productive employee.”

Yikes. No wonder women are willing to work for less. If they’ve been out of the workforce for two years and 70% of hiring managers openly admit that they favor the already employed, it’s no wonder women feel they have to accept less money.

Can businesses fix this?

Yes, they can. Here is what needs to happen.

1. Stop the bias against the unemployed

We talk about unconscious bias, but this is conscious bias – remember, 70% of hiring managers explicitly preferred employed people. Whether you lose your job or choose to stay home, you don’t lose your ability to gain new skills.

2. List accurate salaries in the job posting

If you want to stop women from working less than men, stop making people guess the market rate for the position. List an accurate range – with the top being what your actual top range is. (Plenty of people use the whole range but never hire above midpoint. Make the midpoint your top-listed salary if you won’t go above that.)

3. Offer more flexibility

Women want more flexibility than men do, while female-heavy careers tend to be the ones without flexibility. If you can offer flexibility, do. Even offering a hybrid schedule or the chance to choose what time to come in can make a huge difference in attracting female candidates.

4. Offer fixed schedules

While this may seem a direct contradiction to the above, retail, restaurant, and healthcare jobs often have unpredictable schedules. If you recall, women take care of the children more than men. Daycare is difficult enough to find with a set schedule and can be nearly impossible if you work opening shifts all this week and closing shifts all next week. For in-person shift jobs, let employees pick shifts and stick to them.

5. Promote from within

An MIT Sloan Management study found that women who reached executive levels had to quit jobs to move up. It’s not that they weren’t capable – they had to go elsewhere to get someone to recognize that. Make sure you evaluate your current male and female employees for leadership roles.

Will the pay gap between men and women ever be zero? Probably not, because men and women do have different preferences.

But, when women think they are worth less now than they were a few months ago, it’s likely not a preference issue – business decisions matter; yours included.

The post Women will work for less now – but employers can fix this appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

On stage with Michelle was Workable’s CHRO Rob Long, who presented six unexpected findings from Workable’s Mental Health in the Workplace survey report for Michelle to address.

Here are the main takeaways from that discussion which was attended by hundreds:

1. Take a whole-organization approach

The first finding Rob presented was as above: 92.6% of our 1,303 survey respondents have or have had mental health challenges which impacted their work.

And on top of that, two out of every five say mental health is generally not discussed and they don’t want to be the first to bring it up.

Likewise, 35% don’t talk about mental health at work because of a fear of stigmatization and discrimination.

Clearly, there are blockers to open conversation about mental health at work.

How can a company change that?

“It is a whole organizational approach,” Michelle says. “It is a cultural change initiative.”

She admits it’s not easy. But it can be done.

“If we think about the roles that we can play and how we can remove [the mental health] stigma, a big part of that is starting to normalize the conversation around mental health and embedding that as part of the culture.”

“If we think about the roles that we can play and how we can remove [the mental health] stigma, a big part of that is starting to normalize the conversation around mental health and embedding that as part of the culture.”

First off, your company’s leaders need to be involved.

“They play a really key role in this and having them talk openly about their mental health journey, sharing stories, or even just making it really clear to the business around [how] that stance on mental health and wellbeing can make a massive change in terms of embedding and normalizing that as part of the culture.”

2. Assign a wellbeing champion

Rob then presented another finding from the survey: nearly two thirds (62.1%) said their employer is already prioritizing mental health, and another quarter (23.7%) will prioritize it going forward.

That’s a majority of employers, of course, but it’s just a first step. It behooves the question: now that mental health is prioritized, what’s next? What do employers do in terms of actionables?

Michelle’s answer is direct: start with having someone in charge beyond simply talking about it. This means tasking a person or group who can drive this initiative forward as part of their work – these can be termed as wellbeing champions or wellbeing gurus, for example.

“They really play a critical role in this as well in terms of launching those initiatives, keeping the conversation going,” says Michelle.People managers also have their role – since they’re the ones working directly with teams, they need to be adequately prepared to have conversations so that their direct reports feel comfortable in opening up.

“Anything we can do to enhance that psychological safety role is [going to] be really important there, to provide a very inclusive environment.”

“Anything we can do to enhance that psychological safety role is [going to] be really important there, to provide a very inclusive environment.”

The end goal, Michelle notes, is that mental health is viewed and discussed as on an equal plane with physical and dental health.

3. Be proactive, not reactive

A proactive approach is crucial as well. In that discussion, Rob shared his own experience in meeting with a counselor regularly, likening the experience to how some individuals hit the gym to maintain their physical health, and not only handle a physical problem when it actually happens.

“I go and see a counselor every other week, which I used to think was kind of something you did when you were ill,” he says. “But, actually, it’s just something to prepare yourself for when there are difficult times you can handle them better.”

This preemptive mindset is also something an organization can introduce into the overall culture. Instead of – or rather, in addition to – supporting employees when they’re in need of that support, your company can introduce regular 1-1s and check-ins, an open-door policy, mental wellness apps (i.e. Headspace, Calm), and other strategies.

The goal is to maintain your employees’ mental health – not simply come to their rescue when times are dire.

4. Look to the standard

One particular challenge rising from the mental health report is that while nine out of 10 respondents say it’s a priority in their company, that does mean one in 10 say it’s not a priority at all.

An additional third also say they’d like to do something but they aren’t sure where to start.

Put together, that effectively means 43% say their company isn’t tangibly doing anything in terms of mental health support.

After presenting these findings, Rob asked Michelle how HR professionals can drive progress in their company.

Michelle points to a standardized process for mental health at work as of June 2021: ISO 45003, titled “Occupational health and safety management – Psychological health and safety at work – Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks”. It offers a framework to protect mental health in the workplace and reduce psychological risk.

“It’s a good place to start to start to think about how [we can] look at our workplace and that inclusive environment and job roles and capacity and all these kinds of things to protect our employees, mental health and wellbeing at work,” says Michelle.

This has a double benefit: first, it serves as a roadmap for organizations stuck in the planning stages, and second, it’s a potential driver for those who need to see mental health incorporated into the company zeitgeist before they start prioritizing it.

5. Track everything

Tracking is crucial. “We can’t manage what we don’t measure,” says Michelle.

Tracking is, of course, about employee satisfaction surveys, but it can also be monitoring productivity levels.

Michelle herself also likes to keep a close eye on commentary in employer review sites such as Glassdoor. As she says, if even one employee refers to your culture as overworked, susceptible to burnout, or toxic, you need to pay attention.

“You have to take that on face value because that’s their perception of working there.”

Another related element of tracking is monitoring your company’s demographics so that your organization can understand the unique needs that may apply to one group but not to another – and ensuring that there’s something for everyone so that there’s a truly inclusive environment.

6. Don’t settle for ‘good intentions’

In regards to the most common mistake that employers can make and what they can do better, Michelle says it comes down to the way mental health is addressed one on one:

“Those of us that are trained in the language that we need to be using; these can be counterproductive. They can actually [be] detrimental, but we know that it doesn’t come from malice. It just comes from that misunderstanding,” says Michelle.

“We’re actually [at] that moment that people managers think that they are being empathetic.”

That’s where management training comes in; teaching well-meaning managers on how to have a proper discussion around mental health.

This again involves training leaders and educating people managers, and ultimately demonstrating that it’s part of the company culture to open up and discuss these sorts of things.

It’s also about maintaining a consistent process, and not everyone does that. Michelle has seen many companies launch the initiative of increased focus on mental health, but with staggered results in the long term.

“You know, it starts off with really great momentum, but you start to see those things drop off and it can be tough because those groups of employees tend to do that on top of their day job.“

“You know, it starts off with really great momentum, but you start to see those things drop off and it can be tough because those groups of employees tend to do that on top of their day job.“

In short: don’t simply let that initial statement of support speak for itself. Actions speak louder than words, and sustained actions speak even louder than that.

7. Be aware of differences in experience

While the conversation is becoming healthier all the time, not everyone feels equally great about it. A full third of those identifying as a minority say that the workplace mental health trend is actually getting worse, compared with 22.9% of those who don’t identify as a minority.

The first step, Michelle advises, is to ask those individuals what they mean by it getting “worse”. That doesn’t always mean asking them directly – it means carrying out anonymous surveys and anonymous focus groups.

The findings could range from that there’s more stigma attached to mental health, a less-than-satisfactory conversation with their manager, or discrimination based on gender, race or ethnicity.

And, Michelle adds, “we don’t know what else these individuals have dealt with.” We don’t know their life story or what they’ve personally experienced – which highlights the importance of recognizing one’s own biases and privileges before drawing conclusions on another’s journey or even prescribing policy in a misguided attempt at support.

8. Know the gender disparities as well

Similarly to the minority question, there’s a gender difference as well – more men than women don’t feel comfortable talking about mental health at work (29% of those identifying as male vs. 23.1% of those identifying as female).

Michelle, again, pointed to the stigma, coming from societal norms and identities around the male gender.

“We know in certain cultures and backgrounds, you don’t even talk about mental health because it’s seen as taboo or weakness,” Michelle says.

“We know from studies that men can rank lower in terms of life satisfaction because of things like financial burdens. We know that four out of five suicides will be by men… it’s just a really unfortunate step to see, but it’s not surprising in the fact that mirrors what we know.”

Likewise, those identifying as male are much more likely to utilize their company’s existing mental health services (49.5% vs. 38.5%), whereas females are more likely to procure support from outside of the company (33.5% vs. 24.3%). What does that indicate?

Michelle suggests that it comes from differing levels of knowledge or awareness across the genders. “We know again from literature and studies out there that those that identify as female […] have more knowledge about what support is out there for them.”

And so, they’re more likely to pursue that support that’s right for them rather than simply taking on the existing benefits that their company provides.

And, Michelle surmises, “Is it that those that are identifying as male here are heavily relying on what their employer gives them because […] that’s all they know and they don’t know what’s available to them outside of work?”

It may even go back to who designed the mental health services at a company. “Is it something to do with who shaped that wellbeing strategy?”

9. Do what’s right for you

Michelle, in conclusion, makes it clear that none of these things can drive a difference on their own. It needs to be a collective approach, a concerted strategy, and a consistent objective throughout.

And: much like people, organizations are different from one another. Taking the right approach can get you so far, but the right approach for your organization’s employees, which may be different from another organization, is key.

As Michelle says: “It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Related:

• Workplace mental health: Support your employees through the deep dark winter – written two years ago, but still has many relevant takeaways
• INFOGRAPHIC: Mental Health across the ages
• Employer mental health policy template

The post RecFest 2022: Six unexpected findings on workplace mental health appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What’s going on here? It’s not overt racism – your business is actively recruiting minority candidates. If you can get people on board but not retain them, it’s likely coming from something more subtle: cultural clashes at work.

Cultural differences at work

What do a Black superintendent and a potato-loving Asian have in common? They operate out of the local cultural norms.

Blacks or African Americans make up only 2.4% of the population in Salt Lake City, Utah, so it may not be surprising that the first Black Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Timothy Gadson III, only started in 2021. And the school board suspended him one year later – the same school board that unanimously approved his appointment.

Typically, having the same manager that hires you fire you is a pretty strong defense against illegal discrimination. After all, if the school board didn’t want a Black man in the position, why would they hire one? It can’t be racism – there must be another explanation.

The only school board member who voted to retain Gadson is also Black and said the complaints were “baseless, racially motivated and based on cultural misunderstandings.”

Local news reports claim critics called him loud and intimidating and say he abused his position by hiring other Black workers.

The potato-eating Asian story has a bit more humor: A white employee became upset that an Asian employee ate potatoes in a “sexy” way – biting into them whole. When an investigation showed that she also criticized another Asian employee’s lunch choices, it became clear: This was never about eating potatoes. This was about watching someone do something outside of local cultural norms.

What is culture?

Culture is the “ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society.” You don’t generally even notice the culture you grew up in. This is just how things are. Think about it: when you are at a friend’s house at dinner time, does the friend invite you to stay for dinner?

You may be surprised that the answer to that is entirely cultural. Given that you’re not dying of starvation or are impoverished to the point that you can’t feed yourself, inviting someone to stay for dinner varies significantly from culture to culture. In Sweden, your hosts likely won’t offer you a plate of food.

On the other hand, in other countries, your host would feed you and sacrifice their own dinner to ensure you, the guest, get to eat.

This is blowing people’s minds, so as an amateur historian and sociologist I’m going to try to explain this development/ cultural artifact. pic.twitter.com/vNF0MMpMFK

— Incompetent Beneficiary of Nepotism (@WallySierk) May 29, 2022

Culture impacts every moment of our lives. How we shop, how we eat, how we greet (or don’t greet!) our neighbors on the street, and how loud we speak in public are all part of the culture. And the funny thing is, most people assume that how they do it is how everyone does it until they directly confront a situation outside their cultural bubble.

To help diversity thrive in your organization, you need to recognize the value of culture – which includes knowing when to let things go and when to say: “That’s not how we do things here.”

Have your company culture accept all cultures

The key to accepting other cultures is to separate out what things are essential and what are not important. Ask yourself: Am I making this criticism because it is different or because it is wrong?

• Different: talking loudly and directly
• Wrong: talking rudely

• Different: wearing a hairstyle outside the local cultural norms
• Wrong: not having good hygiene

• Different: wanting to start work at 10 instead of 8
• Wrong: not showing up for meetings on time and wasting people’s time

• Different: having a name that is difficult for native English speakers to pronounce
• Wrong: refusing to learn how to pronounce someone’s name

Making this distinction between different and wrong can help you stop and think before you blurt something out. Eating potatoes with your fingers may seem wrong, but it’s just a cultural difference.

Standardize processes

One of the best ways to limit discrimination based on cultural differences is to set measurable goals for employees and then follow up on those. If you just let managers do whatever they want, you can end up with discriminatory practices that drive people out.

For instance, Textio found that men were likelier to receive feedback solely based on their work, while women received personality feedback. Managers also used different words to describe male and female employees. Can you guess which words were more likely to be associated with women?

• Group 1: brilliant, genius, confident, ambitious
• Group 2: abrasive, challenging, helpful, collaborative

If you guessed Group 1 was men, and Group 2 was women, you’d be right. Why do these words come up in performance appraisals? They are just cultural nightmares, and how does someone respond or change their behavior based on that?

Women are twice as likely to report being described as collaborative and nice. While men are three times more likely to report being described as confident and 3.7 times more likely to report being described as ambitious. https://t.co/Xy3KFcKJRv pic.twitter.com/40Jl3zZ9L8

— Textio (@textio) August 2, 2022

Instead, have all performance appraisals focus on the job and stay away from personality. If a manager feels compelled to comment on an employee’s “abrasive” personality, ask the manager to explain why that is a problem.

If the manager can’t articulate how it causes problems in the office, then it doesn’t go into the appraisal.

Don’t describe – explain

If they can, then the explanation goes in, not the description. For instance, instead of saying, “You are abrasive,” you’d say, “You cut customers off in mid-sentence. Please focus on letting people finish their thoughts before answering.”

An employee can change behavior on the latter because it’s a specific and resolvable example. ‘Abrasive’ is just too general.

This helps you avoid cultural mixups and forces managers to justify their criticisms and praises – it goes both ways. No one would write, “You are a genius” in a performance appraisal. Instead, give details about what the employee did that evokes that impression. You may find out that the person isn’t a genius after all if you can’t identify what they did.

Fixing cultural differences at work is only one step toward making your business a better place for everyone, but it can be a step toward helping to retain and develop underrepresented employees. And that’s good for every business.

The post Cultural differences at work: another challenge for DEI appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

First-generation professionals have their own unique challenges when entering the mainstream working environment, and Fadjanie knows this experience first-hand. Her new book, In First Place: How to Win over First Generation Professionals with your Inclusion Strategy, coaches you on how to attract, develop and retain this crucial segment of the working population.

You can find Fadjanie here and buy her book on Amazon here.

The post Your DEI strategy must include first-generation professionals appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

How taboos change

Can you recommend a therapist? Have you had therapy?

Those questions would have been shocking and rude in previous times, but Gen Z has no problem talking about mental health and seeking therapy or medication. How did this happen?

Very Well Mind theorizes, “Gen Z has grown up in a world where it’s normal and considered natural to get treatment for psychological problems. They don’t know any different, and so they don’t attach any bad feelings to speaking about it.”

Gen Z alone doesn’t deserve the credit for being open – it was also the hard work of previous generations that worked to remove stigmas around discussing mental health. The result is a generation with the ability to talk about these things openly.

We are with salary now where we were 30 years ago with mental health. People are starting to talk about it – in fact, a Glassdoor survey finds 70% of employees across seven countries say salary transparency is a good thing.

It’s still a taboo for many, though. People are working hard to change that, though.

New laws around salaries

Some of these taboos around pay transparency are being broken by state legislatures. For instance, Colorado and New York City both have laws requiring salary ranges on job postings. Companies worked around the Colorado law by advertising in their job ads that remote employees could work in any state but Colorado – because they didn’t want to share salary information.

New York City’s law didn’t go into effect until May 15, 2022. Even then, with so many big companies already located there, it’s not likely to prevent companies from going the Colorado company route and offering remote positions in the Big Apple.

Twenty-two states have bans on asking job candidates to produce their salary histories. That may seem like a step backward for salary transparency, but the opposite is true: when companies can’t rely on a person’s previous salary they have to create their own salary around market rates. Knowing previous salaries helped employers to maintain disparate pay and gave companies strong reasons to not want people to speak about it.

For example, if Bianca was making $40,000 at her last job and Dimitri was earning $50,000 at his last job, and you offer them both a 10-percent increase, you can pat yourself on the back and say you’re fair. But, deep down, you know that is not fair.

By not allowing employers to know previous salaries, they are more likely to offer a reasonable wage to both. Without that salary gap, they are less inclined to care if Bianca and Dimitri compare salaries.

Employees have the right to talk salaries

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in the United States protects the rights of employees to talk about their salaries with their coworkers. This is called “concerted activity,” and the National Labor Relations Board doesn’t look kindly on companies that punish employees from talking about it.

That doesn’t stop companies from attempting to ban salary discussions. Even big names like Apple and Google get nervous when employees discuss salaries. But talk you can – just perhaps not on company servers.

With the ease that people can share information now, it seems more and more likely that these outlier spreadsheets will become the norm.

People leading the pay transparency shift

Alison Green, who writes the Ask a Manager Blog, asks people to share their salaries. The result is a sortable spreadsheet with 24,000 responses that can help you determine your own market worth.

Also, the Global Editor of Business Insider, Nicholas Carlson, announced a new project to help demystify salaries:

Insider is launching a series that demystifies people's salaries, and we need your help https://t.co/lsaYePUyEz

— Nicholas Carlson (@nichcarlson) January 25, 2022

But, when asked to share his own salary, he balked, responding:

“Fun question! I’d rather not say publicly for lots of practical reasons I’m sure you can imagine. This feels a little wimpy but also prudent. I think I would submit it to some third party I could trust to keep it anonymous and average it with other people in roles like mine.”

What is your salary, Nich?

— Becky Peterson (@beckpeterson) January 25, 2022

We do, it seems, want everyone else to go first. I’ll tell you my salary if you tell me yours, but you better go first!

Well, somebody needs to go first.

How is recruiting and hiring affected?

People push back on companies that won’t share salary ranges up front. With many areas facing a labor shortage, quality candidates won’t waste their time on companies that won’t open up about salaries – whether up front or early in the recruitment process.

Even if you’re not hiring in Colorado or NYC, you will increase your candidate pool by being honest – unless your salaries are too low.

Plus, it saves everyone time and effort if you speak up first. It also cuts down on the potential for discrimination and bias.

Recruiter Mercedes Johnson found out the hard way how people won’t stand for hidden salaries that result in underpaying people. She wrote a Facebook post that stated:

“I just offered a candidate $85,000 for a job that had a budget of 130K. I offered her that because that’s what she asked for & I personally don’t have the bandwidth to give lessons on salary negotiation. Here’s the lesson: ALWAYS ASK FOR THE SALARY YOU WANT (DESERVE), no matter how large you think it might be. You never know how much money a company has to work with. #BeConfident”

The response was not “Oh yes; I should negotiate better,” but instead went on the offensive against Johnson. In short – the candidate shouldn’t have to be confident in negotiations. Rather, the onus should be on the company to be upfront about the pay for a job.

There are 2 types of ppl in this world smh pic.twitter.com/dlHA3rXJWB

— COURT-COURT (@TE_AMO_COURT) January 29, 2022

Johnson learned her lesson – and was let go from her role – but companies that try to keep salaries hush-hush may find themselves on the wrong side of Twitter or /r/antiwork. It’s not a nice place to be.

Let’s all be open about how much we’re being paid for a job. You tell me yours, and I’ll let you know mine.

The post Salary transparency: Good thing for employees – and employers? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

1. Most helpful when building a case for a hiring solution

This one’s easy. You want to get the smoothest, baddest applicant tracking software in the land, but your boss is too embroiled in their own processes to take notice. You know what makes them sit up and take notice? If you present them the value of an ATS in their own language – which usually is in monetary terms.

So, our piece on how to calculate the ROI of an ATS comes in hugely helpful here. Pull out the old calculator, get a pen and paper, and start crunching those numbers!

Read now: How to calculate the ROI of an ATS

2. The most informative for driving DEI where it matters

Awareness of diversity, equity and inclusion shot into the stratosphere in mid-2020 and it’s still top of mind for many employers worldwide. But we have two major messages when it comes to DEI: first, there’s a difference between D, E, and I, and second, you don’t “win” at diversity just because you’ve managed to achieve it throughout your company.

Rather, you need to attain diversity in leadership. There’s a glaring imbalance in diversity numbers in leadership when compared with overall diversity, and that needs to be improved on if real progress is to be made. And if you’re not getting buy-in from your leaders, you can convince them that it makes good business sense to do so. This infographic gives you everything on all of the above, and more.

Check out our infographic: Diversity in leadership: Why it matters and what you can do

3. The most audacious piece of content

We’ve been talking (and writing, and video-ing) about the future of work for a long time now. We’ve discussed remote work, flexible schedules, gender parity, salaries, global talent markets, candidate discontentment, talent shortages, and a lot more.
‘
But one topic really tickled our fancy (and yours, too, if you’re accustomed to a standard Monday-Friday work week) – the four-day work week. The Chief Growth Officer at Service Direct shared their first-hand account of how the company tried an alternating four-day work week as an experiment, and found it hugely successful.

Read now: Implementing an alternating four-day workweek: how & why

4. The most comprehensive (and timely) study

This one is a no-brainer to us. Out of all the blog posts, infographics, videos, etc. that we’ve produced throughout 2021, two 6,000-word survey reports published in September really stand out. They’re the result of two in-depth surveys to better understand what matters to workers in a job – one for the United States and one for the United Kingdom.

If you’re an employer looking to understand what candidates really want so you can attract more of them to your company, grab a cup of coffee (or beer – we won’t tell anyone), and have a read.

Read the US report: The Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey (US)

Read the UK report: The Great Discontent: 2021 Worker Survey (UK)

5. The best for geeking out on hiring data

We know that hiring benchmarks are important to our audience, especially in these wacky times where nothing feels normal anymore. So we developed a new way to look at hiring trends because month-over-month and especially year-over-year data doesn’t make sense anymore considering the volatility of the labor market.

The result of that new methodology is the Hiring Pulse, which was launched in September. It’s a monthly series of data-packed insights so you can see where hiring is going, be it based on industry, function, location, or overall.

Read the latest: The Hiring Pulse

6. The most insightful and commandeering

A big contributor to our content in 2021 is the Evil HR Lady, Suzanne Lucas. A veteran in the HR space who now can speak from direct experience, her sharp to-the-point tone is popular with our audience.

One message we want to drive home is that in this rapidly evolving talent marketplace, the onus is on employers to adapt to this new environment if they want to attract candidates. Suzanne drove that point home with her piece on how the rules of talent engagement are changing.

Read now: The rules of talent engagement are changing: What’s new now?

7. The most inspirational content of the year

The Evil HR Lady isn’t the only contributor we saw in our content in 2021. In February, world-renowned talent management expert Josh Bersin joined us for what turned out to be the most-attended virtual event we’ve hosted all year.

The webinar, titled Step Into the Future with Josh Bersin, led off with one of our favorite descriptions of the tumultuous work world: “We’re entering an effervescent time.” It’s a refreshingly optimistic delivery on all the things that HR can look forward to, and left many in our audience smiling during these tough times.

Check out the webinar:

Check out the podcast:

And if you don’t have the the time, we’ve compiled the top 10 takeaways into a blog post for you.

Read more: Josh Bersin’s recruiting and HR trends for the future

8. Most popular Tutorial

A list like this can’t simply be left to our judgement of what we think is our best and most helpful hiring resource because, well, our judgement alone can’t always be trusted (we’re human, after all). We also need to look at the raw numbers too – for instance, the title of most-read tutorial of the year goes to (drum roll): the top HR interview questions!

It is what it says: the top 10 interview questions asked in the HR interview – which would mostly be at the screening stage of the hiring process. It’s a very nuts-and-bolts piece which delivers – which is probably why it’s number one in terms of popularity for the year.

Read now: HR interview questions: The top 10 questions asked in the HR interview

9. Most popular Stories & Insights

Our Better Hiring site also includes thought leadership and insights in the hiring world. Which means it would make sense to share the top hiring resource from our Stories & Insights section as well. Again, it’s something that’s very top of mind for recruiters in our audience: the most common recruiting challenges and what you can do to overcome them.

What’s great about this piece is how cut-and-dried it is. It lays out very neatly the top challenges that recruiters are dealing with (especially right now), and shares actionable solutions which can be valuable for an overworked, tired audience that’s just looking to get the job done so they can sleep at night.

Read now: The most common recruiting challenges and how to overcome them

10. Most popular video(s)

We noted above that the Josh Bersin webinar was the most impactful in terms of attendance – but what was the most popular video hiring resource of the year? Well, we’re going to cheat and share two, because they’re so different in terms of tone and purpose and both deserve their moment in the spotlight.

First, our customer case study featuring Cytora, an insurance startup in London, and their story of how they accelerated hiring from 20 to 60 employees in just 2.5 years:

And second, an expert-led video tutorial on how to build up your DEI initiative, from someone who does it as a full-time job:

Both videos saw immense reach throughout 2021 and continue to be popular today.

What’s your top hiring resource of 2021?

A list like this would be remiss if we didn’t ask our audience directly: what do you think is the top hiring resource we’ve created all year? We want to know. Send us an email to content@workable.com with “Hiring resources” in the subject heading, and tell us why you liked it so much and what else you’d like to see from us going into 2022.

And without further ado, wishing you the best for 2022!

The post Top 10 hiring resources to help you hire in 2022 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Those organizations that are taking their diversity and inclusion efforts seriously should understand that one area makes up a crucial part of it – positive discrimination. When done right, it has the potential to holistically improve your company’s diversity hiring practices.

Since diversity in the workplace continues to be held back due to recruitment biases, positive discrimination is even more important to further the cause. Let’s get to it then, shall we? #DEI 101!

What is positive discrimination?

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the term “positive discrimination” is the lack of awareness around this subject. What does it mean, where does it stem from, why is it needed, and is it even OK to add this to your company’s DEI policies?

By definition, positive discrimination refers to preferential treatment demonstrated with the intent of bringing an underrepresented group (who possess one or more protected characteristics) to a level of equity in the workplace.

Whether positive or negative, it still is discrimination of some kind. Why should we do it then?

To understand why positive discrimination is required, we need to educate ourselves about equity, equality, and how they differ from each other. Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities, which takes into account an ideal situation where all people are equal.

Addressing the imbalance of marginalized groups in our workplaces is only possible through equity. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the necessary resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.

For a better understanding of these terms, let’s look at two examples:

1. A community meeting, where all members of the community are invited, about a local environmental health concern is held in English although 30% of the residents do not speak English.
2. At another community meeting, the community leaders hire translators to attend the meeting or offer an additional meeting held in another language.

The first case treats everyone the same (equally), which does not guarantee a positive outcome for all the members. The second instance recognizes the individual needs of the members and takes proactive steps to meet those needs equitably.

My first-hand experience with the above:

Over a period of time, I’ve personally experienced situations at work where I’ve had to learn, and then unlearn to strongly move away from the word ‘equality’ and associate the word ‘equity’ with inclusion and diversity instead. Coming from this place, I believe in positively discriminating for ‘equity’.

More about protected characteristics

Positive discrimination can apply to any person who has at least one of the protected characteristics. The policy was put into place in the 1960s to level the playing field for historically discriminated/overlooked groups. There are nine protected characteristics that fall under this policy:

1. Age
2. Disability
3. Gender reassignment
4. Marriage or civil partnership
5. Pregnancy and maternity
6. Race
7. Sex
8. Religion or belief
9. Sexual orientation

Examples of positive discrimination in the workplace

Positively discriminating for equity can lead to dramatically good outcomes for marginalized communities. The practices a company implements to foster inclusion in the workplace directly help in fostering positive discrimination in the workplace. Examples of positive discrimination that I’ve personally seen are:

• Hiring drive specifically for women candidates to increase the pool of candidates at the source and further gender (women) diversity
• Specific career development program for women, to increase the pipeline and gender ratio of women senior leaders at the top

Such practices help you understand the gaps in your workforce and improve workforce equity so you will be better equipped to make strategic hiring decisions.

What we do at HackerEarth

At HackerEarth, our intent and approach focus on inclusion with the end goal of achieving equity in the workplace. Keeping this at the heart of whatever we do, here are some policies we enforce at work:

• Under our leave policy, we include period leaves for women and paternity leaves for one month
• Employee insurance coverage offers same-sex partner inclusion as part of the policy

We hold awareness sessions specifically to talk about how to use the correct gender pronouns, spread awareness about gender stereotypes and the need to accept non-binary employees into the workforce, and touch upon inclusive behaviors in the workplace, among other topics

My first-hand experience with the above:

Ironically enough, when we first started discussing including period leave in our leave policy, I was hesitant. There were two reasons for this – one was that periods don’t give me acute pain/cramps or discomfort so I can handle it pretty well. The other was we would be showing preference to one gender by giving time off so should we also do something for men, just to keep it even?

I had to think, assess, and justly accept that we have our differences and similarities, despite being of the same gender. While all women have periods, not all react in the same way, which is exactly why we need to provide individual resources based on need. And the same can be said for men. As genders, we are biologically different and will require a separate set of resources to attain the end goal of equality and foster an inclusive workplace.

This was my first brush with the equity vs. equality conflict and needless to say, I’ve been on the side of equitable policies ever since.

Ways to positively discriminate

1. Do your DEI research

Before you blindly start on your DEI journey, you should do your research. Companies must educate themselves on where they currently stand in their diversity hiring, the industry research of past and present companies, and sociological studies. This helps identify gaps in the existing workforce and a better understanding of the strategy you should devise. Go back to the basics of what diversity and inclusion mean for your company and take it from there.

2. Implement a shared vocabulary

Creating a shared lexicon around the correct pronouns to use, and important DEI concepts they should know in your organization – and explaining meanings – is the first way to establish equity. By incorporating shared vocabulary into the workplace, both employees and employers are more likely to identify what is acceptable and what is not.

3. Select leaders who believe in the cause for equity

Identify champions for DEI and positive discrimination at senior leadership and top management levels. They are the ones that can communicate policies and values top-down, ensure that it is a priority, and be role models for the employees to emulate in their behaviors. Also, the higher levels of a company should reflect the diversity of their employees to be a truly inclusive workplace. The data is clear: DEI leadership is crucial for success.

4. Integrate positive discrimination into your strategy

At HackerEarth, inclusion is at the heart of whatever we do. We believe attaining equity in the workplace does not happen overnight. It has to be woven into the threads of the entire organization to successfully build an inclusive culture. Use a combination of leadership training, behavioral coaching, and planning to integrate positive discrimination for equity into your strategy. Give people the correct language to use, ask them to call out behaviors that are not accepted, and sensitize others towards these behaviors. Don’t restrict spreading awareness to only on the marginalized groups – include concepts like ‘allyship’ and positive discrimination.

5. Keep an ongoing dialogue on positive discrimination

Use research and learnings from other companies to start the conversation with your employees who are invested in this cause. Creating an inclusive workplace is creating an organizational culture of belonging that invites and values the contribution and participation of all their people.

At HackerEarth, this is one of the reasons why I decided to keep an open dialogue going to exchange thoughts, opinions, and ideas from different perspectives on my LinkedIn channel.

A word of caution

Practicing positive discrimination to simply fill a company quota is as harmful as taking up diversity hiring just to meet some numbers. It inadvertently perpetuates bias and affects the morale of a company.

Personally, the trick here is to keep equity at front of mind and not lose sight of that. And then use positive discrimination to create better opportunities and visibility for underrepresented groups.

The main word to place the spotlight on here would be “to be given equal opportunity / visibility.” Use the lens of merit, accordingly for all the candidates in consideration. Practice with intent and not just for the sake of it.

Swetha’s bio in her own words: As an HR professional, I’m fiercely passionate about the value I add to the individuals and teams that I associate myself with. Absolutely enjoy working on organizational development, change and transformation management. ‘Cultural transformation’ and ‘Inclusion’ are a few of my favorite topics to talk about. My personal style and approach come from the interest and passion that I share for art and various forms of mind-body expression. I strongly believe in challenging the status quo, whether it is by standing on my head once every day (read yoga), or by standing up and voicing my opinion on diversity and inclusion in our workplaces.

The post Positive discrimination: What it is and how you can implement it appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Hiring managers need to get creative to solve this staffing problem. By doing so, they can solve today’s crisis and address lingering, systemic inequalities in our employment system.

• Look to women to solve the hiring crisis
  • Women are an undertapped resource for hiring teams
  • The unique social and economic burdens on women
• The economic impact of the pandemic
• Women as an undertapped resource
  • 1. Part-time work
  • 2. Flexible and/or remote work
  • 3. Salary
  • 4. Child-care benefits
  • 5. Parental leave programs
• Case study: Working mothers in education
• Why are so many teachers women?
  • 1. School schedules
  • 2. Parental leave policies
  • 3. Benefits

Look to women to solve the hiring crisis

Women are an undertapped resource for hiring teams

Women have overwhelmingly borne the worst of the economic and occupational impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has only worsened existing structural inequalities. Hiring teams have a unique opportunity to tap into this group, which has been largely overlooked as a potential solution to ongoing staffing difficulties. Companies that address barriers to female success at work can take advantage of all they have to offer.

The unique social and economic burdens on women

Women have been economically oppressed for centuries. Only in the last hundred years have women’s rights truly begun to expand: to education and literacy, work, and voting rights. Even when women’s rights began to expand, women of color faced barriers to equality. The effects of these historical inequalities are, in many ways, still felt today:

• Women earn less than men in every professional category tracked by the Department of Labor, including in education, an industry in which women are more than twice as likely than men to work.
• And while women as a whole earn about 82% of men annually, that number is even lower for women of color. Black women with a bachelor’s degree only earn about 65% of what white men with the same education earn.

Under U.S. federal law, women have the right to 12 unpaid weeks of maternity leave, but paid maternity leave varies drastically by employer. Poor labor provisions for new mothers as well as the exorbitant cost of daycare for young children lead many new mothers to exit the workforce completely, often for years at a time.

Working mothers must balance their full- or part-time work with taking care of children and the unpaid labor involved in running a household. Women spend between two and ten times more time on unpaid labor than men.

The economic impact of the pandemic

These were the factors at play when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in March of 2020. The effects the pandemic has had on gender equality at work are downright chilling. Women’s labor force participation rate, meaning the percentage of adult women who choose to work, fell to an astonishing 55.8%. The last time the number was this low? 1987.

As school went virtual for much of the country, working mothers were put in an impossible bind: find a way to guide their children through virtual school while somehow still working full-time, or quit their jobs. Many chose to leave work, finding maintaining the balance impossible.

Our research found that American women are more than twice as likely than men to cite family duties as the reason they’re not working. In the U.K., women are more than six times (41.7%) as likely as men (6.7%) to say that family priorities keep them from working.

Women lost 5.4 million jobs during the pandemic, compared to 4.4 million for men. This is largely due to so-called ‘pink-collar jobs’; women hold many of the low-wage positions in the United States. In fact, in 2018, 46% of working women were employed in low-wage jobs. A quarter (25%) of working women are mothers of a child under the age of 14, but many of those women struggle to find affordable childcare, with childcare for toddlers averaging $900 per child per month. To learn more about the ways the pandemic is affecting working women, check out our article and infographic.

Jump to the full infographic – or download it for yourself here.

Women as an undertapped resource

This much is certain: our economy is not making use of women’s labor the way it could, and when it does, women are not fairly compensated for their work, experience, and education. The pandemic has worsened existing disparities along racial and gender lines, and hiring professionals in general seem to be overlooking the under- and unemployment of women as an opportunity for recruitment.

But simply recognizing the way that women have been unfairly impacted by the tumultuous work conditions of the pandemic is not enough to execute a solution to ongoing staffing issues. The largest barrier, perhaps, is the fact that for many of the nearly three million women who have left the workforce over the last year, they have no intention to return to the workforce anytime soon.

Even among women who are still employed, a survey from Deloitte found that 60% are planning to leave their jobs in the next two years.

Why? Lack of work-life balance was the number one cited reason that women are planning to leave their jobs.

In order to hire women, companies are going to have to incentivize them to return to work. What will it take to get women to consider rejoining the workforce? Let’s discuss some of the benefits you can offer women to encourage them to join your organization.

1. Part-time work

Many new moms would like to continue working after they have their child, but are faced with an impossible choice: stay home and quit altogether, or return full-time and find a way to afford full-time childcare. Part-time work continues to carry a stigma in the corporate world – and without good reason, because it is actually a potential solution to staffing problems and gendered workplace inequality.

Our survey found that women are more than twice as likely to say they’re currently working part-time than men. If you can’t find candidates to fill your full-time position, consider switching it to a part-time position instead.

2. Flexible and/or remote work

Allowing your employees to work on a flexible schedule can make work far more accessible for working mothers. Consider, for example, the typical 9-5 work day. For parents with children in school, their workday ends after school (with school days typically ending between 2 and 4:30). This can put parents, especially single parents, in a bind. In fact, 44% of women we surveyed said that work flexibility would attract them to a new opportunity, as opposed to just 31.6% of men.

Similarly, 39.7% said they like remote work because it makes it easier to integrate personal and professional priorities. Remote work can be a better option for women who have long been excluded from the workforce due to competing priorities.

3. Salary

Women are motivated by salary and benefits just as men are. In our survey, men were slightly more likely (67.3%) to say that salary attracts them to a new opportunity than women (61.8%).

That being said, consider the cost of child care and the gender wage gap when thinking about salary in the context of employing women and working mothers.

4. Child-care benefits

How can your organization support working parents? Work-life integration is one of the top priorities for working mothers, so to hire women, you’re going to have to show concrete proof that your culture is supportive.

One way to do this could be through offering child-care benefits, such as company or subsidized child-care, or credits for employees with children in child care.

5. Parental leave programs

Do you offer parental leave? How generous is your parental leave program? Generous parental leave shows your employees that you support gender equality.

Why? Because having a child is physically taxing, and inadequate parental leave dismisses the physical and emotional recovery that parents go through following the birth of a child.

With childbirth, household duties, and childcare falling unequally on women, parental leave is one way to balance the scales.

Case study: Working mothers in education

To explore other ways your organization can hire and retain women and working mothers, let’s look at a sector that employs women at one of the highest rates: education.

Nearly nine out of 10 (87%) of primary school teachers in the U.S. are women, according to the World Bank. Teaching is the second-most common profession for American women, after nursing. Women are twice as likely as men to be teachers.

We also know that, overall, one-third of full-time workers care for a child under the age of 18. Compare this to the fact that 48% of teachers have at least one child to care for, and we see that there are more working mothers in education than other professions.

Why are so many teachers women?

There are many factors to consider here. The history of women as teachers may play a role, as might be the fact that women hold more jobs in less traditionally prestigious professions like education.

Some would point to the caregiving and nurturing aspects of teaching as reasons that the profession attracts a high number of female employees.

But perhaps the most compelling theory is that the profession simply fits better structurally with the life of the working mother. Here are a few ways that education sector policy lines up with working parents’ priorities.

1. School schedules

For working parents, corporate schedules that demand presence in an office from 9-5 make it challenging to care for children. Even if the children are school-aged, most school days end between 2 and 4:30 p.m. This leaves working parents scrambling to coordinate expensive daycare or babysitters.

For mothers who work as teachers, their schedules align far more closely with children who are school-aged. In addition to making pick-up and drop-off easier, if a parent works in the same school district where their child goes to school, they share the same school holidays and break schedules. Working mothers are able to care for their children full-time at home during the summer holiday.

2. Parental leave policies

School district policy on parental leave varies dramatically by geographical location. In North Carolina, for example, new parents are entitled to up to a year of unpaid leave following the birth or adoption of a child. This is far more generous than the 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave guaranteed by federal law.

This is just one example, though, and certainly many parents can’t afford to take an unpaid year off of work following the birth of a child.

Some teachers use school schedules to time their pregnancies with summer break to get the most possible time with new children under a system that doesn’t meet their needs.

3. Benefits

Public school teachers, as government employees, generally have access to decent benefits, a must for any working parent. While teachers are underpaid, most school districts offer robust healthcare options and even pensions.

With education offering little prestige and no promise of wealth, the number of educated women choosing to pursue this career path speaks to the other advantages it offers. Organizations looking to bring working mothers back into the workforce can learn from the opportunities and pitfalls of one of the most common professions for women.

Educate your business – in more ways than one

Your company can contribute to ending decades of gendered economic inequality by making your organization a haven for working moms. But in order to get women to return to the workforce, you have to fix what’s broken and address their needs. Shift to align your priorities with working women and you’ll gain the benefit of them as an untapped staffing resource.

The post The education solution: Address gender barriers as an employer appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

And the Great Discontent survey carried out by Workable in June 2021 points to the disparity in current working situation between the genders, with those identifying as female far more likely to be not working (26% vs. 15.3%) or working part-time (17.7% vs. 8.6%) than males in the United States.

The World Economic Forum also reported similar data:

What does that say about how our workplaces are doing in supporting working mothers?

We’ll let TopResume’s report answer that:

“Women have had to navigate the stress and time-management challenges of taking on the role of teacher and child-care provider while attempting to work or find work during quarantine. All of these factors together have led to what economists are calling the world’s first ‘she-cession’ – a women-led economic downturn.”

To gain further insight, we sat down with TopResume’s career expert Amanda Augustine – herself a working mom – for a conversation about this. Clearly, employers need to up their game if they want to be part of changing things for the better.

The plight of the working mother

The mother of a five-year-old boy with special needs, Amanda’s own personal and professional load is further stressed by the fact that she has a husband who works long hours as an essential worker. And, she says, women feel they have to take all that on – more so than men.

“I think for the working mother in general, we’ve grown up hearing, ‘You can do anything’, and we’ve somehow translated that over time into ‘You should do everything,’” says Amanda. “And there’s a lot of extra responsibility and weight and stress we put on ourselves.”

And that commitment to a full-time workload also ate into Amanda’s daily schedule. Before the pandemic, she commuted into New York City for work three times a week, translating into three hours of commuting each day. This meant less time with her son all around.

“I only saw my son for two hours a day on the weekdays. I was gone well before he was awake. And I came home, picked him up from daycare and I got two hours before he had to be in bed.”

The sacrifice and the stigma

Work has long been an unmovable pillar around which we mold other parts of our lives. It’s created a situation where working mothers worry that if they make concessions in the workplace – such as arriving late or leaving early because they need to drop off or pick up their kids at school or the daycare, it impacts their career arc.

“[Those] suddenly become issues where they have to be navigated around fears that you’re not going to be put up for the promotion, or you’re not going to get the raise,” Amanda explains.

“And because whether, you know, whether [working mothers think] correctly or not, they’re going to assume that it’s either not feasible or that they’re concerned that other priorities will take over, which is just… it’s unfair.”

There’s also a proximity bias in the workplace that makes things even more difficult for working mothers forced to make amends in their schedule to accommodate demands on the home front.

“There’s this false assumption by managers that the people they see working in the office are more productive than the ones that they don’t see.”

It’s not COVID’s fault

These problems facing working mothers aren’t rooted in the pandemic. Rather, the pandemic simply exposed – and exacerbated – the problems that have long existed in the system.

“Many of us were already underwater before the pandemic and the pandemic was that last straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Amanda. “It pushed on all those little cracks and just made them that, that more obvious.”

That’s why working mothers are leaving the workforce in droves – if they can – because they’ve given up on the possibility of a much-needed balance between work and home life.

“Women aren’t going to just show up and sacrifice everything,” says Amanda, emphasizing that this is a situation faced by fathers as well.

“For some people, it’s a re-evaluation of their priorities. Many are assuming that they’re not going to find a job that’s going to allow them to still keep some of these things [remote work, etc.] that were actually the silver linings of the pandemic.”

That 69% statistic points to this new reality.

“What’s happening now is that people are [saying], ‘Do we really need that income? Can we get by without it? I’m going to hold out until there’s something that really makes sense and is a good fit. I’m not rushing back to the workplace, because I want to see what happens.’”

It’s a crisis, but it’s an opportunity

We’re already seeing a recruitment crisis – as indicated by the staggering numbers of job openings, higher than the number of unemployed, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This exodus of working mothers presents an added challenge for recruiters already facing depleted talent pools.

“[Many] recruiters I hear from and talk to are just saying, ‘We can’t fill these positions. We can’t get people in the door what’s going on here.’”

And it’s not that these are not good opportunities. These are “white collar, corporate, good paying jobs”, Amanda adds.

“A good portion of your normal labor force or, you know, is not looking right now. And so you’re missing out on a lot of that.”

But there’s good news. They’ll come back – if the conditions are right.

“Many of them would probably come back [if] they’d be able to still bring in that money or do what they love, but in a more balanced fashion where they don’t feel as though they’re slightly underperforming in every aspect of their lives.”

That’s where greater support of working mothers is needed in the workplace. Forcing your employees to find a balance between work and home actually hurts at both ends. Something always has to give.

“If you’re feeling really great as a mom, you feel like you’re probably not the star employee that day. And if you’re really rocking it at work, chances are, you’re not feeling like you’re getting a gold star from your kids that day.

“And you know, it’d be nice if that wasn’t necessarily the feeling all the time.”

The need for flexible schedules

So how do you build an environment that supports working mothers? Obviously not every company can do everything – but you can start by looking at the things you can do that don’t drastically impact your bottom line. The first objective is to build up your support system that you can offer to a potential employee. Have a strategy that enables mothers to thrive in every area – both at home and at work.

One way to do that is introduce greater flexibility in work – a lesson we all learned from the pandemic, as shown in our New World of Work survey report in August 2020 which found that 71.1% of respondents see remote work and distributed teams as one of the biggest paradigm shifts coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amanda agrees.

“More jobs are becoming location agnostic. This giant work-from-home experiment has been successful for a lot of organizations,” she explains.

“There are a lot of employees that I know of while they were still working, moved across the country, just decided they’re like, ‘You know what? I don’t want this cost of living. And if I can work anywhere, I’m going to do it.’ A lot of people are relocating.”

She points to her own company as an example.

“That’s why we’re not really going back to one central office. [It’s] because they saw it worked and they started hiring people all across the country.”

Another thing Amanda’s employer is doing right in supporting working mothers is leaving the responsibility of scheduling to employees.

“Are you getting your work done? Then we don’t care when you’re logging in and logging out. Are you there when you need to be for a meeting? Great. As long as you’re producing, no one cares.

“If you have to run out in the middle of the day to grab your kid or, you know, take them to the appointment or pick them up from daycare, as long as you’re getting your work done and you’re on when you need to be on for the very important meetings, nobody’s going to look twice and think there’s anything wrong.”

Employers can step up their game

And that’s a mindset which needs to be adopted by employers if they want to attract – and retain – workers. That’s especially when it comes to working mothers, who benefit more from this than other professionals.

“Working mothers [see this] more as a necessity or a requirement as opposed to an extra benefit.”

You can step up your policies supporting working mothers if you’re looking to attract them to your company, especially if you don’t have the luxury of moving to a permanently remote or flexible working system.

Amanda suggests looking at your maternity leave policy, and looking at other ways you can help ease the demand that a working parent faces.

“Are you providing either stipends for daycare or are you providing onsite daycare or services? Do you have a service that you keep on retainer that your employees can call if they need help securing a last-minute babysitter because someone’s ill or something like that? Those services do exist.”

Be leaders by example

While these and other programs and policies are a great first step for employers, it’s not enough, says Amanda. It also comes down to the mentality of your organization – and from the very top.

“It also has to come through in your communication. [Are you] a company that truly values and embraces and supports the working parent or various different lifestyles and is able to adapt?”

Personal experience plays a factor as well, she adds, recalling an anecdote from a friend who expressed that she couldn’t wait for her CEO and his wife to have a kid because “he doesn’t get it today”.

Instead, get ahead of that situation, with executive leadership setting the tone for a truly inclusive working environment.

Amanda described an experience before our interview where she was in a meeting with one of her own executives.

“She was sitting on her patio and she goes, ‘This may be my only moment of vitamin D all day, because I don’t know when my son gets home from daycare, if it’s going to be an outside or inside day’.”

That was a strong message from leadership. The result was that Amanda – and likely her other colleagues – now felt empowered to be able to do the same.

“I would have never considered that before, until I saw somebody a couple of rungs up for me doing it and it being perfectly OK, and not making a big deal about it.”

So pay attention, managers, directors, and executives.

“If you’re going to offer those benefits to your team, take them. If you’re encouraging them to take time off, you have to take a few days off too.”

This is a wakeup call – will you answer?

“There were a lot of awful things that came [in the pandemic], but I have to say for me, there were some definite silver linings. It has a lot to do with getting a better sense of what is a healthy work-life balance and what I want. But […] for many people out there, I think it’s a wakeup call.”

You can answer that call by updating your policies and employee management strategy to accommodate and support working mothers, and you’ll find that you attract the very best candidates to your company.

“It would be really nice if, if we could change that narrative and put systems in place that helped to support a new narrative out there,” Amanda says.

Don’t wait for others to set the standard – you can lead the charge. Be part of the solution.

Amanda Augustine is a well-recognized expert in career advancement, ranging from developing one’s professional brand to acing that next interview. She’s the resident career expert for TopResume, the world’s largest resume-writing service, as well as a certified professional resume writer (CPRW) and certified professional career coach (CPCC).

The post Supporting working mothers: it’s now time for a new narrative appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The needle of diversity is moving too slowly. Perhaps change can be accelerated by showing how diversity can drive extraordinary value. It’s now about determining how to unlock it.

Diversity is more than gender

The dominant focal points for diversity are gender and ethnicity. The deficit in these dimensions is obvious in most organizations, as they’re relatively easy to measure. They’re also well informed by moral, ethical, and social drivers, as much as anything else.

When you consider organizational performance, there is a range of categories you can add to gender and ethnicity that provide an even greater opportunity for unlocking value. Differing perspectives are shaped by people’s sexual orientation, their age, their immigrant status, the industries they’ve worked in, the physical locations they’re in, and even the size of the organizations they’ve been part of. The list goes on.

The more you can adopt the mindset that difference equals value, the more attuned you’ll be to that value when you encounter it in a job interview, a meeting, or a business case.

What’s the point of having a highly diverse team if you can’t draw out the unique experiences, capabilities, and perspectives of each of your people? The challenge for every leader is to create an environment where people feel safe to contribute, to challenge each other, and to debate issues with a view to getting the best outcome – and not simply pushing your own opinions.

Competing against this ideal are two things: our natural tendency to avoid conflict, and our fear of being wrong. But high-performing teams aren’t built on unanimity and consensus. They are built on robust debate, respectful challenge, and fearless honesty.

Six tips for leveraging diversity

Leveraging diversity is most important in two scenarios:

1. When you’re solving a complex problem.
2. When you’re making a difficult decision.

These are the points at which you want as much diversity of input as possible. It will help you to avoid groupthink, and consider factors that may not have been identified by a less diverse group.

As most of this type of work occurs in group settings, these six practical tips on leveraging diversity will help you to maximize the opportunities when they present themselves.

1. Qualify the room

Only people who can add value to a decision or problem should be in the room, and this is usually fewer people than you think (or they think). People love having input in an all care, no responsibility way, but that’s not constructive. It slows the process down and adds little value to the outcome.

Get the right people in the room, give them all the information they need to fully contribute to the topic, and create an environment where it’s easy for them to express their views.

2. Don’t speak first

As a leader, it’s important to empower and encourage people to contribute before they have the benefit of knowing your position. Only the most resilient and robust individuals will contradict or offer alternatives to a strong leader, once that leader has shown her hand.

Facilitating the conversation to draw out people’s views and incorporate them into the framework of the discussion will do a lot to unlock diversity, so you don’t want to stymie that in any way.

3. Listen objectively

Listening is a much underrated skill, but one that’s critical to fostering diversity. We naturally tend to discard any information that doesn’t conform to our own world view.

Putting aside your own preferences and viewpoints, and asking yourself a few simple questions will improve your listening skills:

• What can I learn from this?
• What am I hearing that I hadn’t considered previously?
• How can this perspective improve our current position?

When you open yourself to the input of others, you’ll pick up some valuable insights that can only add to the existing conversation.

4. Draw in the quiet ones

Many people don’t like to talk in group forums. They need to learn to, and as a leader you need to teach them how. Although it might be safer and less confrontational to send an email to express their views, people only bring true value when they allow their ideas to be challenged.

When moderating group discussions, call on these people by name. Support them, and show them that their perspectives are valued, and that it’s safe for them to contribute.

5. Show a willingness to shift

When something changes your mind, or improves your understanding of an issue, be explicit about the fact that you’re changing your mind based on their input. This will encourage people to contribute in the future. If you don’t constantly demonstrate a willingness to be convinced of an opinion other than your own, people will stop offering theirs.

Once people can see that their ideas can make a real difference, they’ll be more likely to offer them up. Over time, this will become a key motivator for your people.

6. Encourage robust debate

Respectful, robust debate is the means by which alternative viewpoints are uncovered and challenged. Help your people to become more confident by rewarding them for engaging in this way.

Public praise and one-on-one reinforcement can motivate someone to up the ante in their contribution, because they understand why it’s important and they’re prepared to take a little personal risk to see that unfold.

Without robust debate of alternative viewpoints, people’s input is only of marginal value.

Make performance through diversity your brand

Your ability to liberate people’s talent and experience is the real key to unlocking and leveraging diversity. Ultimately, this becomes a true driver of performance, and a defining characteristic of your team. Results speak louder than anything else, so if you learn to harness the power of diversity to drive better results, people will sit up and pay attention.

Once this becomes part of your culture, it forms an important plank in your employee value proposition. Why would people want to work for you? Because you value diversity in a way that takes the organization to new levels of performance – it’s your brand, after all.

Who wouldn’t want to work in a company like that?

Martin G. Moore is the former CEO of CS Energy. Within five years, he grew earnings from $17 million to $441 million, a compound annual growth rate of 125%. Moore hosts the chart-topping No Bullsh!t Leadership podcast, and his book, No Bullsh!t Leadership, is scheduled to be published in August 2021.

The post Diversity on its own isn’t enough: 6 tips to leverage value appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But even for the most abstract tests, there are still best practices that can ensure you can learn what you need to know about a candidate.

Enter science and technology. Since you’re digitally transforming your entire recruitment process, it makes sense that you can and should digitize your assessments as well. Plus, you want to have a standardized process like in every other stage in the recruitment process.

Workable’s cognitive and personality assessments are specifically designed to fit in seamlessly within that environment to ensure you make the right hire for your business. There are five areas where you can test candidates:

1. Workplace personality
2. Abstract reasoning
3. Verbal comprehension
4. Numerical comprehension
5. Attention & Focus

The first of these, of course, is the personality assessment, while the other four are for assessing cognitive abilities.

These tests weren’t designed on a whim. A great deal of background and research – including input from international psychology experts – have gone into the design and development of these tests.

We know you want to ensure these assessments are valid and rooted in science before using them in your recruitment process, so we’ll give you some quick highlights to save you the time of researching the deeper material. Once you understand the science, you can then think about how you might include them in your process – please see our resources at the end that can help you with that.

Personality test science and methodology

Workable’s personality assessment is deeply rooted in scientific methods, and is built on the Five Factor model of personality testing accepted in psychology circles worldwide as the de facto model of personality.

The five factors come from statistical analysis of the adjectives used to describe people across five dimensions – and have been translated to many languages and cultures. They are:

1. Agreeableness
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extraversion
4. Openness To Experience
5. Emotional Stability (or Neuroticism)

These factors are sometimes referred to as the acronyms OCEAN or CANOE. They’re not based on an either-or measurement, but rather, on where a test-taker places on a scale or continuum. It’s been scientifically linked to predictors around health, education and on-the-job behaviors, which makes it a valuable test to evaluate candidates for a role.

Workable’s version of the Five Factor model goes deeper, analyzing 16 additional areas that are selected and modified to be most relevant in the selection process. Workable’s personality assessments have also been analyzed for consistency using Cronbach’s alpha testing and other indexes. For some quick context, this is a common statistical analysis designed to ensure the validity of Likert scale surveys (i.e. sliding-scale or continuum surveys).

Many questions have been adopted from the public domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), which have contributed to questionnaires in more than 850 published studies. The IPIP scales have demonstrated high internal consistency metrics along with strong correlations with the scales of many established personality questionnaires. (You can examine the comparisons here.) This further validates many of the scales we measure in our personality assessments.

Cognitive test science and methodology

Professionally designed by testing experts at Psycholate, Workable’s cognitive assessments are likewise modeled after common cognitive tests in the industry.

The verbal and numerical comprehension question sets have been professionally designed by testing experts, and cross-checked by psychologists with a background in psychometrics to ensure validity and accuracy. Other tests were also performed including the above-mentioned IRT testing and parameter estimation, and items that met the criteria were added to the abstract reasoning and attention & focus question banks.

Meanwhile, for the abstract reasoning and attention & focus assessment tests, multiple prototypes were created and tested, contributing to the final version that a candidate sees when they take these tests. Again, these tests were professionally tested and reviewed by psychology experts to ensure each test meets psychometric and industry standards of quality.

Cronbach’s alpha testing was also applied during design and pilot stages.

Real-time scoring, adaptability and length

These tests are not simply scored via ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ answers. Rather, they utilize the universally recognized Item Response Theory (IRT) framework. It uses complex statistical algorithms with each question having a measured level of difficulty and quality metric based on historical data.

Scoring for all four cognitive assessment tests is conducted using the Expected A Posteriori (EAP), which allows for real-time scoring of the candidate with each question answered, and updating upcoming questions based on that scoring. This means the next question is presented based on previous answers.

An adaptive test will estimate the candidate’s ability after every new response based on answers up to that point. It will then adjust and display the most suitable or relevant question to match that just-estimated ability level. As a result, an adaptive test is shorter because it only asks the questions that are needed, without burdening the candidate with potentially irrelevant questions.

Also, unlike preconfigured tests with a set number of questions, an adaptive test decides when to stop based on answers received up to that point. IRT scoring offers not only a score for the ability of a candidate; our assessments can also calculate the positive or negative quality of this score via the Standard Error of measurement (SEm).

Obviously, a score based on more items is more reliable. So Workable’s adaptive tests will stop once a candidate’s score reaches a satisfactory and measurable level (i.e. a low enough SEm) or when a maximum number of questions (for example, 20) has been reached in order to protect the test content.

This all ultimately means that each individual candidate will experience a different and unique set of questions. Along with other measures, this ultimately assures test security: It’s practically impossible to replicate the exact same test or create a cheat sheet to assist in ‘passing’ a test.

There are safeguards in place to ensure that the same question isn’t asked twice in the same assessment.

Want to learn more?

This is, of course, just a summarization of the main science and methodology that have provided the foundation on which Workable Assessments is built. Now that you have a high-level understanding of the science behind the tests and what they’re testing for, it’s now time to think about how you might incorporate that as an essential tool in your hiring toolbox.

If you’re interested in learning more about our assessments feature – or even taking it for a test drive – don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Finally, if you’d like to learn more about some of the concerns around assessments from a candidate’s perspective and why you needn’t worry, we cover that in this article. Meanwhile, here’s a tutorial on how to conduct a post-personality assessment interview.

The post Workable Assessments: The science behind it all appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this episode, Carolyn sat down with Fadjanie Cadet, LEK Consulting’s Diversity Recruitment and Engagement Lead, to talk about building a strategy to support diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Fadjanie talks about how DEI initiatives have changed over time, how you can get started, what makes it unique now during these times, and how to make it sustainable for the future. Let’s jump in!

The post Podcast episode #12: Building a DEI strategy from the ground up — Part 2 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Events since 2020 have been a much-needed eye-opener for many corporations, with many taking steps to move DEI into a central role of their corporate culture and strategy. Diversity in the workplace is already a key component, with clear benefits. Mentoring is part of that – and at a deeper level, diversity mentoring.

The benefits of mentoring

Organizations that want to attract, engage, and retain diverse talent make this happen through mentoring as a key piece of their talent development strategy. The benefits of mentoring are huge:

• It helps employees feel more valued by their employers
• It builds supportive networks with coworkers
• It develops critical skills that help advance their careers

And that’s just the first phase of output.

All of those can lead to job growth opportunities, more engagement at work, and longer tenures with the organization.

A survey of mentees and mentors by MentorcliQ found impressive results:

• 90% of participants said mentoring helped them develop a positive relationship with another individual in their company
• 89% said mentoring allowed them to contribute to the success of their company
• 89% said that they felt like their company valued their development because they offered a mentoring program

The importance of diversity mentoring

Taking this a step further, many companies that want to retain and engage diverse talent in the workplace have implemented diversity mentoring programs as a way to provide visibility with senior leadership for diverse employees.

One type of these programs is reverse mentoring, which are different from other types of mentoring programs in that senior leaders participate in the programs as mentees being mentored by junior employees – in the case of reverse diverse mentoring, junior employees from diverse backgrounds are the mentors with executive mentees.

This type of program helps mentees and executives increase skill and knowledge in sometimes challenging content areas, while also bolstering engagement and career opportunities for mentors.

According to Camille Lloyd of Gallup, “Black employees in the U.S. are significantly less likely than White employees to report seeing leaders of their own race in their organization, and that appears to matter in creating a healthy corporate culture.”

Addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion through a mentoring program has become a way for many companies to engage employees in a thoughtful way that doesn’t involve stale training sessions that will soon be forgotten.

Examples of diversity mentoring

A great example of a strong diversity mentoring program is the Nielsen marketing research company which, as part of a larger diversity and inclusion strategy, implemented mentoring as an innovative and thoughtful way to weave DEI into all aspects of career development.

Fueled by employee resource groups, its MyMentor program matches mentors and mentees of all backgrounds across different functions, lines of business, and job grades for increased social connectedness, developmental learning, and culture building.

In the program, individual and career development emerged as key discussion topics and the program has received rave reviews from people at all levels of the company as well as amongst participants. In the program, Nielsen learned about the challenges their associates faced and how to overcome them, as well as what areas of professional development were most important.

Since its initial success, Nielsen expanded their programs to support targeted growth throughout the organization.

How to create a diversity mentoring program

Every mentoring program is different, but a few key best practices should be followed to ensure success. First, standardize the process with the following:

Determine length of program

Based on what we’ve seen, a six-month timeline is beneficial for both mentors and mentees. This duration strikes the right balance between being long enough to work on goals related to more complex topic areas such as implicit bias, while also being cognizant of demands on senior leaders’ time.

Establish relationship structure

One of the defining characteristics of these mentoring programs is a one-to-one (1:1) match between mentees (senior leaders) and mentors (junior employees).

Participants often discuss complex and sensitive topics, which requires a high level of trust and comfort best accomplished in a one-to-one format.

Use match logic

Mentoring programs use a combination of rules based on participant profile, stated preferences, and the results of a personality survey for match scores. A few areas we’ve found are important for matching including: identity & experience, expertise and job-specific skills.

We’ve also found it’s essential that the mentor and mentee do not have a direct-report relationship. Plus, if the company is distributed across time zones, ensure that there’s enough overlap in the work schedules of both mentor and mentee.

Don’t forget the human

While other factors might impact the type of matching process used, we’ve found Admin Matching works best for these programs. Program administrators, who are able to see all of the data and make the best decisions, can select participants based on their match score, and then match mentoring partners across different aspects of identity and experience.

Diversity mentoring action items

Once you’ve put down the groundwork, it’s time for action. To implement a powerful and effective top-down mentoring program that will help retain and engage diverse talent, follow these four tips:

1. Listen

Listen to your diverse employee populations. Ask them what they need, understand the obstacles they face, and work to uncover what will help them advance and grow with your organization.

2. Include

Include your diverse employees in the program planning process, get their input on key factors of your mentoring program design, and ask them to be ambassadors for the program to help spread the word.

3. Act

Act on the feedback you hear from the employees, create a program that reflects their needs, and look for opportunities for growth within your mentoring program to help you create and sustain a mentoring culture.

4. Expand

This is only a first step. Use feedback from your mentoring program to understand where additional opportunities may be necessary. Include supporting sponsorship opportunities, paid anti-racism / racial justice education, and encouraging community building through employee resource groups for starters.

Research shows that diverse workforces outperform less diverse organizations by 35% in profitability. Diversity mentoring programs are instrumental in helping achieve diversity, equity and inclusion goals; in fact, it may be the springboard you need.

Lora Zotter is the VP of Employee Experience at MentorcliQ, a mentoring software solution that helps organizations launch, support, and grow high-impact employee mentoring programs. As VP of Employee Experience, she makes sure MentorcliQ is an amazing place to work by leading talent attraction, onboarding, and retention initiatives.

The post How to create a diversity mentoring program appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

But how can you choose who to move to the next phase based solely on those criteria? Even though you have some evidence, it’s easy to get lost in translation, especially when you have numerous applicants to screen.

That’s where Workable Assessments can step in and do the trick.

First, you’ll get a better overview of each candidate’s skills on different cognitive areas that you define as important to thrive. Second, you’ll learn more about their workplace personality and behavior to see if they’re a good fit for your current team and workplace.

Certified by psychometric experts and designed within the Workable platform, the Workable Assessments feature is not only credible, but also a handy solution for hiring teams. With easy access to performance insights and a user-friendly interface that enables collaboration, it’s an asset for organizations who want to introduce pre-employment testing into their screening process.

Inside Workable Assessments: Understanding different test types

Here’s a brief breakdown of Workable Assessments: the cognitive part consists of four tests measuring different types of mental skills – abstract reasoning, numerical comprehension, verbal comprehension, and attention & focus.

1. Cognitive Assessments

Abstract reasoning: This looks at the ability to logically analyze multiple information that are presented in a more abstract form – usually not numbers or words. For example, software engineers and researchers often need to think abstractly and out-of-the-box to recognize patterns and resolve problems in a resourceful way.

Numerical comprehension: This assesses how candidates handle and analyze numerical data in order to reach appropriate decisions. For example, an accounting candidate should have a high degree of this skill in order to perform their daily responsibilities. Overall, positions in Finance, Banking and Audit require a high numerical comprehension level.

Verbal comprehension: This measures the ability to understand and analyze verbal information, such as arguments and written statements, e.g. reports. For instance, it’s a critical skill for lawyers and journalists, among others.

Attention & focus: This assesses abilities that require observation and acute working memory. This is vital for roles that require a high attention span or switch often between tasks, such as content editors and data entry agents.

The jobs mentioned in the examples above are indicative. Every company shapes their roles based on its business needs and for similar job titles, requirements may vary. Once you define the mandatory skill set needed, you can hand over the related assessments to candidates.

2. Workplace Personality Assessment

Workable’s personality assessment is based on the Big 5 Model and unveils how people behave in a professional setting. More specifically, they measure the degree of the personality traits below – and 23 related factors, that define their workplace personality:

• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness
• Emotional Stability
• Openness to Experience

Before you administer the assessment, determine what traits the ideal candidate should have based on the role, responsibilities, and current team dynamics. For example, if you’re looking for a salesperson, then a high extraversion level would be an asset, but it’s not the same if you’re looking for a content marketer.

Even though Workable’s cognitive assessments are targeted to white-collar professionals, the personality assessments benefit all types of companies and roles. And remember, you don’t have to provide all tests in bulk; it’s up to you to decide what’s best for your hiring process.

About candidate experience

As with every other Workable product, this is designed with candidates and hiring teams in mind. We understand that pre-employment assessments could be stressful for candidates, so we made sure to provide an easy-to-navigate experience in an intuitive interface.

Before the assessment starts, candidates learn how the tool works. They have time to warm up, get comfortable with the instructions and answer a few practice questions.

In addition, we’ve introduced adaptive technology, which means that the difficulty of the provided questions varies and adjusts to the candidate’s ability. This minimizes the time needed to complete each test and makes candidates feel more confident throughout the process with their performance.

So, these are Workable Assessments, everyone. We’re thrilled to offer you this hiring solution – we hope you are, too.

The post Introducing Workable Assessments: Make data-driven hiring decisions appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Before we go into detail on assessment concerns, let’s take a look at the types of assessments. There are five core assessments:

1. abstract reasoning
2. numerical analysis
3. verbal communication
4. attention & focus
5. personality

Each of them have their distinct best practices for specific job roles – for instance, verbal communication skills are desired for those working in public-facing roles such as customer service or sales. Numerical analysis can be applied to those working in finance. And so on.

Now, let’s look at the concerns about these assessments.

Why you should use cognitive assessments

Let’s first look at cognitive assessment concerns, with reasons why you should include them anyway.

Concern #1: They reduce the candidate to a number

The concern: A standardized recruitment process – especially for larger organizations who have built a scalable hiring model – can make candidates feel like they’re on a conveyor belt. When you add assessments, candidates will feel like you’re just adding another statistic to them.

The reality: A standardized process is also more susceptible to bias – despite the sincere intent for the opposite. Likewise, AI screening of resumes can lead to a new problem, as seen in the example of Amazon. Even if you take AI out of the picture, humans can still be influenced by the reputation of the school the candidate went to, or their charisma in a face-to-face interview.

When you add assessments to the process, you can analyze cognitive abilities and potentials in an isolated environment without being influenced by these other factors.

Concern #2: There’s plenty to learn in other stages of the process

The concern: In between the resume, cover letter, interview, and even the reference check, you already have plenty of information to help you make a good decision on the candidate. Adding assessments just further complicates things.

The reality: Each of the stages in the evaluation are designed to understand specific parts of a candidate’s eligibility for a role. But gaps remain: for instance, it’s hard to discern how much of a candidate’s success actually comes from their own contribution or just from the environment they worked in. Plus, exaggerating one’s accomplishments in a resume isn’t entirely uncommon.

With assessments, you’re future-proofing your company against those potential bad or misleading hires by directly analyzing what they can actually bring to your company.

Concern #3: Assessments prolong an already lengthy process

The concern: Adding assessments just adds time to an already lengthy recruitment process – a common gripe among many candidates.

The reality: Yes, they’re right – if those other stages are clumsily managed with slow turnaround at the recruiter’s side due to an excess of work. But optimization tools, such as automated emailing, self-scheduling options, and one-way video interviews, can shorten those stages. This gives you the luxury to seamlessly add assessments to the mix – also in a semi-automated way – without prolonging the process. In effect, you’re getting more for less.

Now that we’ve covered three main concerns around cognitive assessments, let’s look at the more charged topic of personality assessments.

Why you should use personality assessments

While cognitive assessments are already a widely accepted element of the recruitment process, the value of personality assessments isn’t as universally acknowledged. The controversy around Myers Brigg and DiSC profile testing is widespread, and there’s little consensus on their usefulness.

Concern #1: Personality assessments promote biased hiring

The concern: Testing for personality promotes biased hiring. For instance, if you find that someone’s not a so-called “team player” or a good “cultural fit”, you may opt not to move forward with them. It also unfairly favors extroverted “go-getters” and “problem solvers” over equally qualified introverts who prefer to focus on the work at hand.

The reality: Personality assessments should not be dealmakers or dealbreakers in a hiring decision. They only help provide stronger insights into a candidate that may not be found in other stages. Perhaps a candidate seemed quiet and unmotivated during an interview – a personality assessment may find them to be introverted yet still just as qualified as a louder, friendlier candidate who made a stronger impression in the interview stage.

Concern #2: Candidates will try for the “right” answer rather than being honest

The concern: When jobseekers take a personality test, they’re going to be naturally inclined to try and give the ‘right’ answers to further their candidacy for the role. They may not be wholly honest.

The reality: It’s not a test. It’s an assessment. You’re trying to get a deeper understanding of their personality and traits. The result can help you learn how they’re likely to behave in the role, how they like to be managed, the job environment in which they most thrive, and their preferred communication style, among other things that help you understand who the candidate is and what motivates them.

Concern #3: Personalities have nothing to do with the job

The concern: Many see personality assessments as irrelevant and even as an invasion of privacy. What do they really have to do with candidacy for a role?

The reality: As stated above, having a good understanding of how a candidate might act or behave in the workplace will help you build better teams and a work environment in which they can thrive. This can create a better all-around employee experience with more engaged and productive employees.

Assess your own team first

That being said, personality assessments have their limits. To use them to their fullest benefit, have the existing employees in your company take an assessment as well.

Not only can you identify opportunities to build stronger teams, more motivational environments, and better management structures, you can also set up mentorship programs specifically tailored to specific personalities that can bring the best out of a new hire.

This means a much stronger onboarding and a shorter time to maximum productivity.

It’s not a dealmaker or dealbreaker

Boston-based management consultant Laura Crandall seconds that. Personality assessments shouldn’t be the defining factor in making a decision – nor should they even influence a decision.

Laura adds: “The name is a bit misleading, as, at their core, these tests aim to identify how personality traits, be they assertiveness, optimism, extroversion or introversion, and the like, will manifest in workplace behavior.”

And she adds succinctly: “They’re just lenses.”

In the end, while they are great tools to overcome the “one size fits all” solution, cognitive and personality assessments need to be utilized properly for them to be effective. You also want to communicate their intent and benefits to the candidate as clearly as you can to maintain that all-important candidate experience.

Think of it as adding another tool to your HR toolkit that focuses on bringing the best people to your company, and bringing the best out of them while they’re there.

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Personality assessments, in particular, should be conducted with care. To ensure a fair and equitable analysis, follow up with a post-personality assessment interview.

The challenge here is that such an interview cannot follow the traditional structure of an interview, with a preset series of questions. Additionally, many post-personality test questions are customized based on individual test results and will differ from one candidate to the next. So, you’ll need to allow for flexibility here to gain a better understanding of the more intangible aspects of a candidate’s eligibility for a role.

With all those factors in play, here’s how you can use post-personality test questions to conduct a fair and equitable interview process.

Why should we care?

Often, interviews include questions like “What is your biggest flaw?” or “Where do you see yourself in five years?”. Research shows that questions such as these are most prone to interviewer bias.

Nevertheless, this approach may work when evaluating a handful of candidates. But when the number of candidates grows and each candidate needs to be assessed, a traditional interview with typical questions becomes more difficult when so many variables and intangibles are involved in an analysis.

This is why a structured way of conducting and recording a candidate’s post-personality assessment interview is crucial during the hiring process for a specific job. To maintain structure, follow these five steps in mind to ensure you’re set for success:

1. Prepare beforehand
2. Invite every candidate
3. Set up the interview
4. Perform the interview itself
5. Report immediately afterwards

1. Prepare beforehand

The first step is to prepare ahead of the interview. Review a map of all available personality factors and facets. Consider the relevance of each for the job, and focus on eight to 10 core facets that you want to evaluate.

If you’re unsure whether or not to include specific personality traits or characteristics in this list, consult with someone already in that function or team to get a better understanding of what traits are beneficial to the role.

Once you have the list of traits and characteristics you want to look at, it’s time to start collecting insights via the interview.

Now that you know what you are looking for, it is time to start collecting data and invite candidates to interview.

2. Invite every candidate

To ensure a fair and equitable process, make sure every candidate gets an interview. Remember, you’re looking at specific behaviors and characteristics that are better analyzed via assessments and interviews than via candidate profiles.

Another factor is that candidates’ own biases can factor into the assessment results – for instance, they may be naturally inclined to give the “right” answer to further their candidacy for a role even if there’s no actual right or wrong answer. There will also be those who don’t seem to match what you’re looking for in an ideal candidate.

A post-personality assessment interview gives you the opportunity to hear them out. You may find candidates who use uncommon tactics to turn disadvantages into advantages. Some may have different approaches to handling dissatisfied customers, for example.

3. Setting up the interview

Now it’s time to set a standard for the pre-interview period. Your goal here is to make sure each candidate feels welcome, comfortable and respected. That also means creating a comfortable environment and allowing enough time for candidates to respond in depth – and for you to really listen without distractions.

This is especially important when conducting a post-personality assessment interview because you want the candidate to feel at ease.

Meanwhile, make sure you’ve done your homework on the suggested interview questions – which are customized as well. These questions, via Workable’s personality assessment feature, can come up in cases where greater clarity is needed in specific areas.

For example, a candidate may show significant “friendly” or “distant” traits, which would trigger questions via the feature (which are, again, customized) to help understand those elements at a deeper level. These questions will be available via Workable’s personality assessment feature in cases where the candidate has scored below or above average in specific personality characteristics.

Some of these questions may not correspond to characteristics included in your list you made in Step 1. In that case, you may skip them.

4. Conducting the interview

During the interview, you should always go back to the priorities you’ve outlined in your initial preparation. Ask yourself:

• “Why is this characteristic important?”
• “How will a candidate with this characteristic perform better in this job?”

There will be a corresponding question or statement for each characteristic. Follow-up questions are available if you want to explore further. Once you’re satisfied that you’ve learned what you need to know about the candidate, move on to the next question(s).

It’s important to pay close attention to the candidate’s responses. Your goal is to understand how the candidate will perform in the job in terms of personality traits.

5. Report immediately afterwards

After the interview is over, record your assessment of the candidate’s qualities. It’s best to do this immediately after the interview, and in a standardized format that allows you to compare results with other candidates.

Post-assessment interview best practices

When interviewing, follow these best practices:

• Be actively engaged in the interview, and pay attention to the candidate’s responses. These questions are as much for your benefit as they are for the candidate’s – don’t treat this as an afterthought.
• Ensure a stress-free environment that allows the candidate to bring their best self to the interview. Even if you want to see how a candidate responds in a stressful situation, there’s a time and place for that; don’t deliberately create that atmosphere in this particular interview.
• Be intensely aware of the most important personality characteristics for the specific job position that you’re interviewing for.
• End the interview in a professional and respectful manner, and be sure to note your impressions of the candidate immediately afterwards, as to not miss any important details.

Consider a training program or consultation with fellow HR professionals to ensure an ideal outcome for yourself and other members of the hiring team.

You may also find the following tutorials and templates to be helpful in ensuring best results:

• Personality interview questions
• How to read candidate body language in an interview
• How to assess soft skills in an interview
• 12 behavioral interview questions
• Emotional intelligence (EQ) interview questions

The post How to conduct a post-personality assessment interview appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this episode, Keith sits down with Fadjanie Cadet, LEK Consulting’s Diversity Recruitment and Engagement Lead, to talk about action items for you to succeed in your diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Fadjanie talks about:

• How DEI has changed over time
• How you can get started in your DEI strategy
• What makes it unique now during these time and how to make it sustainable for the future

The post Podcast episode #11: Building a DEI strategy from the ground up — Part 1 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

• What is workforce planning?
• What is involved in workforce planning?
• How to create a workforce plan

What is workforce planning?

Workforce planning is the people side of planning, but some businesses skip it, thinking that people will just appear when needed. Workforce planning aligns core business goals with people strategy. It makes no sense to plan on a new product launch next year without thinking about R&D, supply chain, and sales staff.

Workforce planning is the tool you use to ensure that alignment.

What is involved in workforce planning?

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) identifies the critical points of workforce planning as follows.

1. Reduce labor costs in favor of workforce deployment and flexibility
2. Identify and respond to changing customer needs
3. Identify relevant strategies for focused people development
4. Target inefficiencies
5. Improve employee retention
6. Improve productivity and quality outputs
7. Improve employees’ work-life balance
8. Make recommendations to deliver strategic value through talent

This article will break down these points and how they apply to your business.

1. Reduce labor costs in favor of workforce deployment and flexibility

Labor is often the highest cost for businesses outside of manufacturing. Some estimates put labor costs at 60% and even 70% of expenses. With these costs, planning to reduce costs while increasing flexibility is critical to continued success.

This isn’t advocating for low-balling employees or providing rotten benefits for employees. It’s about getting the right people in the correct positions. An engaged, competent, happy employee will cost less than an unhappy, unqualified employee. Remember, turnover is expensive as well.

2. Identify and respond to changing customer needs

The classic case study of a company that didn’t respond to customer needs is Kodak. As the king of film, Kodak had digital technology early but decided to focus on film, thinking digital was a fad. It wasn’t, and the company struggled for survival, dropping from a peak of 145,000 employees to 5,000 as of August 2020.

Human resources departments need to be a bit of a fortune-teller to accurately predict workforce needs. Because SHRM doesn’t issue crystal balls, HR needs to work closely with each department to help predict needs and create plans for meeting these. Open communication between HR and each department is critical.

3. Identify relevant strategies for focused people development

The very premise of workforce planning is that business changes, and because business changes, people need to change. Figuring out talent gaps and plans to fill those gaps is a core function of workforce planning.

People development needs to happen before the need exists. Remember, you can go out and search for the “unicorn” candidate to fill a need immediately, but it’s often more manageable if you plan and develop an employee to take care of that specialty skill gap – if you do it right. This can mean training classes, graduate programs, or stretch assignments.

4. Target inefficiencies

If you’ve ever heard “we’ve always done it that way” as an explanation, then you know that the business has inefficiencies that can be rooted out. Good HR will ask; “What should we stop doing?” as well as “What should we do?”. You can find inefficiencies in all areas of the business.

5. Improve employee retention

Turnover is expensive – not only does it take time and money to find, interview, and onboard a new employee, training them can take months. Good HR focuses on retaining employees who have potential. (You shouldn’t retain just to retain – if someone is a toxic employee, giving them more technical skills won’t eliminate their toxicity.) Creating career paths within the company can be an excellent workforce planning tool to aid employee retention.

6. Improve productivity and quality outputs

While managers need to figure out how to improve productivity and quality, HR can provide support. For instance, are there policies and procedures that can increase productivity and quality? What support do employees get for reaching their goals? When HR takes a look at the workforce, they can spot problems that decrease productivity. For instance, an employee who bullies their coworkers can destroy productivity in a department.

HR needs to plan to find, coach, or remove such employees, as well as helping managers find better ways to do things.

7. Improve employees’ work-life balance

Employees are at the center of workforce planning – without employees, all plans are worthless. You can increase your productivity by requiring everyone to work 80-hour weeks, but your turnover will shoot through the roof, and your quality will collapse.

Through making sure that employees have sufficient downtime and are supported at work, your workforce will be a lot more stable.

8. Make recommendations to deliver strategic value through talent

Sometimes managers can undervalue employees – they think if they can get someone cheaper, they should. But, good workforce planning demonstrates that you pay for top skills. While we use the word talent often in HR, you really should think about it in terms of skills. What skills do these employees have that can make a difference in your business?

Remember that treating employees right is a lot easier than trying to squeeze value out of people who are exhausted and burnt out.

How to create a workforce plan

This is more than just figuring out who you need to hire. There are many ways to approach this, but here are four critical elements that will make your workforce planning a success.

1. Understand the company’s mission and goals

Workforce planning doesn’t exist in a vacuum – it needs to support the company’s goals. Are you looking to expand across North America? Well, that’s quite different from a company that is content operating out of a single location.

The company’s mission matters as well. What’s the most important thing to the CEO, shareholders, employees, and customers? Make sure you have that answered before you move to step two.

2. Conduct a present gap analysis

This is a systematic method of understanding the gaps in the organization. What is missing? While workforce planning focuses on the people side of the business, keep in mind that a gap analysis looks at all business areas, not just skills and talent.

People aren’t at their best unless they have the equipment, training, and support they need. This is looking at the situation now. Remember all the points above – you need to look for improvement in all these areas.

3. Project for the future

This involves speaking with company leadership and involving every unit in the business. You’re looking for where the growth will be and where the workforce will shrink. You want to determine what skills the company will need in the coming years, not just now.

4. Conduct a future gap analysis

Knowing what you do about the current employment situation and the business’s goals and projected path, put together what the workforce will need and look at your gaps:

• What do you need to reach these goals?
• Do you need more employees?
• What type of training will your current staff need?
• Can you conduct this training in-house, or do you need people to receive formal training or even degrees?
• Do you have a formal employee training and development company policy in place?

Make sure you look at external trends as well. In 2019, no one would have guessed the massive shift toward remote work, but now, you’d be remiss not to consider where the workforce will be in the future. Will employees continue to work remotely or will they expect to? If so, is your company prepared to support people in other states? Or do you want to limit hiring to your local area, regardless of where they work?

Of course, there are many more things that you can do to plan for your workforce’s future, but these will get you a solid foundation. And, one last note: remember to be flexible. Plans change, and your workforce planning documents need to flex as the world changes as well.

The post What is workforce planning, and why is it important? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

You may even recognize that a diverse employee population where everyone feels included and their voice is heard is the simply right thing to do.

But, like me, you may not know where and how to start your DEI journey.

The challenges of diversity recruitment

This is particularly apparent in some industries including manufacturing (with which I have considerable experience), where 22.4% of respondents to Workable’s recent DEI survey indicated that they want to invest in DEI but don’t know where to start.

This challenge can be compounded where geography and demographics make it difficult to recruit diverse candidates and build diverse teams.

There may also be some discomfort that comes with pursuing a diversity strategy. After all, if you don’t already come from a diverse background or environment, engaging with others who are different from you can at first feel intimidating and uncertain.

To build and lead diverse teams, the approach I believe works best is to start by following your curiosity.

The staples of a diversity recruiting strategy

Growing up in a small town in Newfoundland, Canada, in the eighties was a very homogenous experience for me. With only one or two visible minority families in my town of 3,500, and probably less than 100 in the province at that time, diversity had yet to flourish in this flung part of the world.

But that didn’t mean that diversity didn’t exist.

For example, I remember one boy with whom I was friends being the cultural anomaly in my community as he was the only Pakistani kid in town. His name was Jesse and although we went to different schools, we played together and hung out during 5th and 6th grade.

For me, it was fascinating to be around him and his family. They spoke English with an accent, had different customs and beliefs, and ate the most amazing food. I was curious about his culture and did what any kid would do when they want to learn more: I asked a lot of questions and was continually inspired to learn more.

There are a few important lessons here that have since guided my curiosity about diversity:

• A spark is often needed to light the flame of curiosity. I love to eat so, naturally, my spark was food!
• It’s OK to ask questions about other peoples’ cultures and experiences respectfully.
• By being curious and continually learning about other people’s lives and unique experiences, you can add value to your life – and theirs.

Why is a diverse recruitment strategy important?

Apply that spark to your business: why does it matter to establish a diversity recruiting strategy in your workplace?

There are two prevailing arguments about why leaders should implement DEI policies within their organization: it’s good for business (21.7% according to the aforementioned DEI at work survey) and it’s the right thing to do (50.6%).

I’ve been fortunate in my career to be a part of many different types of teams, from homogenous teams that look and sound exactly like me, to teams with an incredible diversity of thought, opinion, and idea, with people from different cultural, disability, socioeconomic, religious, and political backgrounds.

I’m my experience building and leading diverse teams, here’s what I’ve found:

1. Diverse teams strike a good balance between speed and quality when solving problems. They develop more innovative solutions in less time, which leads to more profitable solutions.
2. Diverse teams have a functionally reserved professionalism that’s engendered through mutual trust and respect. I’ve always found this hard to put my finger on, but this fabric of professionalism keeps cliques, clubbiness, and groupthink at bay and is unique to diverse teams. When harnessed and employed toward common goals, this professionalism leads to better results.
3. Diverse teams are more resilient. Much like in nature, a disturbance to a diverse ecosystem (for example, the stress created with a new project) is hardly noticeable, while a disturbance to a homogenous ecosystem can be disastrous (think homogeneity and the end of the dinosaurs).

Now that you know the top “whys” of diversity recruiting, you must define your own purpose if diversity is to become an integral and sustainable part of your business. Once you do, here are a few steps to help you build and lead diverse teams.

How can you diversify your recruiting process?

Pursue your curiosity. The process of building a diverse team starts with you as the leader and your curiosity about diversity. It can be hard to know where to start, so here’s one option: Identify someone in your network whose background is different than yours who you’re curious about and with whom you can engage. Invite them for a coffee or a virtual get-to-know-you lunch. Let them know why you’re curious and start by sharing something about yourself. Don’t feel as though you need to pepper the conversation with diversity-based questions; just get to know them and you’ll each share your experiences naturally.

Seek new sources of talent where diverse candidates are located. This might be particularly relevant if your local talent pool is not diverse and your recruiting methods have traditionally returned a great deal of homogeneity in your candidates. Check out the diversity Working site as one potential source for your diversity recruiting strategy.

Hire ‘anonymously’. For the next position for which you hire, use anonymized screening tools when reviewing resumes and behavioral assessments to minimize ever-present unconscious biases. This means identifying the skills, knowledge, and abilities of the person you need upfront, in addition to their behavior style.

How can you lead a diverse team?

1. Know yourself. Determine your behavioral style (using a DISC method or similar) to understand better how you will lead collaboration and constructive conflict on your behaviorally diverse team.
2. Actively promote diversity with inclusivity. As gung-ho as you may be to build more diverse teams, the reality is that it’s not going to stick or be sustainable if you’re missing the inclusion piece. Take the pulse of your employees with a survey – do they feel like you’re listening to them? There’s a good chance it’s not as good as you think. For your employees, being able to voice their concerns, contribute new ideas, and provide feedback is important. To be truly inclusive as a leader, you need to start by listening.
3. Celebrate the differences of your diverse team, using this as an opportunity to add depth to the relationship between team members. Start with something casual like a culturally focused potluck where everyone on the team brings their favorite dish or a lunch and learn event where your team has the opportunity to learn and ask questions about someone else’s culture. In my experience, one of the most effective ways to break down barriers is through the shared enjoyment of eating together. Be sure to celebrate the differences equally – check out these 10 ideas to celebrate diversity.

We’re all in this together

If you’re feeling stuck in building a diversity recruitment strategy because of a lack of a diverse personal background, you’re not alone.

It can be hard to know where to start to build a diverse team, and that’s why I recommend you start with your own curiosity. Getting started in diversity recruiting can be innate and within your control, and doesn’t involve a big initial investment.

Let your diversity grow, nurture it in others, and you’ll be amazed at how exciting it can be to build diverse teams and realize the outsized results they can generate.

Luke Sheppard is an executive, manager, and engineer from the heavy equipment industry turned coach, consultant, and speaker. He’s the author of the new book Driving Great Results: Master The Tools You Need To Run A Great Business. Learn more at consultsheppard.com.

The post How to think about diversity recruiting strategies appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

With those metrics on hand, you now have a baseline of concrete numbers to start from, allowing you to track your DEI progress and establish clear goals.

Table of contents:

• How to measure diversity: Best practices
• Gender, sex, and sexual orientation questions
• Race and ethnicity questions
• Religion questions
• Disability and impairment questions
• Socio-economic questions

Multiverse Senior Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Manager Siobhan Randall ties this back to crucial business elements, including candidate attraction and employer branding:

When building a sustainable DEI strategy, Siobhan asks: “Is inclusion really embedded within our employee value proposition? Are people from underrepresented backgrounds going to want to work at the company?”

“How can we make ourselves look and feel like a place that anyone would want to work at, especially individuals from underrepresented backgrounds? We’re definitely doing that reflection on our brand.”

Siobhan continues, pointing out the real value of anonymously surveying your candidates as part of your overall employee engagement metrics:

“From the point of application, each stage of the recruitment process and then, once hired, we’re looking at outcomes like progression and retention.”

How to measure diversity: Best practices

We fully understand that surveying your candidates on personal characteristics can be socially and legally sensitive. Importantly, the information you’re collecting is not related to specific jobs – nor should it be. It’s only for the purpose of furthering your DEI strategy.

There are three best practices to think about here: candidate communication, survey standardization, and the language of the survey itself.

Communicate clearly

First, it’s important to know how to measure diversity in a respectable, transparent and anonymous manner, and communicate that in such a way that puts your candidates at ease.

There are three aspects to include in your messaging to candidates:

• State the purpose: Openly communicate the purpose of the survey, so the candidate understands why you’re doing it.
• Ensure anonymity: Clarify that the survey is strictly anonymous. The data you’re collecting cannot be tied to individual candidates in any way.
• Make it optional: Make the survey strictly optional, and clearly state that this will not affect the status of their job application – or the job itself – in any way.

A paragraph to include at the start of your survey might look like:

“Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is a crucial and permanent part of our business strategy. To help us ensure a fully diverse, equitable and inclusive working environment, we invite you to fill out this voluntary survey so we can track and further our DEI efforts. The information shared here is strictly optional, and cannot and will not affect your job application in any way. It’s also 100% anonymous, and is not linked to your name, identity, or application.”

Establish standards and goals

Second, it’s crucial to establish a standard across surveys so you have a reliable dataset for your own company’s benefit.

Once you’ve established that standard on how to measure diversity in your candidates, you can now:

• Compare numbers in each pipeline stage from the top of the recruitment funnel (i.e. initial job applications) through to the bottom of funnel (final candidate pool and final hires).
• Look at advancement metrics and identify any inconsistencies in promotions and advancement based on different characteristics.
• Identify gaps in benefits, perks, policies, and other elements of employment so that every employee has fair and equal access to all of the above, ensuring that everyone feels valued and included as a member of your organization.

Be thoughtful about survey language

If you’re concerned or uncomfortable about what language you should (or shouldn’t) be using in a survey, that’s OK. You’re not alone. You’re essentially asking people about very personal elements of their identity, including and not limited to:

• Gender
• Sex
• Sexual orientation
• Race
• Ethnicity
• Religion
• Disability
• Socio-economic status

With all of this in mind, we now share tips and resources from experts on how to measure diversity with a thoughtful, inclusive and respectful survey. You can also freely copy our own candidate survey template here for your use.

How to measure diversity: Survey questions

Let’s go through five major category groups, one by one:

1. Gender, sex, and sexual orientation questions

Gender, sex, and sexual orientation are not interchangeable terms or identities. They are three separate categories, and not to be conflated one with another, even if there are potential overlaps. Ask about each separately.

Gender

Due to the complex nature of gender, it’s best to include as many terms as possible. Vanderbilt University’s example is excellent:

Vanderbilt also reminds us of the importance of asking for transgender identity as a separate question:

“Because a respondent’s gender may align with more than one of the listed identities (for example, someone may identify as a transgender woman), it is recommended that you either ask whether a respondent identifies as transgender in a separate question or include both ‘cisgender’ and ‘transgender’ in the listed gender identity options.”

Vanderbilt also shares this great list of definitions for your perusal.

Sex

When asking about someone’s sex assigned at birth, the American University’s Center for Diversity & Inclusion recommends using male, female, intersex, prefer not to say, and an option for the respondent to enter their own response:

Sexual orientation

When asking about sexual orientation, you should again offer a full list of options. The Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals has recommended best practices on what to ask in a college application that you can also use in your own survey:

The Williams Institute School of Law has a comprehensive rundown of the terms you can include as available answers when asking about gender, sex, and sexual orientation. It’s also an all-around great resource for best practices in sex and gender-related surveying.

2. Race and ethnicity questions

When thinking about how to measure diversity, you should know that race and ethnicity are also not interchangeable. According to LiveScience.com, “race is often perceived as something that’s inherent in our biology, and therefore inherited across generations. Ethnicity, on the other hand, is typically understood as something we acquire, or self-ascribe, based on factors like where we live or the culture we share with others.”

Even then, ethnicity itself can be a socially charged topic. Statistics Canada points to the ever-evolving properties of ethnicity due to immigration trends, intermarriage, and blending of origins. As a result, StatsCan recommends three new categories: origin or ancestry, race and identity. The concept of ‘identity’ is to give respondents a choice to choose the group they most identify with – for instance, whether one is Italian, Canadian, or Italian-Canadian.

The U.S. Census Bureau, on the other hand, considered removing “race” and “origin” from questions altogether, calling them ambiguous for many American respondents. Instead, they proposed simply asking people to select from categories that best described them (bearing in mind this was in 2015):

Note that these are just guidelines – not rules. You can, within reason, ask about race and ethnicity – provided you give the respondent comprehensive options to choose from.

Race

For race-related questions, consider this conversation on race options in the US Census, from research group Versta. Versta also proposed their own example:

If you’re interested in seeing what questions and answers were asked in the 2020 U.S. Census, they are outlined here.

Ethnicity

Despite the above discussion around ethnicity, it’s still widely used in surveys around the world.

For ethnicity-based questions, consult this rundown of different ethnicities in the UK government’s census style guide, which shows the different examples of survey options for different parts of the country.

The UK government also shares four examples of how respondents are asked about their ethnicity, including this sample that shows 18 different answer options across five main categories:

Diversity Australia’s own list differs slightly:

Table 1 in this report from the University of Wisconsin’s Office of International Research also offers a good breakdown of the potential answers you can include in survey questions around race and ethnicity.

Sara Clayton wrote this in-depth article on the UX design behind the race and ethnicity question in surveys – it’s worth the read to gain a better understanding of the thinking process behind how to measure diversity in a survey.

3. Religion questions

Since holidays are often linked with religious observances, knowing the faith representation of your workforce only assists diversity efforts, but also helps when planning the work holiday calendar for the upcoming year. This can ensure an equal and inclusive experience for all backgrounds in your workforce.

As with other questions, you need to take care when asking religion-related questions, according to a paper from the University of London:

“The term ‘religion’ may refer to a set of personal beliefs, an affiliation with an institution, a shared cultural identity, or participation in services or ceremonies. Survey questions about religion may tap into all of these dimensions, and if it is not clear what a particular question is asking, the interpretation of the responses becomes very difficult.”

The Pew Research Group also shared wording on religion surveys from different areas around the world – which will give you an excellent launchpoint on how to measure diversity of faith among your candidates.

Baylor University in Texas shared the complete questionnaires from all five waves of their Baylor Religion Surveys – and this is likewise an incredibly comprehensive list. Take a look at the school’s 2017 national study, which not only asks which religious family one most closely identifies with, but also:

• the level of religiosity or spirituality the respondent considers themselves to be
• the frequency in which the respondent attends services at a place of worship.

Finally, the Pew Research Group offers a comprehensive list of FAQs on its own research into religious representation in the United States, including details on:

• identity versus belief
• subgroups of religions
• race and religion
• religion and politics (i.e. “evangelical” becoming a political label as well as religious)

4. Disability and impairment questions

Allowing the respondent the option to share their impairment or disability can help you ensure the workplace is fully accessible and free of challenges, a crucial part of equality and inclusion in your DEI workplace strategy.

Again, as above, impairment and disability are not always considered to be overlapping. According to a report from the Learning and Skills Development Agency:

“Some disabled people prefer to be called ‘people with disabilities’ because they want to be regarded as people first. Others prefer the term ‘disabled people’, arguing that in the social model of disability, the experiences of impairment and disability are separate.”

Plus, according to the report:

• Impairment is the “physical, mental or sensory characteristic, feature or attribute that affects the function of an individual’s mind or body.”
• Disability is “the loss or limitation of opportunities to take part in society on an equal level due to social, attitudinal and environmental barriers”.

Disabilities and impairment can limit an applicant’s capabilities in the following three ways, according to Disabled World:

• Body structure and function (and impairment thereof)
• Activity (and activity restrictions)
• Participation (and participation restrictions)

Disabled World also notes the many different disability types that limit a person’s:

• Vision
• Hearing
• Thinking
• Learning
• Movement
• Mental health
• Remembering
• Communicating
• Social relationships

It also states that disabilities and impairments can be invisible – in other words, hidden.

The United States Census Bureau breaks down disabilities into the following six categories:

• Hearing difficulty: deaf or having serious difficulty hearing
• Vision difficulty: blind or having serious difficulty seeing, even when wearing glasses
• Cognitive difficulty: Because of a physical, mental, or emotional problem, having difficulty remembering, concentrating, or making decisions
• Ambulatory difficulty: Having serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs
• Self-care difficulty: Having difficulty bathing or dressing
• Independent living difficulty: Because of a physical, mental, or emotional problem, having difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping

The LSDA also shares a few examples in its report linked above on how to ask about disabilities, for instance:

If you need to talk with a candidate or new hire about what accommodations may be needed, Mobility International USA has great resources on how to have that conversation in a respectful and inclusive manner.

5. Socio-economic questions

Biases related to socio-economic status exist as well, even to the point where a degree from one school may not be as sufficient as that same degree from another school, even if both degrees offer the same qualifications. The only difference is that one degree is cheaper or ‘less reputable’ than the other.

There are also factors in one’s upbringing that potentially affect their interactions with others even if they’re fully qualified for a position. Home-borne accents, for example, which are often unfairly associated with intelligence or social status, can play a role in one’s perceived suitability for a role.

Another limiting factor is that an applicant may not have the same access to professional and personal networks that can give them good references for a job or a referral to a position otherwise not accessible.

Yes, class bias exists widely. And you can take those biases out of the recruitment process. But rather than asking questions about someone’s social or economic backgrounds as the UK’s Civil Service has done in good faith, that information may already be readily available in an applicant’s CV or resume.

The American Psychological Association offers a standard of measurements you can use to track the socio-economic status of your applicants as they move through the funnel. Three of them are relevant here: education, income, and occupation (in other words, professional background).

Siobhan at Multiverse pointed to guidance from the Sutton Trust in tracking socio-economic status. The Sutton Trust’s employer’s guide on social mobility in the workplace has good insights on socio-economic bias and how to overcome those.

You can use surveys to measure diversity

Finally, take a few minutes and read Sarai Rosenberg’s excellent breakdown on candidate surveying best practices. From this, you’ll gain good insights on how to measure diversity in your candidates, and moreover, how to go about it respectfully. Also, check out our candidate survey template for your own use.

This is a lot, we know. But in the end, consider the intention of carrying out candidate surveys. Surveying your candidates helps you track your progress in diversity, equity and inclusion, and helps you identify gaps in your process.

For instance, if you find that the percentage of a certain characteristic in your final hires in 2021 is significantly less than in your initial talent pool, or the representation of those advancing in your company does not reflect the representation within your total workforce, you now have starting points of where you can improve.

After all, if respondents in our DEI survey overwhelmingly selected “Demographics across entire company” when asked how they measure DEI progress (53.4% of all respondents), that necessitates a tool to track those demographics. Surveying your candidates is one way to get ahead and gain ground in your DEI strategy.

The post How to measure diversity in your candidates using surveys appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

A recent Mercer study proves this lack of diversity in leadership:

The demographics of leadership

• 85% of US-based executives and 83% of senior managers in the survey are white, compared with 64% of those in support and operations.
• 77% of executives and 71% of senior managers worldwide in the survey are male, compared with 53% of support staff.

Seeing these numbers, you’d expect some momentum to increase that diversity at the executive level. There is – but not to the scale you might think.

Contents:

• The demographics of leadership
• Prioritizing diversity in leadership
• Why is diversity in leadership important?
• Diversity in leadership: The payoff
• Diversity in leadership: The initiative
• Diversity in leadership: The action items
• Diversity in leadership: Leaders demand it

Want to see the full infographic? Download it for yourself here. Or read on:

Prioritizing diversity in leadership

In Workable’s survey on DEI at work, 64.8% cited diversity throughout the entire company as an area of priority in their overall DEI strategy.

But when it comes to leadership at the top level, just 25% of respondents included that as a leading priority in their strategy.

So, not only is there not much diversity in leadership, it doesn’t even seem to be as important as overall diversity in the minds of business professionals.

If you can’t point to equal representation at the top level, then how can you really declare real progress in your company DEI strategy? Ticking off that “diversity” box doesn’t mean much when the distribution of that diversity remains uneven.

Why is diversity in leadership important?

So, why should you care? Well, there are three major reasons.

1. Your leadership sets the tone.

Work processes and company cultures are traditionally guided – and influenced – via a top-down approach. If you have a lack of diverse leadership in your workforce, you’re not going to make real progress in the equally essential and more impactful cousins of equity and inclusion. They are all different parts of the whole, after all.

2. Your employees want to feel included.

Think about your employees. If you already feel underrepresented in everyday society – whether you are Black, female, non-binary, etc. – and that underrepresentation is even starker at the top level in your workplace, how can you expect to feel truly equal, included, and understood as an employee?

Related to both #1 and #2: The employee experience is crucial. We’re no longer in a time where there’s a clear separation between personal life and work life. You want all your employees feeling safe, appreciated, valued, and included in the workspace – thus bringing their full selves to work.

3. Your bottom line is at stake.

The payoff can be immense. While there’s no arguing about the moral imperative for ensuring diversity in leadership, doing so actually has a positive influence on your bottom line.

Diversity in leadership: The payoff

The data proves the real and positive business impact of diversity in leadership. Let’s look at the numbers from a McKinsey study:

• Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity at the executive level are 21% more likely to generate higher profits and 27% more likely to have superior value creation.
• Companies in the top quartile for ethnic/cultural diversity on executive teams are 1/3 more likely to have industry-leading profitability.

What’s more, if your leadership is homogenous, there’s a negative impact on your bottom line.

• Those companies in the bottom quartile for both gender and ethnic/cultural diversity are 29% less likely to be above average in profitability.

Diversity in leadership: The initiative

Let’s go back to our own survey, where we asked respondents when they introduced diversity in leadership as an action item. One in five said they did so in 2020. Another fifth say they’ll implement it as an action item going forward.

• 20.8% of companies introduced diverse management and leadership as an action item in 2020
• 19% will do so going forward.

Diversity in leadership: The action items

Do you have leadership diversity in your strategy or do you plan to? More so, what can you do to increase diversity in leadership? It’s no longer about raising a flag in support of DEI – you need to act to make a real difference.

There are many ways to do it – including establishing clear, attainable goals, for example:

“Our executive team will be fully representative of our society’s demographics by June 2022.”

You will also need to define action items to reach each goal.

For example:

“Implement a process to track advancement metrics throughout the organization.”

When you track representation in your hiring, you can establish a baseline and identify opportunities for improvement. You can do that using an anonymous surveying tool such as Workable’s Candidate Surveys.

Another example:

“Utilize tools to reduce unconscious bias in the hiring process.”

Hiring the right people to lead your business is clearly top of mind – but are you also doing so in a fair, unbiased way that treats each candidate equally? It’s possible that you’re unintentionally excluding or disadvantaging certain minorities, as suggested in another Mercer report.

You can reduce that unconscious bias from the recruitment process via anonymized screening where candidates’ names and other identifying features are removed from their applications. There are tools to help you there, such as Workable’s Anonymized Screening.

Diversity in leadership: Leaders demand it

There is a growing call for action from investors, and implementation of new standards and expectations are being set by regulators – including S&P. Some organizations are even seeing leaders stepping down on the requirement that their replacement contributes to a more accurate representation of the overall community.

If you do it right, you’ll be able to have a diversity pyramid that now looks like this:

Company diversity is great – but it’s the equal distribution of that diversity that really counts. It’ll really show your mettle as a business that values employee experience when you have diversity in leadership.

Let’s get to work!

The post Diversity in leadership: Why it matters and what you can do appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

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The post Podcast episode #7: How to build a sustainable DEI strategy appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The workplace is not unaffected by all this. Calls for greater diversity in the workplace have increased exponentially. Now is the time for HR professionals to focus on diversity in the workplace and reinforcing inclusion not just in words, but in practice. Many are expecting to see results.

But what exactly is diversity in the workplace?

Diversity is the coexistence of people with different characteristics (e.g. race, age, gender, sexual orientation), skills and personality traits. For example, at work, we can talk about a diverse team when employees come from various cultural, academic and professional backgrounds and when there’s a balance in gender, age and race. You can find more examples in our diversity in the workplace definition.

You can’t build diverse teams, though, without pairing diversity with inclusion. Nor have you “won” if you now have a diverse team, because equity and inclusion are where the real work begins. Employees feel included in their workplace when they have equal opportunities during the entire employee lifecycle: from the way they’re treated during the hiring process to how they’re being managed, trained, evaluated and promoted.

But this can’t happen automatically. To build an inclusive workplace, employers must provide those equal opportunities to all potential and existing employees. They should also revisit and improve their procedures as needed to ensure they’re respectful to all people regardless of protected characteristics.

For an inclusive workplace, employers must provide equal opportunities to all potential & existing employees. They should also improve procedures as needed to ensure they’re respectful to all regardless of protected characteristics.

The importance of diversity and inclusion

Why do we care so much about DEI in the workplace, though? And why should we care? Is it simply the right thing to do or are there business gains associated with diversity?

It’s both. When you try to build diverse teams, you fight discrimination in the workplace. You aim to give equal opportunities to all employees – even those (or especially those) in underrepresented groups.

We can better understand the value of diversity in the workplace with some examples of what happens when companies don’t take into account diverse voices. Two diversity in the workplace articles talk about the importance of a diverse workforce when building and testing products:

• a Black person struggles to use an automatic soap dispenser because the light sensor doesn’t detect a dark-skinned hand
• Black women speak up about the extensive hair searches they have to undertake at airports, as body scanners give false alarms due to their natural Afro.

These examples prove that diversity, equity and inclusion is not just about the moral aspect of it; when you add diverse voices in your teams, you learn things you wouldn’t have known otherwise, you build better products and you increase equity in the workplace and beyond.

There are financial benefits, too, that motivate employers to boost their DEI efforts. Diverse companies:

• Reflect societies more accurately. Societies are by default diverse in age, race, gender and socio-economic class. Therefore, organizations with diverse employees are better aligned with the demographics of the area (or areas) where they operate. On a macroeconomics scope, this means that they can better predict – and adjust to – changes in the market and local consumer behavior.
• Speak to a broader audience. People usually relate to those from a similar background. So, when your employees come from various backgrounds, they can understand the needs, interests and pain points of diverse audiences, too. This gives you the opportunity to expand your messaging and promote your products and services to a larger customer base.
• Get more creative and profitable. Diversity doesn’t only refer to protected characteristics. There’s also diversity of thought – that may or may not be a result of different protected characteristics. Employees with different experiences and perspectives can bring fresh ideas and innovative solutions to the table which, in turn, benefit the entire organization.

You can start building a business case for diverse teams for your organization with studies and interesting stats.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in action

A quick online search will give you lots of studies and articles on the benefits of diversity in the workplace. And while talking about diversity is a good thing, because it means we’re paying attention, it’s not enough. Let’s take a deeper look at how companies, and particularly HR departments, can actively foster diversity in the workplace.

The legal aspect of diversity in the workplace

To promote diversity at work, there is legislation that protects minority or underrepresented groups from discrimination. There are also regulations that reinforce human rights in the workplace. For example, in many countries, employers can’t fire a pregnant employee and they can’t include age and gender requirements in their job ads unless it’s absolutely necessary or relevant for the role. It’s best to consult a lawyer to ensure that your company complies with all relevant legislation that applies in your specific location.

In the United States, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is the regulatory body that enforces diversity in every work situation; for example, when employers hire, terminate, compensate, promote, and train employees. For more details, check our guides and learn what you need to do to comply with the law:

• What is Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)
• EEO guidelines for employers
• How to follow EEOC regulations
• How to file an EEO-1 report
• Why EEO statements fall short

In Canada, the Human Rights Act includes a number of laws and regulations that protect people against discriminatory practices. There are also specific regulations about equal pay and the Canadian Human Rights Commission where employees can file complaints when treated unfairly.

The UK has established a similar commission, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, that provides guidance for employees and employers regarding the Equality Act 2010.

Finally, the European Union has implemented a series of non-discriminatory directives to reinforce equity across the EU. For example, the Directive 2000/78/EC is about discrimination at work on grounds of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation and the Directive 2006/54/EC provides the framework of equal treatment for men and women in matters of employment and occupation.

Anti-discrimination laws are not here to pose limitations to employers. They exist so that all people have equal opportunities at work. It’s important to have an official, legal context that ensures that companies treat employees objectively and respectfully, because we are all prone to unconscious bias. Also, sometimes for the sake of faster hiring, it’s common to pick candidates based on convenience, i.e. based on arbitrary or even superficial hiring criteria.

In this case, diversity regulations can serve as guidelines for employers who don’t just need or want to be compliant with the law, but try to actively fight all types of discrimination in the workplace. For example, take a look at these illegal interview questions – even if it’s not legally forbidden to ask them in your area, it’s still a good idea to avoid them so that you hire candidates using objective, job-related criteria.

The role of recruiters and HR

While increasing DEI is not one person’s (or one department’s) responsibility, the HR experts can take many actions to build a truly inclusive workplace. That’s because they’re in charge of everything that has to do with the human aspect of the company: from attracting and recruiting diverse candidates to setting the guidelines for fair treatment, management and compensation of all employees to ensure a fully inclusive workplace.

Here’s how recruiters and HR professionals can foster workplace diversity:

• Remove biases from hiring. From gender-neutral job descriptions to targeted, skill-based interview questions, your hiring process should be built in a way that helps you find the best people for the job – not the ones you like the most. Here are some examples from companies that are taking actions to reduce bias in recruiting, plus a few tips to get you started when you aim to create an inclusive work environment.
• Look for areas of improvement. Diversity might not always be tangible, but you can still set some goals and track your progress. For example, what’s the gender ratio at your company and by department? How many of your female employees have a leadership role? If those numbers are not close to your goals, you might want to invest your energy into increasing diversity specifically in these areas. Rachel Bates, who was SVP of Sales & Marketing at Workable until spring 2020, describes how she successfully built a more gender-balanced sales team, while recruitment expert Matt Buckland, at one point Workable’s VP of Customer Advocacy, advises on how to hire more women in tech, a traditionally male-dominated field.
• Consider the overlooked types of diversity. When we talk about diversity, we mostly refer to race and gender. But there’s more than that. Some examples include age discrimination, bias against employees with disabilities, and rejection of candidates with non-traditional career paths. You should also keep in mind that there’s intersectionality in the workplace, i.e. overlapping biases such as age and gender discrimination. Your DEI efforts should take into account all different types of diversity that exist in your workplace – or that you’d like them to exist.
• Involve all of your team members. A recruiter alone can’t build a diverse company. Picture this: As a recruiter at your company, you might be diversifying your candidate sources and screening resumes with strictly job-related criteria. But if those who’re making the final hiring decision are biased, they could still reject good candidates because, for example, some candidates don’t have a degree from a prestigious school. It’s essential that all employees, no matter their seniority level, understand the importance of diversity in the workplace. Whether it’s through bias trainings or official anti-discrimination company policies, everyone should be aware of expectations, values and appropriate behaviors in terms of mutual respect and acceptance. For example, those who’re involved in recruiting should know how to document interview feedback to help their teams make well-rounded hiring decisions and all colleagues should know what constitutes unacceptable work behavior.

Why oppose diversity in the workplace?

“I want to hire people I get along with because I know we’ll collaborate better.”

“When I’m actively looking to increase the number of female employees at my company, don’t I discriminate against male candidates?”

“Things like religious beliefs and sexual preferences have no place in a professional setting – they only bring controversy and distractions from work.”

These are valid concerns, but not strong enough to dismiss DEI efforts from the workplace. In fact, it’s quite the opposite; it goes back to building an inclusive environment where all employees feel safe and respected no matter their protected characteristics, personal opinions, backgrounds, etc.

You fight the challenges of diversity in the workplace by structuring your interview process in a way that helps you hire on merit (rather than make decisions that lead to homogenous teams) by implementing affirmative action programs to support underrepresented groups when needed, and by setting the framework for approaching controversial topics at work.

Ultimately, you want to create a place where employees are treated equally and there are no privileged and underprivileged groups, and everyone feels included.

The post Diversity in the workplace: why it matters and how to increase inclusion appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Table of Contents

1. Candidate experience

• On sidestepping “Where do you see yourself in X years?”
• On recruiting passive candidates

2. Lean recruiting

• On start-up recruiting without benefits and perks
• On sourcing diverse talent on a tight budget

3. DEI in the recruitment process

• On supporting DEI in hiring
• On the efficacy of Workable’s anonymized screening tool
• On hiring diverse candidates for a school district

4. Competing for talent

• On compensation in different markets
• On finding top talent when you’re not the ideal

5. And one more for the road… on hiring after COVID

Following are some exchanges from that Q&A session (with names of guests removed to preserve privacy):

1. Candidate experience

On sidestepping “Where do you see yourself in X years?”

Guest:
What is the best question to ask potential employees about retention in the office?

Melissa:
Hi, thank you for your question! To clarify, are you asking how to respond about retention at your company if the answer is not positive?

Guest:
Yes, we have a lot of longevity in our office. I have worked there for over 20 years. It takes about a year just to learn the job. I wanted to think beyond the “where do you see yourself in 5 years”. I know there are some gray areas to avoid, but any advice would be great!

Melissa: 
Assessing staying power can be hard to navigate, I would focus on sharing your company’s lengthy ramp time and the need for time commitment that employees need to invest in order to make an impact. For the right candidates, this transparency and approach will resonate.

However, we also have to recognize that workforce behaviors have evolved when it comes to tenure and the average time in a role is around 4.5 years and those aged between 24-34, it’s around 3 years, so employers have to adjust in order to maximize the impact employees can make in that timeframe.

Guest:
Great advice!! thank you so much!!!!

Melissa:
My pleasure!

On recruiting passive candidates

Guest:
Could you provide advice on best practices when it comes to sourcing passive candidates?

Melissa:
Hi again, of course! RESILIENCE. Candidates are cautious to leave jobs right now so don’t get offended if you don’t get responses to your reach out.

Personalization is key, show that you have a good understanding of their background and why you think making a move into your organization would be worthwhile. Projecting warmth and enthusiasm goes a long way and sharing as much about your company and why it’s a stellar place to work.

It’s difficult but you also have to do this as succinctly as possible. And don’t be afraid to use multiple methods of reaching out, direct email, LinkedIn or even a call.

Keith:
Think of it in terms of recruitment marketing. You are marketing yourself as an employer. You want to show your value as an employer to the candidate. Usually, it’s the other way around, in that candidates are trying to market themselves to you.

Show your value as an employer, in terms of what that candidate can gain from making such a move. As Melissa says, passive candidates aren’t just going to jump ship. You’re asking them to take a risk. You want to show them that you’re worth that risk.

Guest:
Thank you so much you two! I really appreciate it! I often do get discouraged when I don’t get a reply back. I will consider trying different approaches and watching which one works and have really been looking into recruitment marketing.

2. Lean recruiting

On start-up recruiting without benefits and perks

Guest:
What is the best way to recruit people into a start up that currently has no formal benefits and very few perks. It’s hard in the world of free lunch and a games room!

Keith:
Oh yeah, that is always tough. You’re in a very competitive space already. Workable CEO Nikos Moraitakis offered some great insights around that theme in an interview a few years ago:

To your point about free lunches and games rooms, he offered this: “No one ever came to work because of the ping pong tables. Even less so, stayed for them.”

He does have a point. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about benefits and perks – you can communicate the value of the work itself, which can be unique and interesting in so many ways compared with other startups.

You may also find this to be a good resource.

Melissa:
Hi! You have to capitalize on the things a startup does offer – a chance to be part of building and shaping structure, tech tools, teams and culture! Post your jobs in places that might draw in candidates that are inspired by that type of opportunity – AngelList, VentureFizz and Built In to name a few. At this stage of your growth, count on referrals too, they’ll have a better sense of what they’re walking into.

On sourcing diverse talent on a tight budget

Guest:
What are some strategies for sourcing diverse candidates when the organization doesn’t have the budget to invest in diverse platforms?

Melissa:
Hi … thanks for your question! To me, it’s about posting in multiple places to source from as many diverse job boards/candidate pools as possible. There are organizations who also focus and partner with companies to support diverse hiring. Also, using technology like anonymized screening will help.

Training hiring managers to identify biases is a crucial starting point when interviewing in order to to avoid unintentionally disqualifying candidates. Getting commitment from the hiring team will sometimes take longer than you wish, so patience is required.

Just so I can try to help further, what are the diverse platforms you’re referring to?

If you’d like to do some reading on the topic, here’s a great resource for you (and definitely, watch the video!).

Guest:
Melissa, thank you for the advice. This is very helpful. Currently we have looked in areas like Dice or POCIT. And I have been told we do not have a budget to post on paid platforms at the moment. Current postings are those provided via our current ATS. Thank you again for sharing this resource.

3. DEI in the recruitment process

On supporting DEI in hiring

Guest:
There are some new recruitment products, touting support of DE&I with this process, that is championing for even more increased “blind” selection criteria to go beyond hiding names, home addresses, school names, etc. which have been known to elicit hidden biases to not utilizing Zoom or video interviews to further cut down on unconscious biases from creeping into this process – ie. voice, dialect, dress, hairstyle, etc.

So these products are focused on the employer asking work-based questions for the candidate to submit in writing. Would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this new burgeoning recruitment strategy to further support DE&I efforts?

Melissa:
Hi … thank you for your question! This is a tough one, but definitely a good one. While there is research available that shows the positive impact of anonymized screening, it needs to be part of a wider DEI initiative to have an impact.

For example: According to a study completed by Harvard Business Review, “Before any anonymization, men outperformed women by about 5%. After just the removal of the names, that number dropped to less than 3%. When the applications were fully anonymized, women outperformed men by 1%.”

However, even if this method does improve your diverse hiring metrics, it does not guarantee the organization’s culture is inclusive. Anonymized screening is one piece of the puzzle – it’s a tool companies can utilize to meet their goals – but so much more needs to happen as well.

On the efficacy of Workable’s anonymized screening tool

Guest:
I also noted that you have anonymized the Workable ATS, could you please let me know to what extent this has reduced unconscious bias and how, in cases where the content of the CV or application either countries where one has worked, college or university can give an indication of nationality

Melissa:
Hi, great question! This article has a few screenshots that can help you visualize what our Anonymized Screening tool does. As you can see, college & country are considered identifying information, so these would be blocked out.

According to a study completed by Harvard Business Review, “Before any anonymization, men outperformed women by about 5%. After just the removal of the names, that number dropped to less than 3%. When the applications were fully anonymized, women outperformed men by 1%.”

Guest:
Great feedback, that’s good analytics. I noted that some panel members try as much as possible to have women in the shortlist and sometimes this can be at the expense of men.

This happened last time, I pointed this out to the team and they thought, it’s good to have an all-women shortlist. The results were anything but; we did go back to the longlist and selected the next group which was a mix and the second round was much better and men did better compared to the first group.

On hiring diverse candidates for a school district

Guest:
Hi! As a recruiter for a school district, my biggest challenge is to recruit diverse candidates for all positions. What suggestions or ideas do you have on how to do this?

Keith:
Hi – great question. We talk a lot about this in Workable’s own content. First things first, you want to diversify that initial candidate pool. In that, you’ll need to think about where you’re actually posting your job ads and where you’re announcing opportunities at your school district. The more diverse your outreach, the wider range of candidates you’ll attract, so to speak.

Another thing to think about is the overall messaging of your school district. An overt statement that shows you value diversity, equity and inclusion can do a lot in terms of candidate attraction.

If you’d like to do some reading on the topic, here’s a great resource for you.

If the challenge is about making a case for it with stakeholders, then this may be helpful.

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question!

I agree with Keith, you want to increase posting in multiple places to source from as many diverse job boards/candidate pools as possible. There are also many organizations focusing and partnering with companies in support of diverse hiring. Also, you’ll find using technology like anonymized screening will be helpful.

On the hiring manager side, training them to identify biases when interviewing to avoid unintentionally disqualifying candidates will get the ball rolling. When it comes to commitment from the hiring team, it will sometimes take longer than you wish, so patience is required.

4. Competing for talent

On compensation in different markets

Guest:
I recently joined a fully distributed company with employees all over the country. When it comes to hiring cross-country and compensation, what philosophy do you think makes the most sense? Different compensation for different markets? Same compensation regardless of market, which can mean you’re priced out of the most expensive markets?

What’s your advice when coming up with compensation recommendations knowing how much markets can vary?

Keith:
Hi! This is obviously a tough one, because there’s no “right” answer. It’s been debated widely, especially as more companies move to remote-first operations during the pandemic. There’s a great discussion from Forbes on it – highlighting Reddit and Zillow as companies that opted to pay the same regardless of location, and Facebook at the other end, preferring to pay based on location.

And if you wanted to go down the rabbit hole on the topic of distributed teams, we do have some great reading for you. First, an interview with SmartBug CEO Ryan Malone, whose company was fully remote way back before it was cool.

And another, on the topic of hiring in different countries.

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question. Definitely a hot topic right now. But really, it comes down to your company’s compensation philosophy. Do you want to lead the pack on comp or stay conservative or middle of the road?

It’s unrealistic to expect a company of a certain size and revenue located in one geography to compete with the likes of large enterprises in NY and San Fran.

So the best advice I can give is, make a fair and realistic budget for roles based on comparative comp data, budget approval and cast your net far and wide in your candidate search. You’ll soon get a pretty good picture from candidate feedback if any comp adjustments need to be reconsidered from there.

And sometimes, you have to accept, this is how much a role is going to cost to fill, and you gotta pay if that’s the position your company needs.

Guest:
Yeah, it’s interesting. We’re a small 30-person series A company so our resources are very different than many of the companies frequently mentioned in regards to this topic. I think the biggest challenge has been helping my hiring managers realize that our budget for a role is X.

We might find someone great in an expensive market, but there’s only so much flexibility we have in regards to compensation.

I think they are struggling to understand that there’s always going to be great talent out there that we simply can’t afford–and I know that’s not unique to just my company.

Melissa:
The way I look at it is, if budget is non-negotiable, then time and patience is required to advertise and source for this needle in a haystack. The other, less ideal option, a re-assessment of the job might be required and understand that you might have to get someone who checks 70% of the boxes or a more junior profile.

As much as we’d like to move mountains for our hiring teams, we’re also not miracle workers.

On finding top talent when you’re not the ideal

Guest:
Melissa, thank you for your time and expertise. I am at a small, regional, rural public university in the PNW and we are challenged finding qualified IT faculty to hire. Suggestions?

Our comp structure is “average”, benefits are very good, and livability is superb (if you don’t need a city to live in). Thanks again.

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question! Happy to help as best I can. IT / tech talent can notoriously be difficult to find. Do you find you’re not getting enough quality candidates to fill the pipeline? Or, are you getting candidates, but they fall off during the hiring process?

Guest:
Unfortunately – both. Lean applicant pool and quick bailouts when offers to our best candidates come in ahead of us. We cannot sponsor H1B visas and that portion of the labor market appears to be the applicants most available.

Melissa:
This is a tough one. Advertising and promoting those stellar benefits is key and the livability, it will help make your position stand out. Thank you for clarifying, if it’s a lack of qualified candidates, focusing your sourcing efforts on passive candidates at other educational institutions would be where I’d start first.

Keith:
Hi! Seconding Melissa’s comment that IT/tech talent is tough to find. We have written a lot about that in our website. You’ll probably find these articles particularly helpful, especially if you’re finding that talent attraction is a challenge:

• Office in an ‘unsexy’ area? Use these 5 talent attraction strategies
• Hiring tech workers when you’re not on their A-list

Guest:
Super! Thanks for the tips and online resources. We will move ahead optimistically!

Keith:
De nada! If you search “tech talent” in our site, you’ll find plenty of other helpful stuff as well.

Guest:
Thank you again. Your online availability is just great…

Melissa:
Our pleasure!

5. And one more for the road…

On hiring after COVID

Guest:
Any recruiting recommendations for hiring pre & post COVID?

Melissa:
Hi, thanks for your question!

In the past year, we opened our scope to other states offering greater flexibility on location, resulting in a larger pool of candidates. We’ve also focused on a higher utilization of video interviews. As we’re working remotely and will likely continue for the foreseeable future, that comfort with technology and video communication is key.

We’ve also been looking at our scorecards and how we assess candidates to evaluate autonomy and greater emphasis on communication skills. We’ve found by doing these activities, we’ve had greater success in securing hires that do well under our new ways of working.

Keith:
Melissa basically answered it… but thought you’d be interested to know that we surveyed our employees on the kinds of skills that are needed in a remote work world, with some great results.

We also sat down with a CEO of a company that has been fully remote for nearly a decade. He had some great tips on how to identify ideal candidates for that kind of environment.

Have more questions for us?

We are always here to support recruiters and HR professionals in doing what they do best. If you have any more questions that you wish you had the answer to, don’t hesitate to email us at content@workable.com with “Recruiting Q&A” in the subject headline. We’ll assemble your questions and have Melissa answer them for you in a future article!

The post Recruiting Q&As from Bamboo HR’s Employee Experience Week appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Described as a digital challenger bank in the United Kingdom, Starling Bank operates out of four locations in the UK and Ireland with headquarters in London. They take a more customer-centric approach to banking, and continue to grow rapidly as a disrupter in the financial industry. They have amassed £363M in total funding and more than two million customers to date, plus they have been voted as Best British Bank for three consecutive years from 2018 to 2020.

Starling Bank’s incredible growth requires a highly efficient recruitment solution that can handle the volume of candidates and hiring managers while maintaining seamless, easy to use functionality. Workable’s ATS gives Starling Bank what it needs to confidently maintain its recruitment process. 

Says Marc Douch, Talent Acquisition Manager at Starling Bank:

“It’s a simple platform to use from a recruiter and a hiring manager point of view… Training new hiring managers is almost non-existent because I just set them up with an account. It’s fairly self-explanatory.”

To meet the skyrocketing demand of its services in the market, Starling Bank has consistently hired at a high volume in two major areas: engineering and customer support.

“We hired just under 600 people last year and, I think so far [as of November 2020], we’ve hired about 450,” says Marc. “So, it’s been a bit of a busy past couple of years from a hiring perspective, that’s for sure.”

The Video Interviews feature, which eliminates resource-heavy communications between the recruiter and job applicant to set up screening calls, has been particularly helpful, says Marc. 

Marc adds that recruiting continued at its torrid pace even as Starling Bank shifted to a remote working environment, making Video Interviews an even more useful tool in the company’s recruiting toolbox. In fact, he says business has moved even more smoothly than it did when everyone was in the same working space.

“We’ve gone from a company that was five days a week in the office to no one’s in the office five days a week,” Marc says. “We’ve ended up doing some stuff in quicker time than we probably would have done in the office.”

Marc also highlights Workable’s award-winning customer support team as a huge bonus to using the recruitment solution – when operating in such a busy recruiting environment, recruiters like Marc rely on solving problems as quickly as they arise. 

“The support that you get is more responsive, more thoughtful, more on the ball than any other ATS I’ve ever worked with,” says Marc.

Starling Bank’s choice to use Workable’s recruitment solution enabled it to continue to grow its workforce rapidly to meet booming business demands. Moreover, it ensured a seamless shift to a fully online recruitment process throughout the COVID-19 pandemic – making possible a highly efficient operating system beyond the crisis as the business continues to scale rapidly in future.

The post Starling Bank scales from 50 to 1,100 employees in five years, staying efficient with Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

So, how can you choose the best place to start? The answer is easy – “look at the data”. We surveyed nearly 800 business and HR professionals, resulting in numerous compelling insights to help us better understand the status of DEI in companies and the most impactful ways to take action.

Tune in to hear the experts discuss how to:

• Dissect the most compelling insights around DEI in the workplace and utilize them to create a business case
• Differentiate between “talking the talk” and “walking the walk” when establishing a tangible and sustainable DEI strategy
• Benchmark your own DEI goals with quantitative and qualitative data across your sourcing channels, recruitment process and workforce

The post A deep dive into the data behind DEI appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In the past year, we’ve experienced major change like never before. At home. At work. While some organizations are struggling with attracting and retaining talent in this new world of work, others are thriving. Why?

In this session, Josh will reveal his top 12 predictions for the future. If optimizing your culture, benefits, DEI, employer brand, candidate experience, or hiring technologies are on your priority list for 2021, this session is for you.

In just 60 minutes, Josh will give you a leg up on tackling 2021 and beyond.

The post Step into the future with Josh Bersin appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

About accessibility

In order to better understand what designing for accessibility means, we need to look at it more comprehensively, particularly in talking about universal design. Universal design is the process of making products accessible to the widest possible audience, which includes – but isn’t limited to – people with disabilities. For example, attaching a wheelchair ramp would make a building accessible to people with mobility problems, while a combined ramp and stairs would open access to all.

Accessible design considers the need of people with disabilities. Accessibility in the physical world is the degree to which an environment is used by as many people as possible: for example, pedestrian traffic crossings that play a tone to signal that it is safe for people to cross, braille public signs, tactile paving, and much more.

Accessibility is very often underprioritized in design due to what is seen as a small percentage of users suffering from a permanent disability. That results in people with certain types of disabilities struggling to get equal access to things that many take for granted in society.

About Web accessibility

Web accessibility is about making products and services available to all users regardless of their physical ability, internet speed, or the device they are using. It refers to the practice of building web content and applications that can be used by a full range of people, including individuals who have visual, motor, auditory, speech, or cognitive disabilities. Some people have to use assistive technologies to make these tools fully accessible to them.

Accessibility has overlapping principles with usability, but there is a difference: While accessibility focuses on creating more accessible web content for people with disabilities, usability focuses on the general user experience, including users with disabilities.

Web accessibility also benefits people without disabilities, for example:

• people using smartphones, smart watches, smart TVs, and other devices with small screens, different input modes, etc.
• people with “temporary disabilities” such as a broken arm or lost glasses
• people with “situational limitations” such as operating in bright sunlight or in an environment where they cannot listen to audio

Designing first for people in different challenging situations – be it disability, tech limitations, environmental restrictions, etc. – helps us better serve anyone.

Accessibility guidelines

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops technical specifications, guidelines, techniques, and supporting resources as universally accepted and standardized descriptors and definitions for accessibility solutions.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 consist of many requirements that guide designers and developers to create accessible content for a wider audience.

WCAG 2.0 guidelines are categorized into three levels of conformance in order to meet the needs of different groups and different situations: A (lowest), AA (mid range), and AAA (highest). Conformance at higher levels indicates conformance at lower levels.

Accessibility features we worked on

We at Workable want to focus on users and their needs in each phase of the design process. Our processes are driven by user-centered evaluation – which means we want to build a fully equitable and inclusive experience for users of our recruitment solution. We do follow the basic accessibility rules when adhering to web standards, but there is more to be done to make Workable entirely accessible above and beyond the usual standard of excellence.

That means Workable aims to enhance accessibility and meet WCAG 2.1 level AA guidelines, by approaching the task at a design and development level. Features we are working on include:

Design level

On a design level, for example, we’re thinking about color contrast. Having a low contrast ratio may result in people not being able to distinguish the foreground from the background, or especially read text. Not everyone has a good screen and not everyone has good vision.

We also consider animation accessibility. This applies not only to people who suffer from epilepsy and migraine sensitivities, but to anyone who experiences an adverse reaction to excessive motion on the screen for a longer period of time. Animated interfaces can cause headaches, nausea, dizziness, and other health problems for many.

WCAG 2.0 Level AA speaks to the importance of letting the user resize text: “Except for captions and images of text, text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality.” This guideline states that all website text must be resizable, so we ensure that all text in Workable is adjustable and readable by everyone.

Lastly, icons can convey all sorts of meaningful information, so it’s important that they reach the largest number of people possible. We ensure that the icons we use are appropriately accessible or hidden from assistive technologies where applicable.

Development level

On a development level, well-structured content allows more efficient navigation and processing. We use semantic HTML and WAI-ARIA attributes to improve navigation and orientation on web pages and in applications.

Every image should contain an alternative text which describes the information or function of the image. This text helps screen-reading tools describe images to visually impaired readers, so it has to be descriptive and informative of the action.

Some users are physically unable to use a mouse, and might be navigating through the page using a keyboard alone. Websites need to provide uniform feedback whether it’s for keyboard or mouse users. We have to ensure that all the website’s elements are keyboard accessible and that users can continue to fully interact with Workable even if they cannot use a mouse.

As many users use assistive technologies online, websites must be accessible through alternative user interface devices, such as screen readers and screen magnifiers. Testing Workable with assistive technologies is now a standard part of the process we follow throughout development.

Next steps

Making a website accessible has different levels and depths. Optimizing a website for disabled users is not a one-time effort. As Workable is dynamic and evolves continuously, we need to work on it continuously.

Accessibility to Workable is an ongoing process that we are committed to carrying out at the highest quality possible. For us, it’s not simply about complying with regulations or adhering to standard tech specifications – it’s about providing all our users with a fully equitable and inclusive experience, so that everyone has equal access and opportunity when using our software.

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The post COVID-19 and gender equality: The conversation needs to keep going appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

7 stats on gender and COVID-19

Here are seven eye-opening stats for you on how women have are uniquely affected, shedding light on COVID-19 and its impact on gender equality.

Jump to the full infographic – or download it for yourself here.

1. Unbalanced scales

4.5% of women’s employment is at risk, compared with 3.8% of men’s employment according to McKinsey – as women work more in industries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. A mother’s burden

Mothers are more likely than fathers to scale back or consider leaving their job during the pandemic, the World Economic Forum reports. They found that 17% of mothers reported a reduction in their work hours, compared with just 9% of fathers who reported the same.

3. Where’s the support?

More black women report that they don’t feel supported by their manager, compared with women and men of other races. According to a report collaboration from McKinsey and LeanIn.org, 15% of black women reported that they don’t feel supported by their manager at work.

4. Burning the candle at both ends

Women in senior-level positions report higher levels of exhaustion and burnout than men, with 54% vs. 41% citing exhaustion and 39% vs. 29% citing burnout according to the World Economic Forum. This is likely due to a greater stress at both ends of the work-life balance as a consequence of the pandemic.

5. A matter of importance

According to Workable’s survey on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the workplace, 96.6% of women state that DEI in the workplace is important to them.

6. Strong leadership

The Harvard Business Review reported that women are rated as being more effective leaders than men during the COVID-19 crisis, with 57.2% of respondents in a survey saying women ranked positively in overall leadership effectiveness ratings, compared with 51.5% for men.

7. … and maybe this is why

Senior-level women are more likely than men to practice allyship at work, including active listening and mentorship according to McKinsey and LeanIn.org.

Important reminder: the pandemic isn’t solely to blame for the gender imbalance. It simply exposed the imbalances that have existed in the system for a long time, and we need to continue the conversation even after the pandemic is over.

We’ve got a lot of work to do yet to bridge the chasm – and it goes far beyond gender and COVID.

Progress depends on persistence – let’s keep at it.

PDF

Related content:

Gender inequality in the workplace: A lack of women in leadership

Gender inclusion in the workplace: Going beyond diversity

Why should employers care about the gender pay gap?

The post Gender and COVID-19: 7 stats on women at work in 2021 appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

The voice in our survey data is clear – there is considerable support for DEI initiatives both at a personal level and at an organizational level. We have a destination in mind – but we just don’t know how to progress in DEI-focused areas in the same way that other business operations are carried out.

In this chapter, we address the following questions:

• What are the top takeaways from Workable’s DEI survey results?
• Which DEI initiatives are top priority, and which ones are not?
• What’s the difference between diversity, equity and inclusion?
• How do you build a DEI action plan?

Your DEI action plan

Including a DEI action plan as part of a company’s overarching vision, mission, and values is fairly straightforward in abstract terms, but it gets murkier when you get down to the granular details that are so critical to all areas of business: Who should own that strategy? How should they carry it out? What are the DEI action items? What are the target metrics? How do you measure those metrics? And so on.

That lack of deeper understanding of DEI actionable steps – and the lack of a clear road map, even – is confirmed by significant numbers of respondents saying that they don’t yet have a plan in place or don’t know how to proceed, and even larger numbers saying that establishing a sustainable, long-term DEI action plan and strategy is a leading challenge.

Also, our survey found that diversity and demographics are a clear area of focus for many respondents. Equity and inclusion aren’t as highly prioritized. We also noted the higher percentage of respondents who say there are no plans in place for affinity networks and mentorship programs as action items. We also recognized the lower scores placed on inclusive teams, inclusive leadership, and inclusive benefits and perks as areas of focus in DEI initiatives.

We also saw that some segments in the dataset feel more strongly than others about DEI progress – as indicated in the answers for male vs. female and minority vs. non-minority categories. Perhaps personal experience is a factor in their answers. Perhaps some segments do not feel as included as others think they are.

“From my understanding in my workplace and some of my peers in other organizations, DEI only became a priority after the current events in the media. Previously, there have been a handful of executives all over the media that have been removed for not being compliant with DEI standards […]. But it was not until the more recent events that every company now has some kind of DEI in place. Overall, as a minority, I felt like it should have been addressed a long time ago and now it feels disingenuous, just a reflex to what is happening across the United States.”

Finally, a fifth of respondents say their company only started considering DEI in 2020. It’s uncharted territory for many, and it may be that the surge in interest means a much steeper learning curve in building a thoughtful, sustainable, long-lasting strategy around DEI. Perhaps the spirit of English business mogul Richard Branson’s quote applies here: “If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later.”

“As important as DEI is to organizations, most are just giving lip service to it. It’s the cool thing to say currently and it’s certainly more acceptable than it was 18 months ago. Companies are still under the illusion that it’s a position for White women or a position that pacifies people of color, and so they’ll put a powerless person in as a figurehead. This survey proves a bit of what I’m saying with all of the softball questions.”

Our own lesson is that we must understand diversity, equity and inclusion as three separate elements of the bigger DEI picture, and that we should establish specific metrics and action items for each, while understanding that there will be many overlaps between them:

Diversity

Diversity is tangible and measurable – X% of your company’s workforce is A, while Y% of your workforce is B, Z% of your workforce is C, and so on, based on protected characteristics as well as other areas including class, academic history, etc. This is relatively easy to identify and track through company audits, recruitment strategies, and candidate / employee surveys.

Equity

At its most basic level, equity is also measurable in a DEI action plan in terms of salary, advancement, benefits and perks, and so on. However, when we start looking at individual contribution, distribution of responsibilities, assignment and ownership of tasks, and treatment of colleagues, that becomes a little harder to concretize and track – but not impossible. One can establish action items here such as targeted development and mentorship, management training, a more diverse and self-aware leadership, and operation audits.

Inclusion

Unlike diversity and equity, inclusion is more abstract than concrete. It’s the sense of belonging, value, support, and respect that one feels in society and in a company – and that’s largely impacted by individual behavior and collective company culture. While difficult to tangibly measure beyond employee surveys, inclusion can be augmented through inclusive leadership, psychologically safe work environments, affinity networks, sensitivity and management training sessions, company language audits, and other items in a DEI action plan.

The explosion in DEI as a topic of interest in 2020 has resulted in a vastly publicized wealth of actionable lessons from experts and influencers in the space that we can and should start working on right now to truly define DEI in tangible business terms. This means thinking about your company mission, vision, values, and positioning statement, followed by identifying areas of priority and defining data points to monitor progress, and finally, implementing clear action items to hit those goals.

The commitment is clear. The information is readily available. There is work to be done – and it involves every one of us. Real, tangible action speaks louder than words and statements, and your employer brand may depend on it. With time and business smarts, and a well-thought-out DEI action plan, we’ll all get there.

“I believe [2020] will be pivotal in future talent attraction success. Companies will be challenged by candidates with the question; ‘How did your company change after the [Black Lives Matter] Movement in 2020?’ and they better be ready with a game-changing answer! Similar questions are to be expected around LGBT, the #MeToo movement and how we treated parents during COVID who had to deal with juggling lockdown, WFH, and childcare.”

The post Time for a DEI action plan: We’ll help you get there appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Jump to the full infographic – or download it for yourself here. For a deep dive, check out our full report on DEI at work.

We found eight major highlights for you on how UK&I compares with non-UK&I when it comes to DEI at work. Here they are:

1. 2020 was a bigger influence on DEI awareness

The growth of personal interest in DEI in 2020 was higher for UK&I than for other respondents, with 33% of UK&I respondents saying DEI became more important this year compared with 22% of non-UK&I responses. The opposite was true for respondents who answered that it always has been important to them, with 58% of UK&I respondents and 71% of non-UK&I saying it has always been important to them.

2. The will is stronger – but what’s the way?

UK&I respondents are more likely to say they’re interested but just don’t know how to go about it. When asked about the current state of DEI in their company, 15.5% of UK&I say they’re interested but don’t know where to start, compared with just 9% of non-UK&I.

When it comes to top challenges in meeting DEI targets in recruiting and hiring, 11.5% of UK&I respondents said they didn’t know how to do it, compared with just 2.4% of non-UK&I respondents. We saw similar differences when it comes to challenges in meeting overall DEI targets, with 17.3% of UK&I vs. 10.6% of non-UK&I saying they don’t know how to do it.

3. Progress? Not so much here

UK&I respondents are much more pessimistic in how they perceive DEI progress in their own company. Close to half (44.2%) of UK&I respondents said they don’t feel like their company is making meaningful progress in DEI, compared with one quarter (25.2%) of non-UK&I respondents.

4. A more prominent voice and ownership

UK&I respondents are more involved in sparking the conversation on DEI – and they’re also in charge of it now. Same goes for HR. A full 69.2% of UK&I respondents said they themselves were directly involved in that initial conversation, compared with 48.6% of non-UK&I.

Even more (76.9% vs. 60.4%) said they are tasked with executing on DEI initiatives in their work, and 25% vs. 15.8% said HR had initiated that conversation in their business.

5. It is the way – and it’s good business sense too

The moral imperative for DEI is stronger in UK&I, and so is the business case. External influences and brand reputation? Not so much. We learned that 57.7% of UK&I respondents said DEI is the right thing to do, compared with exactly half of non-UK&I respondents – and more cited the business benefits as a motivator (30.8% vs. 21%).

When it comes to social expectations (13.5% vs. 20%), company/brand reputation (13.5% vs. 21.6%), and current events and trends (5.8% vs. 14%), UK&I respondents are less likely to choose those as factors in DEI motivation.

6. Total diversity > leadership diversity

For UK&I respondents, leadership diversity is much less important – it’s more about overall company representation. Equal opportunity? Much, much less than others.

A full three quarters of UK&I (75%) picked “diversity throughout entire company” compared with 64% of non-UK&I, and fewer UK&I respondents (21.2% vs. 25.3%) picked “diversity at executive level” as a priority area in their DEI strategy.

Strikingly, when it comes to measurable DEI data points, just 11.5% of UK&I chose that as a target metric for progress compared with 24.6% of non-UK&I, and just 5% vs. 31.2% chose “promotion / advancement” as a metric. The latter is interesting, as it’s an indicator of equal opportunity in a company.

7. Talent availability is an even bigger challenge

In recruiting and hiring for DEI, the available talent pool is one of the top limiters for UK&I respondents. UK&I respondents said the talent pool in their industry (34.6%) and in their location (21.2%) were major limiters, compared with 11.5% and 8.8% of non-UK&I respondents respectively.

8. Not as much buy-in at the top – but does it matter?

Executives aren’t as interested, say UK&I respondents. But that’s fine, because the responsibility for DEI falls on everyone – or no one. One quarter of UK&I respondents cite executive buy-in as a major challenge to DEI targets, compared with 18% of non-UK&I.

And far more of UK&I (51.7% vs. 37.6%) say everyone should be responsible – and far less (13.8% vs. 27.3%) say executives / management should be responsible.

What do you think? Let’s have a conversation about this, as we’re all learning together. Ping us on LinkedIn or email us at content@workable.com.

Source for all data: All roads lead to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the workplace. But which one do you take?, published by Workable in January 2021

The post DEI in the UK and Ireland: How is it different from other countries? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this chapter, we address the following questions:

• How many companies have initiatives in place for a DEI recruitment strategy?
• What are the most popular measurable data points in DEI recruitment?
• What are the top action items in DEI recruitment?

Do you have a DEI recruitment strategy?

Across the board, 56.1% say yes, they do have initiatives related to DEI in recruiting and hiring, while an additional 23.9% say they didn’t have initiatives yet, but plan on it.

When breaking down the numbers by industry, we found that 28.7% of those in IT / Technology / SaaS are more likely than average to not have hiring-specific DEI initiatives but plan on it, while those in HR / Recruiting (67.7%) and Consulting / Business Services (66.1%) are more likely than average to have a DEI recruitment strategy in place.

The numbers also differed starkly by company size and geographic area. Those in the 500-999 FTE (71.2%) and 5000+ FTE (62.5%) buckets stated that they have initiatives in place, while multinational companies are far less likely than overall to not have DEI initiatives in their hiring and recruiting (15.4% versus 20% overall).

Measurable data points

When asked about top measurable data points for measuring progress in their DEI recruitment strategy specifically, the top data points were all based on demographics, with demographics in final pool of candidates / actual hires (46.6%), demographics in existing workforce (43.8%) and demographics of applicants beyond compliance (43%) highlighted.

Demographics in hiring teams is further down the list at 24.8%, while feedback from employees (31.9%) and candidates (12.2%) is also not as highly rated.

Again, the numbers differ starkly by industry. Those in Accounting / Finance are more likely to look at demographics of applicants (56.7% compared with 43% overall), while those in Manufacturing are much less likely (30%) to prioritize that as a metric. Strikingly, those in Manufacturing (40%) highlighted demographics in hiring teams as much more of a priority than overall (24.8%) in a DEI recruitment strategy.

Action items

When it came to identifying action items supporting DEI initiatives in recruiting and hiring and when those were implemented, benefits / perks / policies led the way in already-established items before 2020 with 66.8% of respondents checking that box. Training for hiring teams was a leader in action items planned for future (17.1%).

“It’s [about] sourcing out of my network to ensure it’s diverse. We are a seed company and don’t have a HR team that can recruit.”

Leading the way in terms of “no plans for this item” are AI-driven shortlisting (56.6%), talent market segmentation (43.9), and blind evaluation (41.7%).

2020 saw a significant paradigm shift towards remote work as a result of COVID-19 as found in our New World of Work report published in August 2020, and that was evident in a very specific area: remote hiring. Perhaps concurrently, two out of five respondents (39.7%) in our DEI survey cite remote hiring to broaden their talent pool as an action item that had been introduced in 2020.

Promoting a DEI company culture (28.4%), training for hiring teams (24.8%), and diverse hiring teams (24.2%) are other popular action items introduced during the course of 2020.

However, when breaking those numbers down by industry, the numbers differ from the overall baseline. Those in Accounting / Finance are more likely to have already established action items in place before 2020 on average (55.1% vs. 43.3 overall), whereas those in IT / Technology / SaaS are more likely to have no plans for specific items on average (26.9% vs 23.3% overall).

 “I think putting a number on it, a percentage, or offering ‘perks’, is the wrong way to look at it. People should be treated equally yet completely differently at the same time. I believe people should be treated with respect and as equals and, as far as recruitment goes, the person best equipped for the job should be successful.”

Again, those in Manufacturing have very different priorities than others in their DEI recruitment strategy: 24.1% introduced blind evaluation in 2020 compared with 13.4% overall, and 27.6% plan to have more diverse job sites going forward compared with 13.9% overall. They are also much less likely than the overall to pick AI-driven shortlisting (34.5% vs. 56.6% overall) and talent market segmentation (36.7% vs. 43.9% overall) as non-action items.

At the other end of the spectrum of non-action items, IT / Technology / SaaS are much more likely to have no plans for AI-driven shortlisting (67.2% vs. 56.6%) and affirmative action (43.2% vs. 32.6% overall).

We hope you find our survey results on DEI at work to be helpful to you both professionally and personally. Any thoughts or questions, please feel free to share them with us via Twitter, LinkedIn, or direct email (with “DEI report” in the subject heading). We want to hear from you!

Check out the other excerpts from our survey report on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

1. DEI at work: It’s time to take a deep dive
2. What does DEI mean for you and your business?
3. Is there meaningful progress in DEI? Depends on who you ask
4. DEI leadership – and who’s actually doing the work?
5. Your DEI strategic plan: The road is fraught with hurdles
6. What are your top DEI initiatives for the workplace?
8. Time for a DEI action plan: We’ll help you get there

The post Your DEI recruitment strategy: What are your action items? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Stating intent and amplifying the importance of DEI initiatives in the workplace is significant in itself, but a common refrain is that it’s not enough. Talking the talk is easy enough, but people want to see action and results.

That means in order for an organization to see progress in a DEI strategy, there needs to be clearly defined and attainable goals, and tangible action items to reach those goals. That’s the nature of running a business. So, in our survey, we wanted to learn what DEI initiatives, goals and action items you can tangibly pursue to succeed in your DEI strategy at work.

In this chapter, we address the following questions:

• What are the top areas of priority in a DEI strategy?
• What are the most popular measurable data points in DEI?
• What are the top action items in DEI?
• Which industries struggle with the “know-how” in DEI initiatives?

Areas of priority

When it comes to areas of priority in a company’s DEI strategy – which can help a company define measurable targets – two thirds of respondents (64.8%) highlighted diversity throughout the entire company as an area of priority in its DEI initiatives, followed by equity in opportunity, contribution and advancement at 45.3%. One quarter (25%) of respondents listed diversity at the executive / management level as a priority.

In terms of inclusion, inclusive teams is the third-most popular area of priority at 26.4%, while inclusive leadership (16.8%) and inclusive benefits / perks / policies (12.4%) are further down the list of areas of priority in DEI strategy. Just 6.4% cite having an inclusive product or service as a priority DEI initiative.

“[It’s about] creating a company culture that provides an equitable work experience for everyone including employees in minority groups.”

Measurable data points

When respondents were asked about measurable data points used to track progress in DEI initiatives at work, demographics throughout an entire company (53.4%) far outranked demographics at the executive / management level (23.6%) as leading metrics.

Adding to the earlier point that the prioritization of DEI is democratically driven, 34.7% of respondents cited employee feedback as a leading data point to measure progress towards DEI goals.

Action items

To ensure progress, it’s essential to have clearly defined areas of priority and measurable data points when executing on DEi initiatives in the workplace. So we asked about the actual action items in our survey respondents’ DEI strategy, and when they started to apply them.

First, 61.6% of respondents say having DEI-friendly benefits / perks / policies – i.e. flexible working hours – was already established prior to 2020, and 51.5% of respondents say sourcing and recruiting more diverse candidates was an existing practice in their company before 2020.

“Moving forward, we will adopt more company-wide data that, when separated by minority groups, show declining or ideally no statistical difference amongst groups to measure our progress.”

The most popular action items introduced during 2020 are training sessions (25.7%) and sourcing and recruiting more diverse candidates (25.5%). Mentorship programs and targeted development are most likely to be planned in the future (21%). Affinity networks (33%), company audits (29%), and mentorship programs / targeted development (28.8%) are top choices by respondents as having no plans in place for those items.

By industry, we found that those in Accounting / Finance had the most action items in place prior to 2020 on average (53.5% compared with 43.4% overall), with those in Manufacturing most likely to not have plans for each action item on average (29.7% compared with 21.5% overall).

But there’s a lack of real ‘know how’

Despite all of this, what really stands out is an overall need to learn more about how to build a strategy with tangible DEI initiatives at work and putting those in action.

As stated above, nearly a fifth of respondents say that they are interested but either don’t know where to start or hadn’t started yet (17.6% combined). Combine that with the two out of five respondents (39.1%) who cite “creating a sustainable strategy that lasts over time” as a major challenge in their DEI strategy (leading all other challenges, including talent and buy-in), and it is clear that lack of “know how” is a significant hurdle in pursuing DEI initiatives.

When we broke down the state of DEI by industry, we found that those in Manufacturing are significantly more likely to be interested in DEI but don’t know where to start (22.4% versus 9.1% of all answers).

In short, our respondents say that they’re ready and willing, especially in making diversity, equity and inclusion a permanent, sustainable business strategy – but they also indicate that a playbook or road map would be helpful in building a playbook loaded with actionable, results-driven DEI initiatives.

We hope you find our survey results on DEI at work to be helpful to you both professionally and personally. Any thoughts or questions, please feel free to share them with us via Twitter, LinkedIn, or direct email (with “DEI report” in the subject heading). We want to hear from you!

Check out the other excerpts from our survey report on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

1. DEI at work: It’s time to take a deep dive
2. What does DEI mean for you and your business?
3. Is there meaningful progress in DEI? Depends on who you ask
4. DEI leadership – and who’s actually doing the work?
5. Your DEI strategic plan: The road is fraught with hurdles
7. Your DEI recruitment strategy: What are your action items?
8. Time for a DEI action plan: We’ll help you get there

The post What are your top DEI initiatives for the workplace? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We determined in the previous chapter that there are disconnects in terms of who should actually be in charge of your company’s DEI strategic plan. Some say it should be the executive leadership. Others say it should be HR. Others, still, say it should be everyone.

That’s fine. Responsibility and accountability can be a complicated thing, even in a smoothly operating business. Let’s say you do have someone in charge of executing on your DEI strategic plan – even then, our data finds some pretty clear challenges that make it difficult to attain results in your DEI strategic plan.

In this chapter, we address the following questions:

• What are the major obstacles to meeting DEI targets?
• What are the top challenges to a DEI strategic plan in recruiting and hiring?

Buy-in is a challenge

While the number of respondents saying that a DEI strategy is not a priority in their company is relatively small (just 11% overall), we did ask them why it isn’t a priority. The vast majority say there is no interest or buy-in from the executive level (45.3%) or from anyone in general (41.9%).

We also found that those who identify as female are much more likely to say lack of interest from executives (60.5%) was a reason for non-prioritization of a DEI strategic plan in their company, compared with those who identify as male (39.5%).

Again, there’s a major discrepancy here. Is it due to a correlation with a greater proportion of employee-level respondents identifying as female? Or is it due to underrepresentation of females in executive / senior-level / managerial positions?

Or is it because when DEI is emphasized as a topic by a respondent, there’s more resistance to someone who identifies as female? There are numerous potential variables here that deserve to be explored in greater depth.

Diversity is limited to available talent

Diversifying one’s workforce often starts with sourcing, recruiting and hiring more diverse talent – and that is cited as a significant hurdle in a company’s DEI strategy. Respondents say that the available talent pool in their industry (37.1%) and their location (25.7%) are major challenges in attaining stated DEI targets.

“I’ve never seen any minority or female candidates denied or taken less seriously, but the simple fact is that there just aren’t as many female, Black, and Hispanic CS [computer science] grads as there are male, white, Indian, and east Asian CS grads.”

While diversification efforts are limited to talent availability across the board according to our respondents, Manufacturing led other industries here. For those in Manufacturing, the available talent pool in their industry (48.3%) and in their location (34.5%) are cited as major challenges in a DEI strategic plan when recruiting and hiring.

One explanation might be that the manufacturing sector appeals to a specific demographic of the population that isn’t as diverse as the status quo. Perhaps it’s a more male-dominated sector for a variety of reasons – traditionally assumed physical labor requirements, for instance. An explanation for location-based challenges is that manufacturing may involve more physically present work than other sectors – and thus limiting the option to hire remotely to broaden one’s available talent pool.

The ability to operate remotely with distributed teams deserves attention here. Two out of five respondents (39.7%) did say that hiring remotely is a DEI initiative introduced in 2020 – which coincides with the significant shift to remote work in 2020 as a result of COVID-19.

Overall, the limitations are clear. To actively pursue a DEI strategic plan, you need people on board, both in opinion and in availability.

“As a White woman working on a team with 90% men, most of whom are White or non-Black, DEI is an extremely important initiative that needs to be nurtured and facilitated actively. From a hiring perspective, it can be difficult to make progress on DEI efforts when the talent pool largely consists of non-Black & White males. We do make an effort to seek out individuals who would diversify the workplace as this is something we value greatly, however the hiring decision normally comes down to talent, experience, and fit.”

We hope you find our survey results on DEI at work to be helpful to you both professionally and personally. Any thoughts or questions, please feel free to share them with us via Twitter, LinkedIn, or direct email (with “DEI report” in the subject heading). We want to hear from you!

Check out the other excerpts from our survey report on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

1. DEI at work: It’s time to take a deep dive
2. What does DEI mean for you and your business?
3. Is there meaningful progress in DEI? Depends on who you ask
4. DEI leadership – and who’s actually doing the work?
6. What are your top DEI initiatives for the workplace?
7. Your DEI recruitment strategy: What are your action items?
8. Time for a DEI action plan: We’ll help you get there

The post Your DEI strategic plan: The road is fraught with hurdles appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

If you aren’t collecting that information regularly, it’s time to reconsider that choice – you cannot see the bigger picture without your candidates’ point of view. They experience your hiring process first-hand and can readily share your strategy’s pros and cons. Plus, candidates will often share their experiences via public forums such as Glassdoor and Indeed, as well as throughout their professional networks. That’s why it’s critical to take their feedback into serious consideration, before your reputation as an employer is harmed via a poor candidate experience.

Candidate surveys: what can you track – and how?

In this section, you’ll find some key hiring areas you can monitor and improve using candidate surveys. You can tailor these aspects and survey questions according to your business goals and needs. Keep those surveys anonymous, so that job applicants feel more secure and willing to share their honest opinions with you.

1. Candidate experience

We’re starting with the broader category which includes the majority of the aforementioned: Candidate experience. With candidate experience surveys, you can retrieve information regarding each recruiting phase, such as the application process, interviews, and assessment stage. You can combine close-ended with open-ended questions, or ask candidates to evaluate procedures using a Likert scale.

Here’s a small sample of questions you can include:

• What would you recommend to make our hiring process better in the future?
• On a scale from 1 to 5, how hard was the assessment you completed?
• How clear were the job responsibilities to you before and after the interview?

It’s critical to have a standardized hiring process with clear goals and guidelines for both interviewers and hiring managers. The results will enable you to spot the flaws and adjust them accordingly. For example, if the majority of candidates for a specific role reported that the required assessment was hard and time-consuming, consider replacing it with another tool that takes less time to complete and measures skills more accurately.

2. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Companies are increasingly understanding the significance of diverse hiring and inclusivity in the workplace. According to a recent Workable survey on DEI at work, 56.1% of respondents said that they actively aim to improve diverse recruiting in the future, compared to 20% who said they don’t.

In the same survey, 64.8% of the recipients reported they want to achieve diversity throughout the entire company. To succeed in this, understanding the demographics of your candidates is a crucial factor. Here are some data you could collect from your applicants, suggested by Multiverse’s Inclusion and Diversity Lead, Siobhan Randell:

• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Neurodiversity
• Disability
• Education
• Socio-economic background
• Dependents and caring responsibilities

If you find out that you attract applicants from similar backgrounds and with identical traits based on those data, try to figure out why this happens. Maybe you need to tweak the messages – e.g. your vision and mission statements – you share with potential candidates, or post your ads on more diverse job boards.

3. Employer brand

Candidates inform themselves about a company’s culture through numerous channels. They can reach out to your current employees, scroll through Glassdoor or Indeed, search your social media, or talk to others in their professional network. How can you ensure that the perception candidates form about your business is accurate and valid – and remains positive?

Again, candidate surveys can help you know your brand positioning in the competitive market. You can analyze what applicants and candidates think about your company culture and brand and examine how you could boost positive awareness in the future. Here are some questions you could ask:

• Did you know about our company before you applied?
• Was our company culture clear to you during the hiring process?
• Name any benefits/perks that are missing from our scheme that you find valuable.

Overall, this information will enable you to revisit your employer brand and clarify the grey-zone areas that can confuse candidates. For example, let’s imagine that you’ve recently been through a company culture shift. Even though you’ve introduced remote work in your benefit plan, you may learn that candidates were not informed properly about this change.

So, how can you act upon it, with the minimum possible cost? You can consider adding this detail in the job description or your careers page. This way, you’ll attract more suitable candidates next time.

Prevention is better than cure

Overall, collecting feedback from candidates can be game-changing. You’ll be able to spot the flaws in your hiring process before word-of-mouth affects you in a negative way. When candidates understand that their experience and feedback matters to you as an employer and that you want to keep growing in this area, they think better of you.

Finally, avoid using these data just to resolve short-term crises as they occur – instead, utilize them to actively reform your long-term recruitment strategy. For instance, if you see negative comments about your interviewing process online, on Twitter or Glassdoor, responding with an empathetic manner to people who’ve complained is one short-term solution to regain trust. However, if you neglect revisiting the interviewing process, then you’re neglecting the long-term benefits of a fully standardized – and fully tracked – recruitment process.

The post How to level up your hiring strategy through anonymous candidate surveys appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

While there is overwhelming support for DEI, and “everyone” is responsible in some shape or form, executives clearly bear the brunt of individual responsibility in DEI leadership – especially according to those in entry-level or individual contributor positions. The burden of DEI work also seems to fall disproportionately on women and minorities.

In this chapter, we address the following questions:

• Who is responsible for DEI leadership in the workplace?
• Who started the conversation on DEI at work?
• Who is actually doing the work in DEI?

So… who should be responsible for DEI?

Those at the executive or director / manager level are less likely to say that those at their own job level should take on DEI leadership at 22%, compared with 28.8% of those in entry-level or individual contributor positions.

Those in higher-level positions (18.9%) are also more likely than those in entry-level or individual contributor positions (14.3%) to say that a dedicated DEI manager / committee / task force should be responsible for general DEI leadership in their company.

When looking at overall responses, while two out of five respondents (38.6%) say that everyone is responsible for seeing increased diversity, equity and inclusion in their organization, 26.3% say that executives and management should be responsible. Another 15.9% say it should be led by a dedicated DEI committee, DEI task force or DEI manager.

There are two ways to look at this: first, it could be the tendency to say, yes, it needs to happen, but the actual work should be owned by someone else, or it could be that employees are looking to their leaders to set direction and define the culture of the company.

Ultimately, though, when looking at the very low numbers of those who say no one should be responsible, it’s safe to suggest that our respondents wholly believe we’re in it together and that someone should absolutely take ownership of initiatives to ensure DEI progress. However, we shouldn’t ignore that striking discrepancy between higher-level responses and staff-level responses in terms of DEI leadership.

Who started the conversation on DEI?

Our data clearly shows that the call for greater DEI throughout an organization is being acknowledged at the decision-making level, with formal action items being established in many cases. As for who started that conversation on DEI in the first place, 47.4% of respondents say executives and management initiated it, compared with 15.5% who say it was non-HR employees who prompted that conversation.

When breaking down the numbers by industry, there are differences. We found that 58.5% of those in Manufacturing and 61.3% of those in HR / Recruiting say executives and management ultimately started that conversation – significantly higher than the 47.4% of all respondents who responded the same as stated above.

Of those in IT / Technology / SaaS, 25% say HR representatives initiated the conversation, compared with 16.5% overall, while one quarter (24.5%) of those in Healthcare say they didn’t know, compared with 17.9% overall. Education (7.1%) and Manufacturing (7.5%) are more likely to say their customers initiated the conversation, compared with just 2.7% overall.

That is, of course, not to say that customer opinion isn’t important – it is. It’s possible that DEI is viewed through an internal lens (DEI in the employee base) as opposed to a customer-facing lens (DEI in product / service). There are, however, overlaps – the customer-facing component of your workforce can influence buying habits in both positive and negative ways.

Male versus female answers also turn up interesting findings in terms of DEI leadership. Those who identify as male are more likely to say executives and management started the conversation (46% vs. 40%). Those who identify as female are more likely to say that HR representatives (17.1% vs. 16.7% overall) or that non-HR employees (16.7% vs. 9.6% overall) started that conversation.

Who’s actually doing the work in DEI?

Ultimately, when asked who is actually tasked with executing on DEI initiatives, nearly one quarter (23.9%) say Human Resources owns that area – compared with 11.6% who say HR should be responsible (as indicated above).

“Our HR [department] drives initiatives, supported by the executive team. [At] the same time, we have an employee resource group that serves as a I&D [inclusion and diversity] committee, which brainstorms / discusses / evaluates ideas monthly. We are also training our managers and relying on them to act upon our goals during hires, promotion cycles, etc.”

We also asked respondents directly if they are tasked with executing on DEI initiatives in their own work capacity. Overall, 61.6% say yes. Again, the numbers differ when breaking that down by gender identity, with 66% of females answering “Yes” compared with 57.4% of males.

Those who identify as a minority in both their work and local communities also disproportionally answered “Yes” at 65.6%, compared with 61.6% overall.

This indicates that the work of informing and educating others on DEI is disproportionately borne by females and minorities.

We hope you find our survey results on DEI at work to be helpful to you both professionally and personally. Any thoughts or questions, please feel free to share them with us via Twitter, LinkedIn, or direct email (with “DEI report” in the subject heading). We want to hear from you!

Check out the other excerpts from our survey report on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

1. DEI at work: It’s time to take a deep dive
2. What does DEI mean for you and your business?
3. Is there meaningful progress in DEI? Depends on who you ask
5. Your DEI strategic plan: The road is fraught with hurdles
6. What are your top DEI initiatives for the workplace?
7. Your DEI recruitment strategy: What are your action items?
8. Time for a DEI action plan: We’ll help you get there

The post DEI leadership – and who’s actually doing the work? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In turn, mindful leadership is a mindfulness-based management approach that enables someone to focus their full attention on each project at a given time. Plus, mindful leadership does not only benefit the manager, but their team and business as a whole.

What are the benefits of mindful leadership?

As already mentioned, team leaders like Sarah handle various tasks on a daily basis. At the same time they must cater to their teammates in the best possible way. However, distractions and uneasiness can interfere with their thinking process and make them lose sight of the task or goal at hand. That’s why mindfulness can be a huge asset and enable team leaders to quickly regain their focus.

Besides that, mindfulness has been linked with many other benefits related to leadership style and overall performance. Here are the major ones:

1. Reduced stress: People usually get stressed not because of things that happen in the moment, but by overthinking past or upcoming events. By staying in the present, you surpass these stressors and overcome all challenges when and if they happen.
2. Increased attention: When you practice mindfulness, you focus your full attention on the current task in the moment. This doesn’t mean that you’re blocking other stimuli around you. You continue to receive and evaluate it, but you’re less likely to be lured to it.
3. Improved relationships: As a mindful leader, you can form more constructive relationships with co-workers. Your enhanced listening skills, combined with increased focus, helps you connect on a deeper level and empathize with your teammates.
4. Boosted creativity: Mindfulness is also linked with higher creativity. It strengthens your cognitive functions that lead to creative output, such as brainstorming.

How can you become a mindful leader?

So if you’re in a similar position as Sarah, and you wish to practice mindful leadership at work, you can start with related training. First off, know the assets of mindfulness and its positive impact not only for your work and leadership style, but for your overall quality of life as well. Then, follow these common practices:

• Perform mindfulness exercises: Search mindfulness exercises online and choose those that appeal to you the most. Whether that’s through a 20-minute mindful walk or a body scan meditation, train your brain to sync in the moment you’re in. Remember, mindfulness is a skill to be practiced consistently.
• Disconnect regularly: How well do you manage your time? Do you take time-outs during your workday or in between tasks? If not, then it’s time to start. You can begin with the Pomodoro technique, which will help you narrow down your focus on a given task and disconnect systematically.
• Relabel stress: With all the tasks you handle per day, it’s normal to feel stressed at times. To manage workplace stress, all you need to do is start looking at it as a sign that you should pull yourself back into the moment again.

The post What is mindful leadership? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Business logic suggests that progress in DEI is dependent on proactively building and executing on a sound DEI strategy. So, we wanted to learn which industries put priority on DEI and which of those industries weren’t able to simply because they didn’t know how to proceed with such a strategy.

In this chapter, we address the following questions:

• Are companies making meaningful progress in DEI?
• Who thinks there is meaningful progress in DEI, and who doesn’t?
• Which industries put higher priority on DEI in business, and which ones don’t?
• Which industries want to progress in DEI, but just don’t know how?

Is there meaningful progress in DEI?

When we asked respondents if they feel their company is making meaningful progress in DEI – a clear majority (73.4%) answered “Yes”.

However, again, there are significant differences when breaking down the respondents across specific demographics. First, 71.4% of females think their company is making meaningful progress, compared with 77% of males who feel the same way.

The dataset also finds 71.1% of those who identify as a minority in both their work and home communities think their company is making meaningful progress in DEI, compared with 74.6% of those who didn’t identify as a minority.

We also identified differences in answers when breaking responses down by industry. Those in Accounting / Finance are much more likely to answer “Yes” with 85.2% seeing progress in DEI, while those in Business / Consulting Services (67.9%) and HR / Recruiting (67.7%) are less likely to answer “Yes” than overall.

Different companies, different priorities

While it’s generally agreed that DEI is the right thing to do, that people are the drivers behind that sentiment, and that progress is being made to some degree, the level of prioritization differs especially across industries or company sizes.

For instance, those in IT / Technology / SaaS are the most likely of the seven industries with a significant sample size to say that “DEI is not a priority for my company” (13.3% versus 11% overall). Those in Education, albeit a much smaller sample size, are the only ones with a higher percentage to not consider DEI a priority in their company, at 15.2%.

Those in Manufacturing are much more likely (22.4%) to report that they are interested in DEI, but don’t know where to start – more than double the percentage of any other sector.

When breaking the numbers down by company size, the disparity between numbers is more striking. Nearly one quarter (23.5%) of those in companies with more than 5,000 full-time employees say DEI is not a priority in their company, while nearly half (47.2%) of those with 1-9 full-time employees report that DEI is a permanent part of their mission / vision / values.

This doesn’t necessarily suggest that enterprise-level companies are less interested – perhaps it’s that the approval process for new initiatives takes longer or is more convoluted in a larger organization, while smaller companies are more nimble in making new decisions.

It’s also noteworthy that exactly one-fifth (20%) of those in companies of 5,000 or more FTEs report that they didn’t know what the current state of DEI is in their company, while 22.6% of those in the 1-9 FTE bracket answered the same.

“[We’re] currently in a state of exploration. We’re investors with a global portfolio, so [we’re] looking at DEI both internally and […] what it means for the companies we’ve invested in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.“

Local and regional companies (28.1% combined) are more likely to report DEI as not being a priority than their national and multinational counterparts (18.1% combined).

We hope you find our survey results on DEI at work to be helpful to you both professionally and personally. Any thoughts or questions, please feel free to share them with us via Twitter, LinkedIn, or direct email (with “DEI report” in the subject heading). We want to hear from you!

Check out the other excerpts from our survey report on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

1. DEI at work: It’s time to take a deep dive
2. What does DEI mean for you and your business?
4. DEI leadership – and who’s actually doing the work?
5. Your DEI strategic plan: The road is fraught with hurdles
6. What are your top DEI initiatives for the workplace?
7. Your DEI recruitment strategy: What are your action items?
8. Time for a DEI action plan: We’ll help you get there

The post Is there meaningful progress in DEI right now? Depends on who you ask appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this chapter, we address the following questions:

• What are the biggest DEI workplace trends?
• What are the biggest challenges in DEI at work?
• How do you take action on it?

Being a natural extension of society, the workplace is affected as well. So, we surveyed a wide range of HR and business professionals near the end of 2020 to better understand the status of DEI right now in companies, what the priorities are at this point in time, the subsequent action items and goals, and the challenges that hinder DEI progress at work. Nearly 800 completed the survey.

Major takeaways on DEI at work include the following:

• A combined 63% of respondents list DEI as a priority in their organization, whether it’s some initiatives in place or a permanent part of their mission, vision, and values.
• An additional 17.6% say they’re interested – but either haven’t started or don’t know how to start.
• 22.4% of those in Manufacturing said they are interested, but don’t know where to start.
• A combined 23.6% of respondents say they started considering DEI in their business strategy in 2020.

• A near-unanimous 96.7% of females say DEI is personally important to them – while 12.3% of males say it is not.
• 28.8% of those in entry-level / individual contributor jobs think executives, directors and managers should own DEI progress, compared with 22% of the latter who think the same.
• Moral obligation is a top motivator in prioritizing DEI in a company, according to 50.6% of respondents. The other traditional motivators – business case and compliance – lag far behind.
• Buy-in, lack of diverse talent pool, and know-how are major challenges to DEI at work.

We identified four major themes from the survey results:

The democratic driver

The prioritization of DEI at work is largely a response to an amplified call for action at the grassroots level, especially from employees.

We talk, but can we walk?

While the voice for DEI at work is clear and largely unified, there are disconnects in who should be leading it and how.

The gender division

There are stark differences in responses by gender identity – particularly in terms of personal opinion and perceived progress.

Talent pool isn’t broad enough

For many respondents, talent availability is a major limiter in diversifying a workforce – this is especially the case in Manufacturing.

In short, there are optimistic – and very much actionable – lessons here that will help reconcile the chasm between “talking the talk” and “walking the walk” when establishing a tangible and sustainable DEI strategy in your organization.

We hope you find our survey results on DEI at work to be helpful to you both professionally and personally. Any thoughts or questions, please feel free to share them with us via Twitter, LinkedIn, or direct email (with “DEI report” in the subject heading). We want to hear from you!

Check out the other excerpts from our survey report on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

2. What does DEI mean for you and your business?
3. Is there meaningful progress in DEI? Depends on who you ask
4. DEI leadership – and who’s actually doing the work?
5. Your DEI strategic plan: The road is fraught with hurdles
6. What are your top DEI initiatives for the workplace?
7. Your DEI recruitment strategy: What are your action items?
8. Time for a DEI action plan: We’ll help you get there

The post DEI at work: It’s time to take a deep dive appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Out of many insights, we’re highlighting four major themes for you:

1. The democratic driver

The prioritization of DEI in the workplace is largely a response to an amplified call for action from the grassroots level – especially employees. 63% of respondents cite DEI as a priority in their organization.

2. We talk, but can we walk?

While the voice for DEI in the workplace is clear and largely unified, there are disconnects in who should be leading it and how. For instance, 28.8% of those in entry-level / individual contributor jobs think executives, directors and managers should own DEI progress – compared with 22% of the latter who think the same.

3. The gender division

There are stark differences in responses between respondents based on gender identity – particularly in terms of personal opinion and perceived progress. For example, 96.7% of females say DEI is personally important to them, while 12.3% of males say it isn’t.

4. Talent pool isn’t broad enough

For many, talent availability is a major limiter in diversifying a workforce. Nearly half (48.3%) of those in Manufacturing cite lack of talent diversity in their industry is a major challenge.

The biggest lesson we’re picking up – and we’re sharing this in the report in depth – is that DEI seems largely intangible at first, but once you get into the particulars, it’s as actionable as any other business strategy. Plus, there are clear benefits in doing so, in terms of employee engagement, employer branding, candidate attraction, and yes, the bottom line.

Moreover, when half of the respondents in our survey say that having DEI in their business strategy is the “right thing to do”. It’s no longer about merely ticking off the boxes – it’s about growing and evolving as a society. The DEI road map may not be etched in stone, but it’s clearer than it was before.

Within all the division and disparity in our society, there’s a drive to evolve. In these trying times, we’re trying to be better. This survey report offers insights and lessons on how we can get there.

Yours in unity,

Nikos Moraitakis
CEO, Workable

The post Announcing our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion survey report appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

“If you have diversity initiatives in your organization, that’s fantastic. If you have initiatives but you don’t know the ethnicity of your workforce and you don’t collect this data, then how do you know if any of those diversity initiatives work? How do you even know if you’ve got the right initiatives?” Siobhan asks.

So once you’ve collected the right data, then you’ll know exactly what initiatives to introduce. To make this happen, it’s crucial to understand your business priorities and needs.

D&I data collection

What kind of data does Multiverse collect from apprentices to track the progress of their own D&I business goals? For Multiverse, what’s important is taking an intersectional approach and having a holistic view of both the diversity of their apprentice candidate pool and their own workforce. Here is their typical data list:

• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Sexual orientation
• Neurodiversity
• Disability
• Education
• Socio-economic background
• Dependents and caring responsibilities

“It’s then important to be looking at the data across the apprentice and employee lifecycle,” Siobhan adds. “From the point of application, each stage of the recruitment process and then once hired we’re looking at outcomes like progression and retention.

“For our apprentices there are also educational outcomes like successful completion of their qualification, satisfaction with their programs and many more to ensure everyone has the opportunity to thrive.”

Siobhan highlights that sharing this data is optional for everyone:

“People always need the opportunity to be able to say ‘prefer not to say’ that might not be information that they’re comfortable to share with you. But for us, it’s about having a really holistic and intersectional understanding of who our staff and apprentices are so that we can build an inclusive environment and rigorously monitor our processes and systems for areas of improvement.”

The data will not only show you the way to increase diversity in your workforce, but it will also help you understand each person’s needs so that you can build an inclusive culture.

“All of these different things are what make me, me and are what kind of impact how I experienced the world, whether that’s privilege, whether that’s prejudice or whether that’s systemic disadvantage that’s taking place in the different processes and systems that we have across education and the workforce,” says Siobhan.

D&I data contextualization

So if Multiverse’s mission is to democratize access to top careers and lifelong learning how do they treat data such as socio-economic background and education? In this video Siobhan explains how they contextualize data in the application process, through a contextual flagging system and academic out-performer status:

These data contextualization features support young people who are underrepresented in the sectors Multiverse works within or who are facing barriers to employment, by helping recruiters and hiring managers to understand each person’s unique achievements and what challenges they had to overcome to meet their goals in a given context. This approach allows them to recruit apprentices more based on future potential rather than prior attainment.

“We recruit based on five competencies, which include things like grit, resilience, conscientiousness, intent, how much does the individual want it, interpersonal skills, and communication,” explains Siobhan. “By looking at those things, we feel that you can more holistically assess what an individual is going to bring to your company. That’s what really shapes our processes. That’s us.”

D&I data strategy: measuring success

To grasp how successful your D&I actions are and what you need to improve, data will also prove to be life-saving in the process. Here’s what to do:

Set clear goals

For Siobhan, the more precise your goals are, the easier will be to track their progress.

“You need to really pinpoint what you’re trying to achieve,” says Siobhan. “You then need to look at the data. What is your baseline? Set yourself a target. Look at your process. What are the initiatives that you’re going to put in place?”

Once you choose those initiatives, you can test what you think is going to move the needle on that specific target. Siobhan adds:

“You do that for a period of time and then have a look at the data again. What is the data like since the baseline, when you didn’t have those initiatives?”

In short, it’s a process that you have to vigorously monitor and improve over time.

Run frequent surveys

Running internal employee surveys is another way to collect data on how successful and suitable your D&I approach is. For instance, Multiverse conducts bi-annual surveys to measure inclusion:

“We have two kinds of key questions around inclusion, and there are two statements where people can agree and disagree and share their views. One is that I feel included at work and one is that I feel respected at work. So that’s something that we measure over time. We also do pulse surveys that are much more about wellbeing”.

At Multiverse, they also ask apprentices if they have access to the resources they need to do their work and how they could help set them up for success.

“We’ve been really proactively pulse surveying to understand, do people have all of the resources that they need to do their job? Do people have an appropriate working environment so that they can really do their job? And if any of the answers to those questions are no, what can we do to support them?”

Thus, they create a safe and inclusive space for everyone, by taking their individual needs into account. And that’s what inclusion is really about.

Step by step…

Data is critical for Siobhan – and should be for you, too – to ensure that diversity and inclusion initiatives count and really make a difference in a company. This D&I data strategy also gives valuable, tangible information to hiring experts about how they attract young people with their messaging and what they can improve to support all potential candidates going forward. But, Siobhan advises, patience is a virtue here.

“Diversity and inclusion is not an overnight fix. It does take time and it’s very much systems based. So it’s about understanding what your system is and then proactively disrupting any bias that could be taking place at any point in that system. So you kind of need that structured process of reviewing to be able to see whether with the data that you started with, whether that is changing with the initiatives that you are putting in place or not.”

So identify your D&I goals based on your business needs, determine your measurements for progress, and regularly collect data to see how your initiative evolves. The more concrete the goal you set is, the easier it will be for you to monitor it, and tweak your strategy as needed. And remember – take it step by step. Progress takes time, but with commitment, it’ll happen.

The post Looking to improve your D&I data strategy? Learn from Multiverse’s example appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Zinger Property is a property management group that owns 16 buildings across the US Midwest with 4,000 apartment units. Based in Chicago, their mission is to blend technology and the traditional human touch in property management. With Workable, they’ve found a recruitment technology partner that aligns with their mission to ensure a personalized touch in the hiring process. Alongside their main Zinger brand, they also hire for their subsidiary company, RuMe. Their multi-tenancy account with Workable allows them to hire in one place, keeping senior leadership aligned on their robust hiring plan.

Says Kate Blake, Assistant Director of Operations at Zinger: “Workable has completely streamlined our entire recruiting process. Furthermore, our staff working in the field is able to utilize the mobile app, which has been a game-changer.”

Prior to COVID, Zinger had been vetting video interview solutions to reduce the administrative time required to screen candidates. When Workable offered their new solution, they went with it because it was a fully native platform keeping all the elements of candidate evaluation in one place.

Says Kate: “Every member of our hiring team reviews the video interviews. Early in the process, our direct hiring manager will review. As candidates progress, our corporate staff utilize video interviews prior to approval.”

Inclusivity increased with the introduction of video interviews as senior leaders who approve hires were able to gain a better overall impression of candidates. The enhanced inclusivity of the video interview feature aligned naturally with Zinger’s vision of a fully inclusive company culture. This was an added benefit to the original value proposition of Workable Video Interviews, which was to eliminate the time-consuming nature of phone screens in the hiring process.

Says Kate: “I would say that video interviews have cut our recruiting time practically in half.”

Video interviews are sometimes stigmatized among candidates as being impersonal. Zinger combatted that by keeping branded video interviews and ensuring increased flexibility for the candidate – so much that a newly hired employee spoke out about their positive experience.

Says Jim Oates, Associate Analyst at RuMe: “It was definitely easier to schedule than a phone screen because you can do it on your own time. I found this online interview to be a great process that was very time-flexible and very much in favor of the applicant.”

Zinger Property Group’s choice to use both Workable’s ATS and Video Interview products enhanced inclusivity, decreased admin screening time and solidified a branded, personalized candidate experience.

The post Zinger Property enhances their inclusive hiring process with Workable Video Interviews appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

These days, the line between work life and home life is increasingly blurred by the shift to remote work and an intense social and political environment worldwide (Black Lives Matter, Brexit, the pandemic itself) that ultimately spill over into the workplace, impacting engagement and productivity.

You, as an employer and HR practitioner, need to help your employees. Why? Well, for one, they expect this from you. 75% of Gen Z and half of Millennial employees have left work for mental health reasons according to one study – and turnover is expensive. Untreated mental health costs the US economy $200 billion, according to another study. And untreated depression costs employers an average of $9,450 per employee per year, says a third.

An informal Workable poll on LinkedIn in November 2020 found that 62% of employees say their company doesn’t offer mental health support as part of its benefits:

Finally – the 2021 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report highlights workplace wellbeing as a leading priority in workplace transformation according to employees. That stands in stark contrast to executives, who listed that as only the second-to-last priority in a list of outcomes. The report states: “executives who deprioritize wellbeing as a goal of work transformation are missing a huge opportunity.”

So, as a business, you’re not only morally obliged to support your employees through this deep dark winter – it also makes business sense to do so.

Seven tips for workplace mental health

So, we’re sharing seven insights from the SMB and HR communities to help you and your employees get through this long, difficult winter before the days become brighter and vaccinations start to roll out to more and more people going into 2021. Here they are, all with the end goal of maintaining and even boosting your workplace mental health:

1. Establish an open-door policy

Because mental health can be a sensitive topic – and stigmatized in many cases – many employees are afraid to approach their managers or even human resources to seek support. In fact, one study found that 50% of employees feel “very uncomfortable” discussing mental health with a current or prospective employer, compared with 10% who said the same about discussing it with a friend or family member.

This means you need to open the door for your employees and help them feel comfortable stepping forward with their problem, says Stephen Light, a certified stress management coach and co-owner of Colorado-based Nolah Mattress:

“Ideally, employees should have no apprehensions in sharing their problems with managers and supervisors, primarily if it affects their work performance.”

He found that not only did it help in terms of work performance – it also boosted company morale.

“We noticed that not only did the open-door policy improve the overall mental health of reorganization, but it also developed the relationships of managers and their subordinates. Through their one-on-one conversations, employees’ trust in their managers grew, which established a connection beyond the leader-follow set-up.”

Rick Hoskins, founder of air filter company Filter King in Alabama, also has an open-door strategy in his workplace mental health policy, and that applies to all leaders and managers in his organization as part of a formal setup.

“This means that employees are welcome to come to talk at any point, professionally or personally, without judgement or fear of losing their job,” says Rick.

Note: Download our workplace mental health policy template and customize to your specifications. 

2. Train your managers and employees

To have a truly successful workplace mental health policy, you need to create a holistically supportive work environment in which employees can thrive. That means training and empowering your employees so they’re best set for success.

Matt Bertram, CEO of EWR Digital, makes sure this happens in his Houston-based SEO marketing agency.

“We started a wellness support strategy in September. The aim of our strategy is to empower our employees to take better care of themselves and become more resilient.”

He also took aims to ensure managers followed suit.

“Our managers have been directed to openly show empathy and vulnerability towards our employees. We regularly ask our employees how they are. We find out how they are taking care of their mental health and encourage everyone to share what’s working for them.”

3. Don’t just talk the talk – walk the walk

Making a statement for workplace mental health is noble, but in many cases, it’s not enough; that’s simply performative action as opposed to proactive action, according to Inclucive and Allyship founder and DEI consultant Chikere Igbokwe. You need to step up and implement procedures and activities that your employees can willingly participate in.

One way of doing so is establishing a physically healthy work environment as well as a mentally healthy one. Uphold the spirit of the Latin phrase: Mens sana in corpore sano, loosely translated to English as: “A healthy body means a healthy mind”. While physical health of course is not the sole means of maintaining mental health, it’s helpful and actionable, and creating a work environment that promotes this can be hugely beneficial.

Matt speaks to this as well: “Our employees are directed to prioritize their health and family. We allow for flexibility at work to allow employees to balance work activities with home and wellness responsibilities. Healthy habits like exercise, sleep, nutrition, meditation, and time with loved ones are encouraged.”

There’s more you can do in addition to promoting and enabling healthy habits. CEO Aylon Steinhart’s San Francisco-based vegan ice cream company Eclipse Foods introduced tech tools as part of its mental health policy:

“We have recently added wellness apps such as Headspace to our benefits package to give our employees more tools they may need to get through these tough times.”

Those still working in the office – and those about to return as we head out of the pandemic – can provide healthier, cheaper snacking options in the kitchen. Ethan Taub, CEO of an “online mall” for financial services, Goalry.com, did this in his office in Newport Beach, California:

“One simple practice which I think helps the mental and physical wellbeing is introducing free fruit stations within the office. It helps with snacking but the vitamins have a positive impact on the mind, therefore making your workers more productive whilst helping them with their health.”

When his company went virtual, he took it to another level:

“As things have been more difficult this year, our staff have actually been receiving free fruit hampers directly to their front door on a weekly basis. It helps us to stay in touch with one another but also look after our mental and physical well being through these little gift baskets.“

4. Encourage camaraderie and collaboration

When the days get shorter and shorter and the weather outside gets worse and worse – particularly in northern climes – people will spend more time indoors. Stay-at-home advisories and lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, plus numerous days working out of the home with little to no socialization can take its toll on workplace mental health.

When there isn’t a space for organic interaction between colleagues, you’ll need to step up and establish that environment – even virtually – to keep that spirit alive.

Aylon has taken the steps to make sure that camaraderie and collaboration continue to thrive despite working entirely online:

“From daily team check-ins to weekly virtual happy hours, it’s important that our employees see one another not just as coworkers but as real people who are going through this pandemic with one another,” Aylon says. “We are each other’s support system in these unparalleled times.”

Matt at EWR Digital also points to the collective company goal – including its deeper meaning – as a key to keeping employees motivated.

“We strengthen our group connections by cultivating a shared sense of purpose. Employees are helped to find meaning in their work and understand the importance of their individual contributions. This can make them feel more valued as a part of our team and stave of feelings of isolation or loneliness.”

5. Encourage a positive-thinking environment

The benefits of positive thinking are well documented in science: it helps maintain a strong immune system, reduces anxiety levels, and encourages healthier lifestyles and relationships both at home and in the workplace.

Part of positive thinking comes from within, via new habits such as daily statements of gratification, turning an “impossible” situation into a new and welcome challenge, and even simply smiling more and thinking positively about oneself. But another part of it comes from external sources – people feel more positive if they are appreciated by others.

Ted Sun, the president and CIO of Transcontinental University in Ohio, launched a strategy on empowerment at his school in early November and helped other executives implement the same in their workplace mental health strategy throughout.

“The basis of the strategy is to ensure that people are seen, heard, and feel like they have control,” says Ted. “We’ve implemented this into various systems including performance management systems, motivation systems, and learning systems.”

“Especially as we approached the end of the year, performance management has to be empowering. Hope for a brighter future has to be part of the conversation in the annual reviews.”

Ted adds that this isn’t an individual job – it needs to be a collective effort throughout the company.

“This powerful emotion also has to be in the daily language of all managers within the motivation systems. To do this, managers are getting additional development to master this (part of emotional intelligence development). In the learning systems, employees are getting additional skills to get a sense of control for their future.”

6. Hire a Happiness Coach

When you’re handling a company-wide workplace mental health initiative, someone needs to own that process whether as the leader of a team or as a dedicated director. Brexit Project Managers are commonplace in the United Kingdom, whereas jobs focused on diversity and inclusion are surging, especially in 2020. So why not hire someone to be in charge of increasing workplace morale at your company?

That’s what Rick did in hiring a Happiness Coach when his team shifted to remote work.

“This is a company-wide dedicated employee happiness and wellness coach that was hired from within the current team. […] She is the most empathic of all the staff. Her role is to meet up with the different team members on a regular basis and be available for them to speak with her about their private issues. She conducts 360° surveys so applicable changes can be made in the day-to-day management.”

The benefits of having this in the company led to a much stronger understanding of employee needs and workplace mental health priorities, Rick found:

“Because of this, we were able to understand that people would prefer flexible working hours, and four-day working weeks. This was in the height of the pandemic and completely understandable.”

And of course, once you have that information on hand, you need to carry out on that promise of equipping your employees with what they need in order to do their job well.

7. Track the progress

As in any business, establishing a tracking mechanism is crucial to success when launching a new initiative – be it DEI, a new product release, or expansion into new markets. The executives in your business will of course be interested in the wellbeing of your staff, but if they can have documentation in their hands that point to the real value of what you’re doing, then that’s even better.

This means you need to track your progress in workplace mental health and report on it in a very tangible way.

Ted makes sure to have a tracking mechanism in place as part of the mental health initiative in his workplace.

“All people have emotional intelligence data as we’ve focused on developing the EQ of all staff,” he says. “We regularly track the EQ development with various development activities. Optimism is also another metric we use to ensure people are engaged in a positive way contributing to the ideal outcomes.”

Ted also uses metrics to ensure that people follow through on the promise:

“We have systems in place to hold people accountable to learning and growing their EQ in addition to other intelligences like analytical and systems thinking.”

Rick found that tracking and reporting can be as simple as having a regular cadence in the strategy:

“Having a fixed meeting every six weeks with the Happiness Coach obliges the quieter employees to speak, who often have the best ideas and most hidden emotions. There are others then who are more than happy to have a type of Agony Aunt to vent to.”

A mutually supportive work environment

There is no clear-cut prescription to maintaining workplace mental health throughout the wintertime, particularly during a devastating pandemic and social unrest. However, simply implementing a few of the tips listed above can have a positive impact on your business and on your employees and colleagues, as Matt at EWR Digital found:

“We have an uplift in employee engagement following the implementation of our [wellness support] strategy. This has translated to an increase in productivity across all our projects.”

Rick pointed to a mixture of tangible and intangible benefits to actively supporting employees during 2020:

“I can’t tell you for sure if productivity rose because people had flexible hours, because they were at home, because we have a Happiness Coach, or because of all of the above.

“What I can share with you is that deadlines are being met with ease and there is less of a sense of stress during meetings. We completed year-end goals in August and are able to project higher goals for 2021.”

At the core of it all is this: your employees and your colleagues are human beings, each of whom are experiencing 2020 in different and unique ways. What you can do for them is establish an environment where they can feel safe and supported in the workplace – you want them to want to come to work every day and be their best selves.

Headspace’s 2020 Mental Health Trends report finds that companies and their leaders need to develop a better understanding of their employees’ needs, one of which is more evidence-based mental health tools resources as part of overall support in the workplace. The above-listed tips will be a good first step in getting through the deep dark winter – and beyond.

The post Workplace mental health: Support your employees through the deep dark winter appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Our latest DEI feature, anonymized screening, focuses on the initial screening stages of the hiring process. When enabled, anonymized screening obscures a candidate’s name, address and phone number from the Candidate Profile and CV in the sourced and applied stages of the hiring pipeline.

Workable helps companies in 100+ countries create a more inclusive hiring practice with diverse candidate sourcing, anonymized screening and structured interviewing. Stay tuned for more to come in 2021, including customizable post-application surveys, enhanced reporting and native cognitive and personality assessments. Let us help you diversify your employee base and grow your business.

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What is inclusion in the workplace?

Inclusion at work refers to an organization’s intended effort and actions to integrate everyone equally in the workplace, no matter their differences. Inclusion initiatives aim to increase psychological safety and the feeling of belonging, and allow everyone to feel accepted and valued.

According to ZeShaan, fostering inclusivity in business is not just the right thing to do – it offers a competitive advantage compared to organizations that don’t have an inclusion plan.

“Inclusivity leads to diversity, leads to innovation, leads to success,” says ZeShaan. “The inclusivity leads to diversity of perspective, which by proxy means you limit your blind spots, which therefore mean that you are able to innovate further, which gives you a competitive advantage.”

He’s quick to point to the positive impact this can have on the bottom line of a business.

“If you have that competitive advantage, you are going to succeed by whatever metric of success your company chooses, whether it’s revenue, whether it’s market share, whatever it might be. Ergo, inclusivity leads to success as well.”

In brief, inclusion of diverse perspectives and characteristics leads to higher performance and innovation, and benefits both organizations and employees. This has been widely documented.

It’s up to business leaders

ZeShaan believes that decision makers play a key role in promoting inclusivity, as they can carry the message across different company levels. In ZeShaan’s own words:

“It’s all well and good having a diverse workforce and having representation and while representation is important, if you’re not actually at the table when decisions are being made and you’re able to not just be at the table – but also articulate and be comfortable sharing that perspective without fear, without retribution, without any negative connotations – then that means that you’re not actually being truly inclusive of diverse perspectives.”

As a team or business leader, you should remember that not all people have access to the same resources. Be aware of this, and explore your own blind spots and unconscious biases, through self-education and reflection.

For example, ZeShaan acknowledges the burden a typical business hierarchy draws to employees from underprivileged backgrounds to climb the business ladder.

“All of the systems that we have in our society from government to education to policing is built on a structure of hierarchy and certain people at the top have that privilege and certain people lower down have to fight tooth and nail, just to make that step up,” ZeShaan says.

“That’s what needs to be dismantled. And that is inclusivity. You’re dismantling that system of hierarchy and actually all things are equal, all people are equal.”

Take real action

Once business and HR leaders define what measures they want to take to foster inclusion while taking organizational needs and characteristics into account, they should communicate the action plan with managers and employees in a simple and digestible way.

“You don’t need to overcomplicate it,” says ZeShaan.

But what you definitely should do is to ensure that your actions are proactive, not just performative.

“Make sure that their [leaders’] actions don’t just support, but supersede their words because it’s incredibly easy to talk the talk right now, because it’s in the current zeitgeist and en vogue to do so,” adds ZeShaan. “Deeds, not words. That’s the important thing. And hold people, hold leaders particularly accountable.”

One way to get closer to your goals is to create a culture of communication. If employees feel psychologically safe and valued, they’ll be more likely to discuss their needs and sort out potential problems with their managers and teammates going forward.

“You’re creating a culture of proactive communication,” adds ZeShaan. “And that’s essentially what it boils down to: People having the environment where they can speak openly, but with tact. Understanding and having empathy and compassion, but then also being tolerant of other perspectives.”

To help employees from underrepresented groups to feel they belong, encourage them to form diversity groups where they can discuss their concerns openly in a safe space. Then, invite the rest of employees to those discussions:

The “remote” challenges to inclusion

When asked how easy it is to promote inclusion in remote workplaces, ZeShaan was a bit skeptical. He believes that as humans we are not built to be remote and isolated. He explains:

“We are made to connect and interact and not primarily through video. But all of those other visual or other senses in terms of body language – even though we don’t notice it, smell and all of these other aspects, these non-verbal cues – we’re missing out on [those]. And actually, this is why it’s been so hard for people because we are fundamentally built to be interconnected social beings, right?”

In a remote workplace, we’re missing out on little moments that create human connection. This makes it harder to detect who might feel left out or disconnected from their team. Not everything is readily visible in a remote setup, including cases of discrimination or employee burnout. That’s why you have to ensure that you can replicate organic interactions and check-ins virtually.

“My role is not just as a leader for you to be able to speak to me but to speak to each other,” says ZeShaan. “To create that platform. Now it might be a weekly stand-up, a Monday morning. It might be on Friday afternoon. We get together for half an hour to check in as a team.”

It’s also worth finding ways to encourage employees to connect with different teams in the workplace. They might find people with characteristics or personalities they identify more with to nurture that feeling of belonging. ZeShaan explains:

“What a lot of people have said is they’re only really spending time with their teams, which is great. But if you have no real interactions with other teams or departments, but when you were in the office you would occasionally have a coffee or you’d go for lunch with some of the team or you’d be in the same place so you have those interactions, you’re becoming more and more isolated even within your company.”

Be flexible and open-minded

Remote work can be very beneficial for employers who want to increase diversity in their business, as they can expand their talent pool across common borders. But will they still be able to ensure inclusion for people from different backgrounds and locations? And can anyone thrive in a remote setting?

To overcome this challenge, ZeShaan suggests that businesses should offer flexible arrangements around remote working. For example, if somebody wants to work hundred percent remotely, you can allow them to and suggest some amendments, such as visiting the office once per quarter, to sync with the team if needed.

“Companies will need to be, again, inclusive of people with diverse perspectives and requirements,” concludes ZeShaan.

Inclusion in the workplace: the road ahead

More and more leaders are starting to realize the significance of inclusivity in our society and workplaces, so it’s best to act now – if you haven’t done so yet. Take ZeShaan’s insights for starters and see how you can tailor them to your own business needs, especially if you’re transitioning to a remote workplace.

As for business leaders, remember how impactful your voice is for employees and set the right tone. You might be surprised at the benefits this brings to your business and bottom line.

The post How leadership and remote work can impact inclusion in the workplace appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

“I think a lot of organizations are now realizing, they have missed out a whole, big chunk of diversity and inclusion,” says Chikere. “And when they look into their businesses, there is a blatant lack of representation at all levels but especially at mid to senior level – C Suite. So organizations are really sitting up and saying, we need to really address this.”

Data seems to confirm this observation. According to a workplace discrimination survey from by EEOC, 1,889,631 discrimination complaints were filed in the US from 1997 to 2018, and 34% of were related to race, based on an additional report from 2017.

Would those numbers be the same if we educated ourselves more on racial discrimination, diversity and inclusion? How different workplaces would be if we stood up for minorities when needed? Chikere explains how we can become a part of the anti-racism solution, by becoming true allies.

The definition of allies at work

What does being an ally in the workplace mean? Chikere starts with a quick but comprehensive definition:

“An ally is someone who uses their power and privilege to advocate for others. Allies are not members of marginalized groups. Allies support Black, Brown and minority employees, colleagues and friends by understanding what they go through. Allies educate themselves on issues that affect Black, Brown and minority people, speaking out on injustices, educating colleagues, friends and family about being an ally and acknowledging their privilege and being actively anti-racist.”

So how can White employees turn into allies for racial and ethnic minority colleagues? It all starts by acknowledging their heavy loads:

“Allies support and make an effort to better understand the struggle,” Chikere notes. “Allies are powerful voices amongst marginalized ones. And the reason why I say that is more than likely, an ally would have friends and family who look like them, that they can go and talk to about being an ally. And obviously, the key thing is, we need more people to take action and stand up.”

A privileged employee who wishes to make an impact should find the right way to advocate for marginalized groups. Chikere says that the conversation about allyship in the workplace in most cases starts with human resources, team managers or external DEI partners and needs the buy-in of senior leaders. It’s not always easy at first, but this discussion should start as soon as possible. Chikere reminds us:

“If you have minority employees within your organization, talk to them. What do they want? But I think the thing is, not to leave it on the minority employee to lead these initiatives. That is not their job. Their job is not to educate people or lead the initiative.”

The sensitivity of this matter can make those conversations uncomfortable for many, but this is not a sufficient reason to avoid them. We should remember that change happens at the edge of our comfort zones.

How to foster allyship in the workplace

According to Chikere, allyship should start with self-education. Before forming allyship groups, learn what type of struggles and injustices minority groups face at work. This will help you understand their needs and start constructive conversations with them. Chikere explains:

“To be an ally you have to educate yourselves. Listen to Black, Brown and minority colleagues, employees, friends, and voices. Listen to what they have to say. Have conversations with other White people, family, friends, employees, about being an ally and help educate them.”

She also states that to become a good ally you must acknowledge your privilege and be “color brave rather than color blind”. When you realize how privileged you are compared to other people, you’ll feel more obliged to contribute to the change.

It’s also critical to learn other mechanisms that might block the progress, for example, the “bystander effect”, a phenomenon during which people are less likely to address a negative incident, such as an act of racial injustice, if many people witness it at the same time.

One possible explanation on an organizational level is that observers may leave it up to employees of greater authority, with stronger bonds with management to act, and avoid potential conflict. This is an implication that might distract us from being allies and to prevent it, we ought to acknowledge it. Same goes with unconscious biases we might hold against people who look different to us.

Once you accept the blessings of your own privilege and the duty that comes with it to support marginalized groups, it’s time for action. Start by using your exact position to amplify discrimination and make sure to promote racial representantion and inclusion in the organization. For example, if you’re a recruiter, you can start by diversifying your talent pipeline:

“What is stopping you as a recruiter from diversifying your pipeline?” wonders Chikere. “Getting more diverse candidates? Why is it the case that we are hiring the same type of people? That really has got to stop. So I think the key thing is, as an ally, you really have to go out there and educate yourself.”

One way to diversify your talent pool, according to Chikere, is to search for diverse candidates in different places to avoid getting the same type of people. Advertise your jobs through diverse channels, highlight diversity on your website, and teach your hiring team how to avoid biases. These will be proactive approaches to diversity and inclusion.

The difference between performative vs. proactive action

With this suggestion, Chikere makes it clear that being proactive when it comes to allyship and inclusivity is far more beneficial than sticking to performative actions. For example, joining the Blackout Tuesday initiative on social media without introducing any other organizational changes – also known as slacktivism – is performative and not useful in the long run. Chikere clarifies:

“During George Floyd’s murder and the BLM protests, a lot of organizations put out solidarity statements and took to putting up black squares on social media. Great. Amazing. But it’s the case of, what are you doing after that?”

But many businesses decided to go to the proactive direction by introducing drastic changes, such as increasing Black managerial representation or creating DEI advisory boards. These efforts will hopefully serve a long-lasting effect going forward.

Apparently, a leader’s role is crucial in promoting allyship in the workplace. When C-suite level and managers build a psychologically safe environment, minority groups find it easier to express their needs and feel more accepted.

In a nutshell, if you want to become a true ally at work, start by educating yourself more on diversity, equity and inclusion. Learn about racism and injustice and try to empathize with underprivileged groups more. If you are in a leadership position, remember that your responsibility is bigger; as a role model in business, you need to embrace the anti-racism and allyship conversations and solutions at their core.

Below, you’ll find some book suggestions from Allyship BookClub that’ll help you start this meaningful journey:

1. Subtle Acts of Exclusion: How to Understand, Identify, and Stop Microaggressions by Tiffany Jana and Michael Baran.
2. Why I’m No longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge.
3. The Purpose of Power: How we come together when we fall apart by Alicia Garza.
4. White Fragility: Why it’s Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo.
5. How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi.

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• Chikere Igbokwe – Founder and D&I Consultant at Inclucive and Allyship
• Siobhan Randell – Inclusion and Diversity Lead at WhiteHat
• ZeShaan Shamsi – Partner at The People Collective

Below, you’ll find some of their most valuable points around representation at work, DEI data analytics, diverse recruitment and inclusivity.

Embrace uncomfortable conversations

The Black Lives Matter movement gained solid ground in 2020 in response to widely publicized videos of George Flloyd’s death in late May. Racial discrimination became the core focus of DEI conversations. These conversations are tough, especially for businesses that don’t have diverse talent.

According to Chikere, that absence of representation, especially when it comes to race, is one of the main reasons why DEI initiatives fail or are hard to follow for many:

“How can you talk about race if you don’t have any representation?” Chikere posed. “If you don’t have people who look different from you, how do you know how to talk about it? I think that’s the issue that a lot of organizations they say are really having. A lot of the hiring managers, a lot of the recruiters, I think, the issue that I see all the time is that people tend to hire the same type of people.”

With no representation it’s difficult to get to the core of these delicate issues as most people who are part of a minority find this topic uncomfortable. But this is not an excuse, says Chikere:

“I think we really need to have an open and honest conversation about hiring black, brown, people that don’t particularly look like you.”

Your attitude is key in this phase. For ZeShaan, accepting that you’re not an expert and that you’ll probably fail at times is crucial to discuss those issues in an open way:

“Brené Brown has a wonderful turn of phrase and it can be applied here and to many things, which is, ‘I’m not here to be right, I’m here to do right.’ Just going in with that kind of humble, vulnerable mentality to say, listen, we’re trying to unpack such a complex thing. […] You don’t have to have all the answers.”

Use data to back up DEI initiatives

All panelists agreed that a data-driven approach is mandatory for a successful DEI strategy. Before implementing any practices or initiatives, look closely at data you’ve collected of your workforce and job applicants.

Then, invest your time and energy exactly where you see fit to drive evidence-based changes, as Siobhan suggests:

“If you have initiatives but you don’t know the ethnicity of your workforce and you don’t collect this data, then how do you know if any of those diversity initiatives work? How do you even know if you’ve got the right initiatives?” Siobhan asks.

“For me, [kind of] before you are reactive, and perhaps book a workshop or kind of put together something so you feel like you’re doing something, it’s really important to actually have that really thorough internal look at the company.”

Organizations should also organize data in a meaningful way to achieve representation. Using acronyms such as BAME – a mainly British acronym meaning “Black, Asian and minority ethnic” – to group different minority populations is misleading and limiting, according to Chikere:

“I think the issues that lots of organizations are having is that there’s no data. We use acronyms, the acronym BAME, as catch-all tick boxes. I think the problem is, how do you identify the individuals within your organization? I hate the word BAME, because black, Asian, minority, ethnic is the case of it’s white against everyone else.”

Instead of simply subscribing to BAME, think carefully about the categorization of data you’re looking to collect. Once you have the right data, you’ll be able to restructure your sourcing and recruitment processes to track DEI progress. You will also be able to form a business case based on evidence and connect it to organizational success.

In ZeShaan’s own words:

“Inclusivity leads to diversity, leads to innovation, leads to success. The inclusivity leads to diversity of perspective, which by proxy means you limit your blind spots, which therefore mean that you are able to innovate further, which gives you a competitive advantage.

“If you have that competitive advantage, you are going to succeed by whatever metric of success your company chooses, whether it’s revenue, whether it’s market share, whatever it might be.”

Revisit the recruitment process

So how can you use data to create a diverse recruiting process? Siobhan explains how WhiteHat’s team contextualizes data in each recruiting stage and gives equal hiring chances to entry-level talent from various backgrounds. With a dedicated sourcing team and partnership with charities, they reach out to young people who are not in education or employment.

Siobhan explains how they help young people move down the recruiting funnel successfully and how they reframe applicants’ achievements based on context:

For Chikere, educating hiring managers around DEI should be a priority. When everyone is on the same page, they can boost DEI initiatives and promote diverse recruiting. Here are Chikere’s top techniques:

• Make sure job adverts are inclusive
• Use diverse job boards to attract different candidates
• Ensure your interview panel is diverse
• Collaborate with recruitment agencies that prioritize DEI

ZeShaan agrees with Chikere’s point on the value of training hiring managers – sometimes their expectations around job fits are so narrow focused that there is no room for candidates from diverse backgrounds to stand out:

He elaborates:

“Often what I’ve found, […] it’s the expectation of what hiring managers want. ‘I need somebody with a first from Oxford in computer science’, and my first question is, ‘Why?’”

“What we actually want to challenge is capability rather than just the qualification. Actually you don’t need somebody with a first from Oxford. What you need is somebody who is able to solve this problem,” ZeShaan says.

But can companies expand their talent pools to reach diverse people, especially if they don’t have a large value proposition? ZeShaan explains his sourcing approach, which he divides into inbound and outbound:

Siobhan adds that, at WhiteHat, they evaluate candidates based on potential and not prior academic achievement, which if often a misleading performance indicator:

“We recruit on five competencies, which include things like grit, resilience, conscientiousness, intent, how much does the individual want it, interpersonal skills, and communication. By looking at those things, we feel that you can more holistically assess what an individual is going to bring to your company. That’s kind of what really shapes our processes.”

Create an inclusive environment

Hiring employees with diverse characteristics is not enough if they don’t feel included and respected at work. Chikere believes in the power of DEI training and in the importance of promoting allyship at work to ensure diverse talent feel safe.

Siobhan puts emphasis on the role of leaders and managers in promoting inclusivity. They should act as inclusion gatekeepers and get all employees together on this journey – it’s not a single HR professional’s role to safeguard DEI for the whole business.

“That responsibility for inclusion, for living it every day, sits with every single individual,” Siobhan explains.

“How are you fostering that sense of ownership from one of your frontline devs, right through to one of your operations managers, right through to kind of somebody in finance? How do they really understand what their role in inclusion is? Because they’re going to have more daily interaction with colleagues than your diversity and inclusion lead, so it can’t just sit with them.”

ZeShaan believes that diversity groups have two facets. First, the diversity groups that identify with the same characteristics gather in an inclusive safe space where they discuss openly about their experiences and concerns. Then, at the second part they include everyone else harmoniously in this discussion.

According to ZeShaan, diversity groups should not work in isolation:

“When people feel that they’ve been part of the solution, you don’t have to sell it to them. You don’t have to armor up, and it doesn’t have to be a ‘who shouts the loudest’. If that works in harmony multiple times, you’re going to have people that are just going to be across all those diversity groups.”

DEI in the workplace – the time has come…

Long story short: if you’re about to set up a quick plan to introduce DEI initiatives into your business, you probably have it wrong. It’s a long-term game that requires thorough research and training.

So talk with experts, get your leaders onboard and most importantly, educate yourselves. You won’t impact the world with a few performative actions that seem just right; change needs to happen from the inside and throughout, to have that important lasting impact on the overall company culture.

The post DEI in the workplace: Three experts discuss appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s why we’re turning to Fadjanie Cadet, LEK Consulting’s Diversity Recruitment and Engagement Lead, to talk about actionable ways for you to succeed in your diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

She’ll talk us through…

• How these initiatives have changed over time
• What makes it unique now during these times
• How to start and make it sustainable for the future

The post How to build up your DEI initiative appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this webinar, we turned to DEI experts, Chikere Igbokwe, Executive Recruiter and Diversity & Inclusion Activist at Macmillan Davies, Siobhan Randell, Inclusion and Diversity Lead at WhiteHat, and ZeShaan Shamsi, Partner at The People Collective. They’ll walk us through how to launch and build a strategy that is sustainable for the future. They’ll break down where to start and will share actionable changes you can implement in your recruitment process and company culture right now. And bring your questions, we’ll leave plenty of time to ask the experts.

Tune in to hear the experts discuss how to:

• Dive into quantitative and qualitative data across your sourcing channels, recruitment process and workforce
• Identify immediate and long-term changes that your organization can take to build a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce
• Generate buy-in from your leadership team and across your organization

The post How to build a sustainable DEI strategy appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We asked employers about that and got pretty good responses. For instance, Agneiszka Kasperek has a lot to offer on the topic as the CMO of Estonia-based Taskeo.co, a software supporting companies moving to cloud management. She recommends deliberately hiring people who would be a good fit for remote work.

“That is,” she explains, “people who aren’t intimidated by software or learning how to use it, self-starters, motivated and independent. In remotely working companies, certain character traits are more important than the skills that the new person comes with. The skills can be learned. Character traits – not so much.”

In other words, different people thrive in different environments. When you’re screening applicants for remote jobs, you may need to update your hiring criteria. So what ‘character traits’ can you look for when evaluating candidates?

Let’s start with four common worker archetypes. They are Jennifer, Pam, Lukas, and Esther.

Jennifer

Jennifer is an extrovert who thrives off interaction with others. For her, ideas happen between people, not inside one person’s head. Not only does she inspire others through her contributions to the team; she also is inspired by working closely with others towards common goals.

As such, she excels in a driven office environment where she can walk into a room and take over that room’s energy, and comes up with her best work through meetings and presentations. She can rapid-fire her way through a brainstorming session and thrives in spontaneity. She’s the talkative one at lunch who breaks the ice immediately.

If you had a project that needed multiple team members dynamically working together for it to succeed, Jennifer would be the first person you’d recruit to ensure a successful project.

Pam

Pam, on the other hand, is much quieter. She’s an immensely creative and productive employee, but in a different way than Jennifer. In a busy and noisy office environment, she struggles with all the distractions when she’s trying to get work done. As such, she’ll come early in the morning when few people are in the office to hunker down and do some deep work for a couple of hours. She’ll also find a spot away from others – whether it’s a vacant meeting room, a cafe, or in a quiet corner of the workplace – and work diligently with headphones on.

Those who know Pam know not to bother her when she’s got that game face on. They know they’ll get what they need from her at lunch hour, on a coffee break, or during a pre-scheduled meeting. With all that, you know that if you give Pam a project to complete by a certain date, she absolutely will deliver on time.

Lukas

Then there’s Lukas. Like Pam, he likes to have control over his schedule, because he works better in a predictable and structured work environment. He doesn’t like surprises – he likes to know what he’s in for. He likes to know that the weekly team meeting happens at 10 on Mondays, and that his project is expected on his manager’s desk by EOD on Wednesday – provided it’s been discussed ahead of time.

He doesn’t like to have extra work thrown at him with a “Lukas – I’m really needing to get this done by mid-afternoon today, can you clear your calendar and give this a quick look?”. Likewise, he doesn’t like seeing a meeting on his calendar bumped on 30 minutes’ notice. But if there’s a clear structure and a well-thought-out plan already in place, and if he knows exactly what needs to be done, Lukas will absolutely crush his part of the project.

Esther

And finally, there’s Esther. Like Lukas, she prefers structure and predictability in her work world. And, like Jennifer, she thrives off interacting with people. But she also understands that things pop up and priorities get moved around on a regular basis. She gets frustrated at first, but she’ll take it as it comes and adapt accordingly, knowing it’s better to adapt.

And there’s also a lot of Pam in her – she will absolutely revel in a setup where she can block off a few hours a day to do some deep work and churn out a day’s worth of productivity in those hours. But she knows that she needs to make herself available at any given time in the day, and that she’ll need to adapt accordingly.

And also – if you had a half-baked but novel idea and needed someone to take a deeper look and even bring it to fruition without needing a lot of guidance, Esther’s your go-to person. Likewise, if you had a last-minute project that needed immediate attention and you needed someone to say “Don’t worry, I got this!”, Esther would excel there too.

Evaluating candidates for soft skills

Now, imagine you’re a hiring manager evaluating candidates for a remote position. These four are your finalists. They all tick the same boxes – work experience, education, qualifications, skills. But you’re looking for someone to specifically excel remotely. First, let’s look at the soft skills needed for that.

In the aforementioned survey, adaptability and resilience (67.4%) and self-motivated/self-starter (54.2%) led the way as sought-after traits in the new remote world of work.

Also, a recent survey of Workable’s own employees found that time management, effective communication, and adaptability were the three most common new skills developed when they went fully remote at a moment’s notice in March. While the first two can be good soft skills in any work environment, the third one – adaptability – can be more important when evaluating candidates for a fully remote company.

Does it work in practice?

The signs point to ‘yes’. SmartBug Media CEO Ryan Malone – who has run a fully remote company since launching in the late 2000s – looks at two specific properties when evaluating candidates for their ability to work in a distributed team:

Social energy: Ryan will ask a simple question: “When’s the best time for you to work?” The answer may help him see whether a candidate gains a “freedom” in setting their own hours and removing all the distractions typical of an office environment, as opposed to losing the social aspect of office life (i.e. a lunch with colleagues).

In other words, he’s looking for where they get their social energy from – and that helps him determine if they can thrive in remote work.

Resiliency: Ryan is also looking for people who can adapt and pivot quickly in a less structured work environment, where there are very few windows for employees to walk to a colleague and vent after a hiccup in the workflow.

“So,” Ryan says, “we have to find people that have handled some adversity, and our resilient people can understand [that] maybe a client emergency comes up that you need to move stuff around.”

Alison Bernstein, the president of New York-based real estate firm Suburban Jungle Realty, is also pragmatic about remote work. The ability to be self-organized is high up on her list of highly valued skills when evaluating candidates.

“Having an organized schedule with space, time and childcare (if need be) to take calls, attend video chats, and simply execute daily activities is a great start,” she says. “One must begin to set their own goals and timelines and make sure those goals and deadlines are met.”

Sheena Ponnappan, the Chief People Officer of Singapore-based business outsourcing/offshoring agency Everise, also likes to look for those special signs that a person can thrive in a home environment.

“We have built a high-touch model through the recruitment process where we strategically interview for work-at-home propensity and demonstration of abilities to be successful without face-to-face contact.”

Sheena will go as far as to look for specific regions and population groups with high retention rates when evaluating candidates. Additionally, like Alison, she’s looking for “the ability to self-support home technologies and [candidates] who are committed to remote work as a life choice.”

The same goes for Inna Shevchenko, the CMO at iGMS, a short-term rental management SaaS company headquartered in North Vancouver, Canada. For Inna, determining a candidate’s potential to succeed within the existing remote structure at iGMS is a core focus of her candidate evaluation process.

“I believe that if you hire the right person, getting buy-in, user adoption, and the desired level of learning become less challenging,” says Inna. “This way, we ensure that the new hire will adapt easily and fit into the culture.”

So, who is that ‘right person’?

Let’s go back to evaluating our candidates in the final-four list – Jennifer, Pam, Lukas, and Esther, paying attention to their ability to thrive in a remote work environment.

Jennifer

Jennifer’s productivity might falter without being able to organically interact with her deskmates and colleagues on a regular basis. Unless her calendar was booked with meetings back-to-back or if her manager was connecting with her every day, the hours on end in an isolated home office might negatively impact her energy and motivation.

Pam

Next to a desert island, a remote job would be Pam’s dream job. She would love to stay at home and work 24/7 in her home office, where she’s able to maintain greater control over her own schedule and not “have” to talk or engage with others on a regular basis. She can muster up the needed energy for meetings, but the times in between are those golden solitary times where she can really crank out her best stuff.

Lukas

Like Pam, Lukas may see this remote job as a perfect setup for him. But a remote work environment is not necessarily absent of those unpredictable “pop-up” meetings – loved by Jennifer, Lukas not so much. He functions better when he knows precisely what everyone else is doing and what is expected of him each week. In a remote environment, there’s more of a need to fly by night. If he isn’t 100% informed of his expectations and deliverables early on, his productivity might falter.

Esther

Finally, Esther understands and appreciates the ambiguity of a remote work world and has the resilience that allows her to overcome the little trip-ups and changes throughout. Even if it’s not ideal, she can pivot as needed, whether it’s for a meeting being moved or a lack of clarity as to what’s needed for the client presentation on Friday. She also has the self-confidence to go forward without needing a greenlight or validation from her manager. She can take on a task or project with minimal supervision, and can be trusted to turn out a great product in the end.

Don’t put all soft skills in one basket

So, with all of that, who would you hire for a remote position? At first glance, it might come down to Pam or Esther, with the latter getting the job due to her ability to perform even in a volatile or ambiguous working environment. And in remote – you really do need that because it’s such a hands-off climate.

But take care when evaluating candidates for soft skills. Just because a Jennifer comes off as more outgoing does not necessarily mean that she cannot thrive in a remote work world. Maybe she’s an incredibly quick learner and can adapt to a new balance in her work and life.

Likewise, an Esther isn’t necessarily set for success remotely – maybe she rolls with the punches, but when direction is needed, she doesn’t handle that well or doesn’t know how to follow instructions step by step. You may even come across a Pam or Lukas who turns out to be the very best candidate for the position based on their amazing output and performance in spite of everything else – and that’s OK, too.

Not only that, soft skills are not always easy to gauge in those first few interactions in the candidate evaluation process. Jennifer’s demeanor may seem outright extroverted, but there may be some deeper aspects to her you might not initially perceive in an interview. Likewise, Pam and Lukas might be more adaptable to unpredictability than you – or even they – realize.

In the end, the ‘environment’ matters

Also, while you’re evaluating for skills and best cultural fit, it bears noting that if the rest of your system isn’t conducive to success and productivity, it doesn’t matter who you have in your team. You still need a quality recruitment process, a standardized onboarding, and a strategy to build connections with others.

But do you know what the trickier part really is? In the long haul, it’s still up to you to set them for long-term success regardless of the environment they’re in and their individual traits. That’s ultimately your job as an employer and manager – to bring the best out of your team whether remotely or in the physical workplace.

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The conversation around remote work has shifted from short term to long term planning with companies looking to establish stable remote work policies and maintain business continuity.

For many businesses going fully remote is the most viable option, however it is not an easy decision to execute. Business leaders from HR, to Legal and Finance must work together to weigh the complex considerations that go with a move to fully remote work.

In this webinar Shopify, GitLab, Hired and Workable will discuss how they’ve transitioned to fully remote businesses and how to successfully navigate through this change.

Key Takeaways

• Legal, financial and operational factors to consider
• Cross functional partners to include in your decision
• Managing through change as a team

The post Managing the cross-functional transition to fully remote work appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Your organization has announced a hiring slow down during the COVID-19 pandemic. So what do you do?

Advanced People Operations teams are focused on projects that will impact their organization in the future. One area of focus, aided by a shift to a more distributed workforce, is increased diversity and inclusion initiatives.

DE&I goals won’t go away, and as companies become more familiar with remote hiring, diverse pools of candidates will be more accessible than ever.

In this webinar we’ll explore how to impact your DE&I goals in the near term and lay the foundation to source, recruiting and hire diverse talent in the future.

Key Takeaways

• Actionable near term DE&I initiatives
• Operationalizing pay equity and total compensation
• Setting the foundation for diversity recruiting

The post Building a Diverse Distributed Workforce appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

We live in a diverse business world. There’s not just variability in our workforce, there is also diversity in the customers we want to attract, in the messages we share or consume via various platforms, and the markets we plan to expand to.

Inclusive leadership helps balance all these elements – inclusive leaders adapt quickly to diverse scenarios and alternate perspectives with an open, non-judgmental mind to bring on the best results possible. And research shows that, when done right, there are many benefits; teams perform better and more collaboratively, and make better overall decisions.

With businesses increasingly optimizing their diversity and inclusion activities, inclusive leadership is more relevant now than ever. No matter how great your company’s diversity metrics get – be that in new hires you make or deals you close – if you don’t have an inclusive environment that embraces all these differences and creates a workspace where everyone can bring their true selves to work, your D&I initiatives will fail. That’s why inclusive leaders are needed to set the right tone.

What are the top qualities of inclusive leaders?

According to Deloitte, these are the top strengths inclusive leaders possess:

1. They’re loyal ambassadors of diversity and inclusion – they never miss a chance to spread the word of D&I significance at work.
2. They accept that they’re vulnerable and show it.
3. They combat old-fashioned paternalistic leadership styles.
4. They’re aware of their own biases and challenge their habitual patterns.
5. They’re excellent communicators – i.e. they’re curious and great listeners.
6. They understand and adapt to various cultural norms.
7. They’re team players, eager to help and do what’s best for the team.

Tips to boost inclusive leadership at work

When recruiting for a senior role or promoting someone to a managerial position, it’s good to keep these traits in mind. There are also ways to reinforce these characteristics over time. Here are some best practices for inclusive leaders:

• Attend an inclusive leadership training: Through certain activities (e.g. storytelling) you can learn what the most triggering biases are for you and ways to overcome them. You can recall and practice them on a regular basis to stay bias-free.
• Find a mentor: Talk to someone with more experience in the area, and who has excelled in managing diverse teams. It doesn’t have to be your own manager – it can be an external source you trust and look up to for their inclusive leadership behaviors and skills.
• Ask for feedback: You can use your 1:1 meetings to discuss openly with your teammates how inclusive your managerial approach is. Do they feel valued as a member of their team? Do they feel like they can ping you when something is wrong? Leaders should not take all these for granted – it’s easy to get lost in translation when talking about biases.

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On the flip side, there are still unconscious traps you could stumble on. Image and sound are powerful, after all. When you see a candidate for the first time and get cues from how they behave, talk, look and dress like you might get unconsciously triggered. No matter how trained or aware you are, biases will always surface and may sidetrack your attention away from what matters.

Video interview biases: most common risks

So, imagine this scenario: you’re about to evaluate 20 video interviews for an open role in marketing. You’ve handed over four interview questions to candidates, one generic (e.g. “Describe yourself and your career goals in two minutes”) and three job-related (e.g. “What metrics would you use to measure our social media’s performance?”). Each item has unlimited preparation time and the answer is set to a maximum of two minutes.

Despite those given constraints, there is variability in interview answers you receive. Some candidates took the whole two minutes to answer the questions while others spent less than 60 seconds on their responses. The actual responses varied, as well, and of course, you can still see and hear each candidate.

In brief, here are some tricky parts that could trigger video interview biases in this case:

1. Protected characteristics are now evident

What you controlled for during the blind hiring stage will be now visible. You need to be careful with this information and how they might unconsciously impact your evaluation. The umbrella of protected characteristics is huge.

It’s not always the obvious traits that trigger us, such as someone’s skin color or dress code. It could also be that a candidate’s accent might sound funny to your ears, or you might take for granted that a 50-year-old candidate won’t be a perfect fit for a senior position at a dynamic start-up environment. All those elements could be misleading.

2. Non-verbal cues can affect your judgment

Sitting in front of a camera presenting yourself to someone you cannot see is not always that easy for interviewees. Some candidates will feel confident and some won’t. However, this is not necessarily an indicator of how they’ll perform their day-to-day tasks – unless the role entails presenting at a high level or communicating in a similar setup as part of their work (e.g. call centers, telemarketing).

Beware of these no-verbal characteristics and how they impact you. There are some common video interview red flags that might mess you up during evaluation – a noisy background or a multicolored top could sway your judgment in ways you aren’t initially aware of.

3. Evaluating video interviews is a rather new thing

Since one-way video-interviews are relatively new to the recruitment landscape, there’s still a lot to discover going forward. We’re still learning and there are likely more biases that we haven’t identified right away.

Picture this in the above-mentioned scenario: you have two final qualified candidates – one answered their job-related question in 30 seconds while the other’s answer took up the full two minutes. If you don’t pay that much attention to each response, you may prefer the one with the longer answer as they had “more to say”.

But the reality could be that the first candidate had a more accurate answer and cut down the fluff. They were more direct and to the point. For certain roles – let’s say, for editors or public speakers– that would be a good skill to have.

Tips to reduce one-way video interview biases

So, as any other recruiting solution that you use to improve diversity in your business, if you don’t use video interviews the right way, there will still be some stumbling blocks.

No tool and feature will enable you to you to directly succeed in ensuring diversity – rather, it will be your mindset towards diversity that will do the job and your persistent attempts to establish diversity in the core of your business…
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To build a strong approach from beginning to end, track all biases that could surface along the way – whether that’s judging a candidate for a facial piercing for “being unprofessional” to ruling out a single mother at the decision stage, taking for granted that she is not going to be as efficient at the job, with so many personal responsibilities at hand.

Here are some first steps you could follow to structure the screening process in a way that improves your diversity efforts before and during the video-interviewing stage:

Plan your early-stage screening

If you post your job ad to several job boards you broaden your sources for candidates – and in turn, the opportunity to diversify your candidate pool. You can also share the job ad through multiple social networks and find candidates where they usually hang out.

Use a blind hiring software at an early screening stage to eliminate unconscious biases from resumes and social media profiles, such as photo, age, nationality, etc. Later on, when you review a video interview, remember that content and attitude matters more than non-verbal cues and other physical traits or elements.

Conduct pre-employment assessments

Implementing pre-employment assessments is also crucial when screening applicants. They produce a mostly accurate result on job-related competencies and help spot what matters the most for a specific role.

Whether that’s an external assessment or an assignment you built yourself, it’s better to evaluate them before or coupled with video interviews to make sure that what you saw and heard during the video assessment doesn’t impact your judgment and your full attention is concentrated on those important job-related factors.

Structure questions wisely

What you really want to learn about a candidate from their one-way video is if they have the right skills for the role. To spot them, make sure to address the top must-have skills in the questions.

To achieve that, design interview questions that don’t require further explanation. For example:

• Describe a time when you faced a problem in project management and how you dealt with it.
• What is your biggest achievement in content marketing strategy?

It would be unfortunate to lose out on a great candidate because of an unclear or vague question that needs further explanation. You also must use the same job-related questions for every interview to make sure that you evaluate all candidates equally.

Share video-interview tips

It would be also helpful, both for candidates and you as an evaluator, to share some video interview tips with candidates so that they have clear expectations and useful resources to prepare the right way. For example, share some tech and troubleshooting tips with candidates to set up their gear.

Remember to try and ignore the background noise or distractions that could trigger unconscious biases, whether that’s the wall behind them or poor audio/video quality. Focus on answers and attitude.

Here, you can find top video interview tips for candidates that will help you unify the process even more, and prepare all interviewees equally for success.

Train recruiters and hiring managers

All hiring managers and recruiters should be well aware of the video interview diversity risks and biases they could come across with. Apart from not discriminating based on protected characteristics, they should learn how to evaluate answers properly, based on related competency and other screening assessments (e.g. resume, pre-employment assessments, etc.).

It’s important to be aware of some of the common video interview red flags mentioned above, such as poor body language, that are not necessarily valid. Once assessors become aware of those mental traps and how to detect them early, your road to diversity will be on a safe track.

You could also design a D&I training to help your employees understand their personal triggering factors that could enforce biases.

Remember – biases are everywhere

Dear George, as you understand, one-way video interviews will help you improve your company’s diversity, but you have to utilize them carefully and combine them with other features and practices. Tech and tools are not going to be the single factor in this effort; there needs to be a strong diversity strategy in place, in every step of the recruiting funnel – and one-way video interviews can only help you get closer to making your D&I vision a reality.

The post One-way video interview biases: potential risks for diversity appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

In this blog post, you can find the skeleton of a diversity and inclusion training program that you can use with adjustments within your company.

And to sort things out, we gathered practices you can execute in three different levels:

1. Personal level
2. Team level
3. Company-wide level

Bonus fact: Did you know that employee turnover is lower in diverse environments?

1. Make diversity and inclusion training personal

First and foremost, to be inclusive, each of us has to understand in depth what diversity means, both cognitively – i.e. what it is – and emotionally – i.e. how does a person feel when discriminated against. Once this is clear, employees could kick off their journey of self-reflection.

Let the lesson begin

Start diversity and inclusion training by setting up an educational course for employees. This can be either a pre-designed course or even some slides put together in a video.

Friendly reminder: No one likes to be forced to do anything they don’t want to do or they’re not comfortable doing. Be mindful of that. Try to use a friendly tone, simple and clear language and most importantly, make this training optional.

For this course, you can set goals and choose strategies that work for you, aiming to develop a holistic approach to D&I. You can use multiple media to address the matter and even prepare a questionnaire for a quick comprehension check afterwards.

Cognitive goals:

• Learn definitions: What is diversity? Inclusion? What are the different types of diversity? What are unconscious biases and what types are there?
• Get familiar with facts and stats: Anti-discrimination laws, and survey findings around D&I.

Emotional goals:

• Develop empathy: How discriminative actions affect people?
• Share stories through videos: Social experiments, TEDx talks.
• Initiate self-reflection: Ask optional questions and collect data anonymously. Questions could be, for example:
  • Have you ever witnessed an incident where discrimination or prejudice took place? Explain.
  • Have you ever been victimized or felt like a victim of discrimination? Explain.
  • Have you ever wronged someone – or felt like you did – due to unconscious biases? Elaborate.

It is also important to clarify in the invitation email that diversity and inclusion training is not an evaluation and it is not going to be used against any employee in a harmful way. Don’t forget to reassure your colleagues that all data collected and shared will be anonymous during the whole process.

In short: this is a safe space designed for educational purposes, and nothing beyond that.

Be inclusive

After an employee completes the first educational part, express your availability and interest in a personal open conversation with anyone who is willing and interested. Keeping your door wide open to everyone – whether they have completed the training or not – , is, in fact, an inclusive practice in itself.

When an employee enters your space, you should immediately grab the only and most powerful weapon needed: The ability to listen. Be it feedback, thoughts or even a personal experience, remember that everyone deserves to be heard and you should not only give this opportunity to your peers, but also encourage them to speak up – again, making sure they understand they’re speaking in a safe space.

You can also keep in mind the following questions to warm up the conversation:

• How was your experience of the course?
• What did you like the most/least?
• Do you have any thoughts or feelings to share?

And although it’s good to be prepared and have a plan for your conversation, it’s not a panacea. Open conversations are far different from interviews or work meetings – although it’s good to have a set of questions ready in a pinch to keep the conversation going, take care not to control the interaction.

Just grab a cup of coffee with your coworker and listen.

2. Work with teams

Once you have completed the first level of diversity and inclusion training, you can then proceed to group learning practices; During this stage, the main focus is on increasing awareness and empathy with interactive games or exercises, and discussions.

Get-ready tips:

• Set SMART goals and metrics to build an evaluation form to fill out after each session (e.g. # of participants who shared personal story, # of participants who did not talk).
• If possible, build groups of 5-6 people from these forms, preferably with diverse backgrounds (gender, race, role seniority, etc.).
• Find a quiet place where you can all form a circle with your chairs.
• Select 1-2 quick icebreaker games to loosen up any potential tension and build an environment of trust.

Note: In these practices you can start by moderating the group as the facilitator of the exercise – but as people start to loosen up and participate further, you can gradually give the controls to other people, who have already experienced and are able to lead the way.

Storytelling

Set the scene:

• Arrange chairs in a circle around a box and encourage everyone to take a seat.
• Explain that each team member will have to draw a random card from this box that they should read only when their turn is up.
• Ask for a volunteer to read the index of the card.

On each card is an anecdote about an incident in which discrimination occurred. In other words, it’s a story.

A quick side note: Storytelling is one of the most powerful techniques in adult learning and, in this case, the perfect tool to help identify discriminatory behaviors and craft inclusive consciousness.

Did you know? Three in five of us have at least witnessed or experienced discrimination firsthand.

Write down – in your own words, changing names and any other identifiable factors – some of the stories you collected anonymously via questionnaire in the previous phase. You can also add incognito stories of friends, family, or famous people who have shared their own stories, keeping in mind they need to remain unidentifiable. You can even share your own personal experience.

After each member reads the story out loud, ask this person, and afterwards the whole group, to express an emotion or thought in response to the story. Ask them: – “How do you feel about this story? Why?” In some cases, you can let a conversation flow freely from there. There may be some interesting revelations.

When those who want to share their card with others have done so, thank everybody for joining in the session and express your availability and willingness to hear and discuss more if someone wishes.

When you’re left alone, fill out the evaluation form you have prepared.

Note: Try to choose stories showing different types of discrimination (gender, age, background, etc.) in different environment (workplace, university etc.). Be careful not to expose any employee, employer or institution. What we are interested in is understanding what diversity is and what it looks like in real life, so as to promote inclusion.

3. Build an open culture

Even though companies can benefit from diversity and inclusion training programs, it is essential to understand that training alone is not enough. Workplace diversity requires an open culture which not only operates under the guidelines of EEO, but also includes daily practices and activities oriented indirectly towards inclusion.

Let’s take a look at some of these.

Time to play

Who said playing is only for children?

Gamified activities boost employee performance, encourage belonging, and when it comes to training, increase motivation levels.

What you can do is find or make some quizzes with simple online tools and spread the fun across random generated teams throughout your company. You can also adapt those quizzes to your specific needs and make them either for:

• Fun (e.g. trivia quiz game)
• Training (e.g. product-related)
• Educational (e.g. D&I)

Blind coffee date

What more brings people close together than sharing a cup of coffee? When it comes to larger corporate environments, you can arrange so as every employee gets the chance to socialize with everyone within the company. And when we say everyone, we mean everyone – even the CEO.

Online tools that integrate with Slack offer the opportunity to randomly pair people for blind coffee dates. This practice facilitates employee bonding, builds new working relationships, provides a basis for exchanging ideas, and encourages more interaction between colleagues of different backgrounds.

Let ’em talk

Each year on May 21, actively recognize UN’s World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development:

• Let minority groups or even individuals organize lectures and share their stories or experiences with the rest of the world (or even your company)
• Invite Diversity & inclusion experts and psychologists to provide support and guidelines for recognizing discrimination and suggesting what to do in these situations
• Organize open conversations based on employees’ preferences gathered from prior polls

Work can also be school

An inclusive workplace isn’t just about numbers ‘proving’ the diversity among employees. It’s a mindset, or better yet, an active realization and appreciation that each and every one of us is unique. And although we reminisce about our years as students, that does not mean that we have stopped learning and evolving.

In fact, workplaces too are part of our education and it is time to focus on investing more on developing our humanitarian aspect and building a more diverse environment. It may be that you and your colleagues will benefit as well – and your employer, too.

The post Diversity and inclusion training: How to apply it in the workplace appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Headquartered in Dubai, GCC operates in countries ranging from Iraq to Indonesia to Australia. Over the past two decades, they’ve established a strong reputation for excellence in their facilities management, providing top-caliber service in kitchen and dining solutions including staffing, facilities, maintenance, and much more. In response to COVID-19, in partnership with Workable, GCC transitioned onsite interviews to virtual interviews when hiring for their global workforce. 

As Roda Collado, Recruitment & HR Operations Lead emphasized, they were already familiar with some video interview technologies when candidates were overseas, but in-country interviews needed to be quickly reestablished virtually.

“What changed is that even the in-country interviews are done either through internet web conferencing or over the phone.”

As the company responded to urgent employee needs and abrupt changes in work-life balance, the corporate team worked to figure out how they’d continue to hire and meet the expectations of their partner companies in these uncertain times. As this was happening, Workable launched their native one-way video interviewing product and GCC jumped at the opportunity to try it out. During this difficult time, GCC started using video interviews right away without expending valuable time and resources learning how to use it. 

“I’ve received good feedback from our hiring managers – even the candidates themselves. I feel that it’s easy to use and that, [on] the recruiter’s side, it’s integrated into their profiles.” 

By eliminating the time-consuming and restrictive phone screen process, everyone on the hiring team could review the candidate profile in their own time, in a previously unachievable way. Instead of the recruiter conducting the phone screen on their own and sharing feedback with the rest of the hiring team, hiring managers got involved earlier and could more actively step in and provide insight on who they wanted to move forward.

There’s the consistency in terms of questions being asked, so the hiring manager, or the hiring team are able to compare one candidate [with another], based on a consistent set of questions.

Candidates were so pleased with the process that they went out of their way to tell the GCC team. Asynchronous video interviews made it easier to schedule (eliminating the need for back-and-forth email communication) and put candidates at ease, enabling them to conduct the interview on their own time and in their own space. This proved especially crucial in that first screening round, before either party had developed a relationship, and increased candidate interest. It also spoke to GCC’s ongoing emphasis on an inclusive hiring process. When Roda compared video interviews with phone screens, she felt that video interviews were less subjective and less prone to bias. 

Speed up your hiring process like GCC

GCC quickly implemented Video Interviews, and in turn actually sped up the hiring process, allowing hiring team members and other company people to focus more on working through this very unusual time while maintaining a high-quality hiring process across all locations.

The post GCC Services fosters a more inclusive hiring process with Workable Video Interviews appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Get all the right data, skip all of the manual admin.

This new automation will eliminate manual admin and avoid costly data errors, freeing up valuable time and resources to focus on other pertinent tasks in your work without worry. Eight fields can be automatically transferred from Workable to ADP, including: First & Last Name, Email, Phone Number, Start Date and more.

Get started, quickly

Like everything with Workable, getting started only takes a few clicks. To get started, simply:

1. Purchase the Workable connector for ADP Workforce Now®  
2. Watch the data flow — auto export is turned on by default

Want to learn more about ADP Workforce Now® 

ADP Workforce Now® is a cloud-based platform for HR management software, where you can easily manage all of your HR functions — payroll, HR management, workforce management, talent, and benefits — and gain insights across them all.  

To purchase the Connector now, visit: http://adp.marketplace.com/workable

The post Announcing: Workable Connector for ADP Workforce Now® appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

What is asynchronous communication?

In the modern workplace, whether that’s remote or not, asynchronous communication means that there is a time lag in response between the sender and the recipient, be that another colleague or customer. This is the main difference between asynchronous vs. synchronous communication, with the latter involving in person meetings, live chatting or video conferencing.

Briefly, in asynchronous communication terms, if you want to ask your colleague a question about an ongoing project, you won’t address it to them right away, even when you’re at the same office, but you’ll leave them a message so that they respond on their own time.

We’ve all practiced asynchronous collaboration at work, more or less, and tech tools have played a huge part in this. Emails, messaging apps (Slack, Hipchat, etc.), shared documents in cloud-based platforms (G-Suite) where employees can collaborate and reply are common asynchronous communication examples, among many more.

Now that we’ve explained what asynchronous communication is, let’s turn our attention to “why” we’re talking about it. When done properly, the benefits of asynchronous communication are plentiful and can boost both your performance and productivity – and your teammates’, too.

The assets of asynchronous communication

Have you ever found it difficult to concentrate on your daily job duties after being interrupted by an unexpected casual chit-chat about a project your colleague is working on? It’s fine if this happens sometimes because mutual support and camaraderie is a critical part of being a team. But what if it interferes with your productivity?

Recent research has shown that we live in a more collaborative era; we schedule our working day around meetings, Slack conversations and emails with our colleagues and sometimes these events could take up 80% of a full working day. This can be detrimental to our performance; technically we spend more time hopping from one meeting to another or replying to messages than focusing solely and mindfully on our tasks.

But with asynchronous work we can tackle this issue and spend more time resolving tasks with extra attention and care. The key benefits are many:

More productivity

In workplaces where asynchronous collaboration is reinforced and enabled with technology, productivity is higher. People can follow their agenda and complete daily tasks more easily when they are able respond to their colleagues’ requests based on bandwidth or set up time slots throughout the week to prepare feedback for specific projects. Plus, by focusing their attention on one task at a time they have a more detailed look and bring in better results.

Less stress

Switching from one project to another throughout the day and being unable to stick to your own agenda can also be stressful. You probably can recall a time when you struggled in meeting an important deadline and a colleague asked you for a favor. It can be difficult to prioritize what is more urgent in such circumstances or reject your teammate’s call for help.

With asynchronous communication you allow yourself – or your employees – to put all energy into what you do each time and have better control over your workload, so there is no reason to overstress.

Higher quality

When you go through a request at your own pace you can concentrate on details and process things in greater depth. When exchanging information in the form of a conversation instead, you don’t really have the time to inspect all problem aspects. By documenting details on a work matter to receive feedback from your colleagues step by step, you get and give a better review and more constructive input. This type of documentation helps the whole team equally and results in greater output.

Better talent

When you have embraced an asynchronous collaboration culture it’s easier to attract a wider talent pool around the globe for jobs that do not require colleagues to physically be in the same location. Employees are able to collaborate effectively from different time zones, buildings, or offices in an asynchronous way so place and time zone no longer limit your access to great talent.

Asynchronous collaboration best practices

Asynchronous communication sounds like the real deal, but how can you introduce it to your business and team operations effectively? Here are some good practices to start with:

1. Sync with an asynchronous mindset

If your employees are not used to such a working style, train them to do so. Empower them to own their agenda and workload and emphasize that no one will judge them if they take their time to respond to a request. Define what type of enquiries should be perceived as urgent by teammates on a general or per-project basis. This way employees will have clearer expectations and will be able to prioritize tasks more efficiently.

2. Set clear deadlines

If your employees or teammates operate in different time zones, make collaboration equally easy for everyone. Avoid scheduling meetings over time or reaching out to colleagues for feedback before the end of their working day. Encourage your employees to share transparently how they like to work and when they prefer to operate collaboratively throughout the day.

3. Introduce the right tools

Whether that’s your project management tool or your ATS search for platforms whose functionality better enable asynchronous communication and collaboration, with effective documentation, filing and options like comment sharing and tagging. For example, with Workable, once you’ve screened candidates and move on to the selection phase, you can share comments and tag your teammates inside the platform so that they get back to you when it’s convenient to them.

4. Organize your notes and feedback

To make asynchronous collaboration successful, you have to find ways to provide effective notes and feedback to avoid back and forths in communication and time delays on important deadlines. Plus, going through a task in-depth in order to give clarifications or feedback will probably give you a new perspective and enable you to resolve or address it more quickly than expected.

5. Create/update troubleshooting guidelines

Not all of your employees will be able to fix operational tech issues that come up the same way. Make sure to build some guides with steps and solutions to some common technical problems (e.g. internet connectivity, security, etc.) and help employees concentrate on their day-to-day work.

Remember, not all meetings could be emails…

It seems that the benefits outweigh the losses for both organizations and individuals, but keep in mind that asynchronous communication is not the cure to all problems. Sometimes, you still have to meet in person or virtually with your team to address and solve complex issues. When you figure out that you spend lots of time trying to fix a problem over email or texts, sometimes it’s better to schedule a call or a meeting with your team and tackle it right on the spot.

Also, some processes such as brainstorming gain extra value from get-togethers. One idea builds on another and collectively leads to better results. Plus, meeting with your teammates on a regular basis helps you understand each other’s working habits, lifestyle and interests and enables you to build stronger relationships with them. That’s not easily replicated through asynchronous messaging.

When it comes to sharing some laughs and creating happy memories with your teammates, nothing beats the live version of it all.

So if you’re in the hunt for new applications and tips to manage remote teams successfully or to collaborate effectively with your teammates globally, asynchronous communication is probably your thing. There’s going to be a trial-and-error phase, and that’s OK. You won’t figure out everything immediately.

For starters, ask your employees and teammates for feedback and remind them that they do not have to send it straight away but respond based on their own bandwidth. Now that your employees are given the opportunity to think through their responses, the answers you do get – whether later in the day or tomorrow or next week – may surprise you with their insightfulness and creativity.

The post Asynchronous communication in the workplace: benefits and best practices appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

People were not happy with this comment – mainly because it’s based on the assumption that women in general don’t care about sports. Nevertheless, Francke’s statement might have been well-intentioned. She didn’t suggest banning sports talk completely; rather, it was an effort to shed light on behaviors that potentially sustain ‘bro culture’ at work. But even so, it raised some concerns as to whether we know how to improve (gender) inclusion in the workplace.

More than that: do we really know what inclusion means?

Diversity vs. Inclusion: why they’re not the same

It’s not by chance that when we talk about diverse teams and diverse workplaces, we, ultimately, mention diversity and inclusion (D&I). Sure, one could say they’re two sides of the same coin, but it’s important to make that distinction between ‘D’ and ‘I’. For example, if you’re hiring employees from underrepresented groups (e.g. people with disabilities, ethnic minorities, people from the LGBTQ+ community), you’re doing a great job in boosting diversity in your company.

But that’s not enough.

Think about it: After being hired, do these people feel like they belong? Are they confident and comfortable bringing their true selves to work or do they feel the need to hide their unique traits and points of view?

That’s where inclusion in the workplace matters. Simply raising the number of people from underrepresented groups that you employ – and ticking off those boxes – doesn’t guarantee that you’ve built a work environment of equal opportunities.

Back to the gender inclusion in the workplace discussion – if, for example, your sales team have quotas that require travelling, do you make adjustments to accommodate soon-to-be or new mothers? Another example could be the language used in corporate documents or during meetings – is it gender-inclusive or does it make some people in the room feel that they don’t belong there?

Gender discrimination in the workplace takes many forms

It’s not just about a pay gender gap. It’s not just offensive, sexist comments during meetings. It’s not just promotions for like-minded ‘bros’. It’s all of that and many more behaviors and stereotypes that poison the workplace culture.

TrustRadius recently published the 2020 Women in Tech Report in which men, women and non-binary respondents share their perspectives around gender dynamics in the workplace. Findings show that women are indeed feeling left out at work, whether it’s because they’re being paid less than their peer (or even less experienced) male colleagues or due to the overall office culture that favors men.

Here are some examples of what they had to say:

Lately, changes in law and global movements, like #MeToo, encourage women and other people from underrepresented groups to speak up when they experience inequality at work. One recent example is the story of Riot Games, the video game developer company behind popular games including “League of Legends”, where current and former employees accused the company for sexism and harassment. In the end, Riot Games agreed to pay $10 million as part of a settlement over alleged gender discrimination.

Similar stories on the lack of true inclusion in the workplace are all over the news. In 2018, Spotify was sued for equal pay violation and, a few months later, Oracle was also sued. But this is not limited to tech companies. Former Nike employees have filed lawsuits against alleged pay discrimination, Walmart has faced gender bias legal issues on more than one occasion, and Disney was hit with a lawsuit in early 2019.

The list continues to grow with lawsuits involving WeWork, firefighters, the US Women’s National Team, and others. That’s proof that we’re not talking about one-off incidents. It’s also proof (and a good sign) that employees do feel comfortable enough to file complaints. But you of course don’t want to be in the employer’s position in the first place. Not only is it expensive regardless of whether you’re found liable or not, it’s also debilitating to your employer brand and overall reputation as a company especially if it goes public. So, you’ll want to get ahead of it before anything happens. Think about what you can do before reaching this stage.

Inclusion requires a reality check

Let’s face facts: diversity is at first glance more easily measurable. You can track how many people from underrepresented groups you attract, hire and promote at your company. You can monitor how these numbers change over time, how they differ from department to department and if they’ve been positively impacted by any proactive diversity-inspired initiative you take.

Inclusion in the workplace, on the other hand, has less tangible metrics. You could track, analyze and correct any pay gender gaps you find – that part’s easy. You could enforce anti-harassment policies – that’s not hard to track either.

But how do you identify and address those less obvious sexist behaviors? Based on the TrustRadius report, 71% of women have worked at a tech company where bro culture was pervasive. That’s not a number to ignore. It might be now a good time to check your own company culture and try to discover in which ways you support – or don’t support – women in your workplace.

“Even companies that sell tampons are run by men”

This is the title of a not-so-old article from The Huffington Post that explored the impact of having men be responsible for feminine products. And while this particular situation has now been rectified to a degree, the story raises a good thinking point relevant to the workplace, in general: can we let a privileged group (men, in this case) decide what’s best for the least privileged group (women)? Or, even deeper, because stereotypes are largely infused in our way of thinking, can we recognize our unconscious biases?

When you want to boost D&I, the #1 step is to raise your awareness. In other words, to realize that if you don’t have diverse teams, you’re not building products or you’re not offering services that appeal to a broad audience. You’re missing out on opportunities to solve problems and to grow your business.

Taking this story to another level: it’s often argued that tampons would have been rendered obsolete a long time ago if men had periods. Of course, the business gains that are associated with diverse teams go beyond companies that sell feminine products.

And that brings us to step #2: perception. You now realize that you need diversity, but how diverse your company is? You’ll get that information if you look internally at how your teams are built, how you’re making strategic decisions and whether your workplace provides equal opportunities to all employees.

If you find that you’re not as diverse as you could be, your step #3 is decision: the decision to change internally so you increase diversity.

And that goes hand in hand with step #4: analysis. You shouldn’t look at the numbers only at a high level. For example, if you currently employ 10% female employees and decide to increase that number to 40-50%, it doesn’t mean that you’ll solve the issue. It’s not enough to just hire those women; you need to give them a seat at the table where decisions are being made.

The following graph shows that while S&P 500 companies have almost 50-50 balance in male and female employees, the female representation at the more senior levels is significantly lower. When that’s the case, can we really talk about an equal workforce?

That’s when you can move on to step #5: action towards inclusion in the workplace. By default, ‘bros’ cannot recognize and define what bro culture is. Neither can they fix it. To use a simplified metaphor, a fish doesn’t know it’s in water.

Likewise, you can’t decide if your female colleague is feeling left out at work. She’s the one who knows what sexism, bullying or discrimination in the workplace looks and feels like, because she’s the one experiencing it. But the onus is on you as an employer to build a culture where she feels strong enough to raise that voice.

Perhaps you think that your company culture is inclusive. But the only way to know for sure is by going to the source: ask those who are usually affected by discrimination. Perhaps you assume that avoiding a discussion helps a group of people don’t feel excluded. But that’s not the same as actively including those people in the discussion.

Now, if it was you making the decision, would you choose to ban sports talk at work?

The post Gender inclusion in the workplace: Going beyond diversity appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

It’s already a challenge for people with disabilities to get a job. Even when they do, they’re often trapped in dead-end careers, menial tasks and sub-minimum wages. It doesn’t have to be this way, though. Better, it mustn’t be this way.

Disability employment in action

According to statistics there are [more than] 1.1 million people of working age with disabilities in the UK who are unemployed. Clarity & Co’s Head of Employment Services, Gillian Austen says “75% of our employees have a disability. We would like to hire more, but we don’t have the capacity to do so, therefore we need other employers to help. Of course we don’t enjoy seeing some of our best friends and colleagues leave, but we’re happy to be a stepping stone to help them land their dream job.”

Approximately 50% of the staff at Clarity & Co. have the ability to progress into mainstream employment. Using their time there (6 months to 2 years) to build up their skills and confidence before they transition to an external role This then frees up a supported employment space, allowing Clarity & Co. to offer a role to someone else with a disability that is struggling to find work, thus decreasing the overall disability unemployment rate.

The decision to hire people with disabilities was not random; there’s a whole philosophy that drives it. The organization was formed back in 1854 by Elizabeth Gilbert, who herself was visually impaired (VI). She wanted to give other VI individuals the chance to work, Gillian says. “We may now be a pan-disability employer and manufacture a very different product range compared to back then, but the vision and values have never really changed in all these years.”

Is there such a thing as positive discrimination?

“We have a mixed workforce,” Gillian explains, “but, wherever possible, we like to give opportunities to those with a disability or health condition. Everything that we do is focused around supporting people with disabilities into work.”

“We invest time in this, as it is why we exist.”

You may call it positive discrimination, or affirmative action, or something else, but, according to Gillian, there is a place for it when recruiting is done for the right reasons. At CLARITY & Co., for example, the goal is to help change perceptions of disability.

As a not-for-profit organization, sales don’t only help the company operate. Products reach high-street retailers, large companies such as PwC and BNP Paribas, online customers, and companies in the hospitality sector across the UK. It’s through these products that CLARITY & Co. gets to spread the message of the disability employment gap to a wide audience.

“We also attend networking events and functions and present across a wide range of corporate and other events to talk about our social values and raise awareness about disability unemployment,” Gillian adds. “And we host many people at our factory from the business world and beyond, offering tours and team-building sessions.”

It’s not an easy journey

Gillian admits that there are some costs involved in making adjustments in your workplace. But it shouldn’t be a dealbreaker. “In most cases, companies can get assistance in covering those costs through work funding.”

She also advises employers to expand their candidate sources.

“There are so many people with disabilities out there who want to work. We source our candidates via various partnerships; for example, with the local Jobcentre Plus and other training providers who have individuals furthest from the job market on their caseloads, local council employment schemes and other disability organisations that support individuals with disabilities or health conditions into work.”

And certainly, those efforts needn’t to happen in isolation. Companies can learn from each other and work together to fight the disability employment gap. The #StealOurStaff campaign from BECO. is a good example of how to make an impact.

“In the first week alone, for example, the campaign achieved over 25 million social media impressions and gained a lot of media coverage, with retweets from Richard Branson, Deborah Meaden and Sara Cox,” Gillian says. “This certainly helped raise awareness of the disability employment gap, which was one of our aims.”

And it goes more than that. She adds that they’re already in discussion with a number of employers regarding the campaign with a few interviews underway. Those are the real gains from opening up the topic of disability inclusion at work; removing the barriers and reducing the unemployment rates among people with disabilities.

As Gillian concludes in a powerful message:

“We see workability, not disability.”
Click To Tweet

The post How a bold initiative can boost disability employment appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

You won’t see a list of diversity-specific features, though. And that’s on purpose. We believe that D&I is neither a couple of boxes that you just tick, nor a quota that you want to reach. It requires a holistic approach, re-thinking and updating your processes, and adopting practices that contribute to an inclusive workplace. We do offer features that will help you comply with anti-discriminatory laws (e.g. EEO/OFCCP regulations), but we’re mostly focused on delivering solutions that will help you interact with candidates and hire employees bias-free.

Let’s explore how you can increase diversity at each step of the hiring process using Workable.

1. Advertising your jobs: How to attract diverse candidates

When you want to increase diversity within your company, your first priority should be to diversify your outreach when you’re promoting your job openings. If you’re constantly posting jobs and looking for candidates in the same places, you’ll likely come across people with the same background. But researching and trying out new candidate sources can be time-consuming.

Here’s how Workable can automate and speed up your job advertising process to maximize your outreach:

Post to multiple sites and social networks

Instead of creating accounts and logging in to different sites in an effort to increase your candidate sources, you can do all that within the platform with just a few clicks. Pick the free and premium job boards where you want to advertise your open roles, add social media to your advertising mix, and we’ll automatically publish your job ads. This way, we help you get your job opportunities in front of a broader audience without wasting any valuable time.

Find potential candidates where they are

While job boards are the go-to place for job seekers, it’s worth casting a wider net. You can reach out to people with the right skills in the places where they spend a lot of their time daily: Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn of course.

Customize one of our inclusive job descriptions

We may not always realize it, but even one word can make a difference in a job ad. Would a boomer apply for a job that highlights the company’s youthful environment? Or, what would a female candidate think if she saw a job ad for a salesman? We’ve built more than 700 job description templates for a wide range of industries and business functions, paying attention to using gender-neutral and inclusive language. You can directly upload and edit those templates when you create your job ad inside Workable:

2. Screening applicants: How to remove biases

Once you’ve advertised your jobs, you’ll start receiving applications. At this stage, it’s important to make sure you evaluate resumes, application forms and portfolios using strictly job-related criteria. It’s common to be influenced by non-relevant factors, so here are two ways that can help you stay on track:

Turn off social media profile pictures

While Workable gives you the option to gather information candidates have shared online in order to build a robust profile, you also have the option to disable their profile pictures. If you think that you or other hiring team members might get distracted by candidates’ pictures and miss out on important skills, you can turn this feature off.

Screen candidates consistently with video interviews

First impressions are powerful. You can instantly like or dislike a candidate as you walk them to the meeting room or during small talk before the interview. What if you could go straight to the interview, though? Picture this: you can send all candidates for the same role a set of questions, which they’ll answer by recording themselves. This way, you only receive their answers to job-related questions, you can avoid the potentially bias-inducing small talk, and can compare candidates without showing unduly favoring one over the other.

3. Making your hiring decision: How to evaluate candidates objectively

You’re now in a good place. You’ve enriched your candidate sources to ensure you reach a diverse audience, you’ve screened applicants with job-related criteria and you’re ready to interview and hire your next star. You have a good base, but the challenge is that they’re multiple people involved at this stage, for example, a hiring manager or senior executives. How can you tell if they are also free of biases?

You probably can’t. And maybe you don’t have the time – or even the power – to train them on D&I practices. What you can do instead, is build a hiring process that eliminates biases:

Ask all candidates the same interview questions

More or less, hiring managers will ask similar questions to learn whether candidates are qualified for a role. However, because interviewers are human and questions may go off in tangents at times, it’s easier to stay consistent when questions are prepared in advance. In Workable, you can build interview kits to evaluate skills and include as many questions as you want. The result is a structured interview process, where interviewers ask all candidates the same questions in the same order and use a scorecard to evaluate answers.

Share your interview feedback impartially

We all get influenced by other people’s opinions, but hiring decisions should be well-rounded, not biased. This means that interviewers should be able to openly call attention to any red flags they spotted in candidates, regardless of what others in the team think. To allow for objective evaluations when there are multiple interviewers in the same hiring stage, each interviewer will be able to see feedback and comments from the rest of the hiring team only after they’ve already submitted their own evaluation. This way, they’re encouraged to share their honest opinion without being subconsciously influenced by the reviews of other hiring team members.

Technology alone is not enough

Diversity and inclusion go beyond software, of course. Technology can help, but it’s the people who make the hiring decisions and it’s the people who are responsible for embracing different traits in the workplace. So, the onus is on people who are involved in hiring and team management to let go of biases or, at least, to be aware of them.

There’s no tool that can enforce diversity. Perhaps your recruiting software prompts you to justify your feedback after you interview a candidate, but it won’t stop you from commenting; “I really liked this candidate”. Likewise, you might get a shortlist of 49 candidates who come from underrepresented groups and still hire the one who looks and thinks most like you.

Technology is not a cure; it can only support your D&I efforts. If you rely only on tech to boost your company’s diversity, you risk being short-sighted or, worse, see the opposite results. For example, if a software helps you gather candidate data to uncover areas for improvement, you could raise legal issues. Candidates might be worried about how you’re going to use this information, even if your intentions are good.

If you are experimenting (or considering to experiment) with masking candidates’ personal details, such as their name, race and school, don’t rest assured that you will indeed pick diverse candidates. Research shows that this is not always the case. Likewise, an overreliance on technology can lead to adverse results in your hiring process. D&I practices should be addressed throughout all your procedures, not just at the beginning of your hiring process.

At the end of the day, diversity is not in the numbers. To build a truly diverse and inclusive work environment, you need to be an advocate for differences, you need to embrace people as they are and you need to actively look for a variety of skills inside your company. Diverse candidates will want to work with you, not because you claim to be an equal opportunity employer, but because you are one. And there’s no shortcut to becoming one.

The post Diversity in the workplace: how to use Workable to boost D&I appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

That’s where a talent assessment would come in handy.

The concept of a ‘talent assessment’ as part of the hiring process isn’t new, but it’s still going strong. According to a 2019 LinkedIn report, 57% of recruiting professionals use soft skills assessments, and 60% think these assessments will make a great impact in the next five years.

That’s because talent assessments provide an indication about whether candidates can do the job you’re hiring for, and also if they fit well in your company culture and team. By using pre-employment assessment tools, you’ll be able to reduce the number of candidates to a small, super-qualified group. That way, you get insight into the candidates’ skills and you make your process much more efficient.

So, if you’re wondering how to evaluate talent, here’s a list of six talent assessment test types that can prove useful to your hiring processes:

1. Work samples

The work sample is a piece of actual work that a candidate will complete. Usually, it’ll be closely related to the job they applied to. For example, an SEO specialist can be asked to conduct keyword research for one specific topic, an accountant could be asked to apply a few formulas, and a developer may be asked to write a short piece of code.

These talent assessment tools have been shown to be the most effective in predicting job performance. And that makes sense; work samples gauge ability to do a specific work first-hand.

Of course, work samples shouldn’t be so much work that candidates feel they’re working for free (this may impact candidate experience and, consequently, your employer brand). Clarity here is essential; communicate clearly to the candidate the purpose of this work sample and that it will not be used for business purposes. In some cases, you may even compensate them for the time invested in producing the sample.

Make sure you’re asking them to produce work that’s as closely related to the position they’re applying to as possible – this way, you can also help them better understand the role and how much they’d like it.

2. Job simulations

You may have heard of the famous interview question “Can you sell me this pen?”. It’s usually presented to salespeople to evaluate skills like persuasion and thinking on their feet. This is what a job simulation is.

This type of talent assessment is similar to the work sample, but it involves more on-the-spot work. A job simulation can be done during the interview or via online hiring assessment tools. For example, you can send assessments to candidates that ask them to handle a disgruntled customer over chat, do a presentation, or sell something a bit more complex than a pen.

Similar to job simulation tests are situational interview questions. These questions ask the candidate to explain their reaction to a hypothetical scenario at work. Each candidate’s answers shed light on their way of thinking and how they’d approach a tricky situation.

3. Cognitive ability testing

Cognitive ability tests can also be called “Intelligence tests” or “General Aptitude Tests”. They usually include numerical and verbal reasoning, as well as logic exercises, but they can also branch out to memory, problem-solving, attention to detail and more. These talent assessments help you evaluate candidates’ general intelligence and ability to comprehend various concepts and solve basic problems.

Before you administer cognitive aptitude tests, make sure they’re reliable and well-validated. For this, you can try out providers that specialize in these types of assessments. For example, a recruitment platform like Workable can help you send assessments via integrated partners like Criteria Corp, MindX, etc.

4. AI-powered video interviews

Asynchronous interviews have started becoming more and more popular: this type of interview lets candidates record answers to questions and allows interviewers to evaluate the answers at their own time. Apart from the convenience of these interviews, AI technology has also turned them into talent assessment tools.

For example, face-scanning algorithms can be used to assess candidates’ tone, word choice, and other factors to determine the best person for the job. Companies like HireVue have developed this kind of technology.

Of course, there are concerns involved. Built-in biases are an issue in most artificial intelligence applications, and there are also doubts about the scientific basis of analyzing expressions to predict job performance. So, this may not be the type of talent assessment to jump into haphazardly, but it’s definitely one to watch.

5. Job trials

A tried-and-true way to judge a candidate’s ability to perform specific duties, as well as how they fit in your existing team. Candidates will usually work for a day or two at an agreed-upon pay rate. That way, both candidate and employer can see if they’re well-matched.

Job trials aren’t possible for every profession, but they’ll usually work well for blue-collar roles. For example, a machinist, a production supervisor, or a pipefitter could easily go through job trials if the law allows it.

Of course, keep in mind the limitations of this talent assessment: first, it’ll consume a few hours from the hiring team’s normal working day, since they’ll need to be close to the candidate to evaluate them and help them when needed. For this reason, it’s best if job trials are conducted only for the finalists in a hiring process. Also, consider that some candidates may already be employed so they might not be able to take time off.

So, use job trials whenever it makes sense for both you and the candidate.

6. Exercises and games

These are the more obscure talent assessments. Exercises are usually done in group interviews where the interviewers may ask candidates to work together to solve a problem or debate a particular issue. The hiring team will observe and draw conclusions about each candidate’s abilities and attitude. A more popular variation may be hackathons that companies often hold for coding applicants.

Gamification is also one of these talent assessment examples. Employers can use online tools that have been specifically developed for judging candidate abilities via games. These assessments are best used at the beginning of the hiring process in order to reduce the number of applicants.

Depending on the form of these assessments, their effectiveness might vary. For example, simply evaluating candidates in a group discussion might open the road to biases. But, letting them win a hackathon or other small competition might yield more impartial results. In these assessments, you have room to experiment and finetune when needed.

How to choose the best talent assessment for your company

First, you may need to take a deeper look at your hiring process. Is your initial screening effective? Are there delays in any step of the process? For example, if the majority of candidates who move to the interview phase are qualified, then your current selection practices probably work well, and you can then look into efficiency and speed.

So, depending on where the improvements need to be made, you can choose the assessments that work best for each role. Determine what you want to do and research recruiting assessment tools that will help you make that happen. Some assessment providers can also integrate nicely with a talent acquisition platform that will power up your hiring process as a whole.

The post 6 talent assessment methods to use for recruiting in your company appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Well, not yet. Lots of questions will occur down the line. How experienced is this candidate in this must-have skill? How can we interview this applicant who lives two hours away? And ultimately, how do we know who the best candidate is?

In this step-by-step guide, you will find useful screening techniques and tips to follow. Before we go into details though, take a step back for a moment to make sure you’ve:

1. Identified all must-have and nice-to-have skills: You may already know the highly important skills applicants should have, but, if you dig a bit deeper, there might be others you had not thought of.
2. Become aware of unconscious bias: We all tend to favor similarities. We are more likely to get on well with people who have the same interests or backgrounds with us. During screening this and other biases can be harmful.
3. Sharpened your candidate experience practices: It’s important to make a good impression as a company to applicants. Be clear and transparent, send follow-up emails and give feedback when possible. Regardless if a candidate will be hired or not, they might fit future openings or be able to refer other candidates.

Once you’ve done all these, let’s get down to business with screening applicants.

Application phase: Hitting the road

1. Screening resumes

Resumes are the most traditional way of showcasing skills and experience to potential employers. Scan candidates’ resumes to find out about the candidate’s educational background, work history, and most related certifications. Recruiting platforms like Workable can make this process much easier by automatically parsing resumes and organizing information under unique candidate profiles.

So, if a candidate seems to have the essential skills, does that mean they should move to the next phase? Maybe. Look at these two factors first:

• The resume format: In most cases, messy resumes with typos and weird wording may indicate lack of attention when writing the text. This may be concerning, especially for roles that require attention to detail, such as software testers or copywriters. However, if the candidate seems like a good fit for the role based on other characteristics, you can evaluate these skills with the use of different methods, for example, assessment tools.
• Unexplained job gaps: These may be alarming, but it’s not a reason to disqualify a candidate. It’s just something to explore during the interview. Find out what they did during this time. For example, they may have used their time off work to acquire a certification that’s useful for the current position.

2. Screening cover letters

Most candidates include cover letters in their applications. If you consider cover letters an essential part of your evaluation process, it’s good practice to ask candidates to submit a cover letter in the application guidelines. Here is what you can figure out about the candidate through cover letters:

1. Motivation for the role and attitude
2. Strengths and weaknesses
3. Future career goals
4. Consistency between resume and cover letter
5. Clear structure

Many candidates will use a template for their cover letter, or they won’t provide much useful information for fear of saying something wrong (especially if they’re junior). That’s why it’s useful to have other sources of information. For example, you can design open-ended application questions, such as:

• Why did you apply for this position?
• What do you want to achieve in this role?
• How do your strengths and weaknesses match the demands of the role?

3. Screening video applications

A video application is an addition or replacement of cover letters. It’s a one- or two-minute video in which applicants can explain why they are a good fit for the position. Ask them to briefly introduce themselves and why they applied for the role. You can also ask candidates to showcase a certain skill during the video application that is relevant to the job (e.g. sell a product in fifteen seconds). If you want to introduce video applications in your screening process, it’s best to use relevant software, so that candidates can easily record their answers.

Phone screen: Making the first move

Now that you’ve narrowed down the most suitable candidates based on resumes and cover letters, you can schedule a phone screen with them. What should you ask in a phone screening interview? First, you can cross-check the applicants’ work and educational background. You can also ask basic information, such as their current location, salary expectations or availability. During the call, focus on how well they are able to communicate and note down their answers.

Create and send calendar invitations to candidates so that they are available and well prepared. Here are some potential red flags for phone-screening:

1. The candidate doesn’t answer the call. It’s called ghosting and is not a good sign of the candidate’s professionalism. Give them the chance to explain what happened and consider giving them another opportunity if their explanation makes sense, and their profile otherwise looks like a great fit the role.
2. The candidate has a rude or indifferent attitude. Nervousness during interviews is normal. However, you can spot a lack of interest and arrogance through certain words and phrases. For example, ‘I don’t care’ or ‘whatever’ are unsuitable in interviewing contexts. Also, the absence of questions from their end may show that the candidate might not be as interested as you’d like them to be.
3. The candidate has provided inconsistent information. From your conversation with the interviewee, you understand that some of the details in their resume are not correct. This means that they either try to hide something or they did not pay much attention when applying.

Assessments: Checking the essentials

After the phone interview, it’s wise to check applicant skills with the use of assessment tools. There is a plethora of tests out there – from measuring coding skills to identifying if the candidate is a cultural fit. Find the ones that will give you a good view of their future job performance. The most common types of tests are:

• Aptitude tests: Use them to measure job-relevant abilities. For example, if you require an employee with a sharp command of English, the English Quiz can help you gauge the candidates’ language capabilities.
• Personality tests: Personality tests can show a candidate’s character strengths and whether they have behavioral traits that are necessary for the role, e.g. be a self-starter.

On-site interviews: Bringing it (them) home

Next stop: the on-site interview. Interviews can be stressful for both candidates and interviewers. Both parties are being evaluated and want to make a good impression. For this reason, a good interviewer will choose the right interview questions and get prepared to answer all types of questions about the company and the role.

During the interview, create a positive environment for the candidate and engage in authentic conversation with them as much as you can. Taking notes during an interview is essential, but it’s also important to focus on the conversation to understand the candidate’s personality and mindset.

Types of questions to ask:

• Situational and behavioral questions to understand how the person reacts in certain contexts.
• Skill-based questions that reveal the candidates’ job-relevant abilities. For example, if you are hiring for an editor, you should assess their attention to detail.
• Values-based questions to examine if they are good cultural and team fit.

What else you should evaluate:

• Effective communication: Are the candidate’s answers on point? Do they appear to be attentive listeners? A good communicator also provides examples to help you understand their point of view.
• Attitude: The candidate is down-to-earth and positive during the interview. They talk about their achievements with pride and not arrogance.
• Consistency: Again, consistency with previous answers and resumes matters. If a candidate’s resume states that they have experience in Java and it turns out they don’t, it’s a red flag.

Video interviews: Shortening the distance

What happens if the candidates need to commute a long distance for the interview? Or if you need to quickly assess job applicants due to rapid scaling and it’s difficult to arrange on-site interviews? Then, you can easily invite them for a video interview. Video interviews have become widely popular these days as they are cost-effective and convenient both for candidates and interviewers.

Live video interviews: You log into a video call with the candidate in real-time and follow the same screening process as in the on-site interview. Make sure to give clear instructions to the candidates regarding the video call and what to expect to avoid confusion.

The same red flags that you’d look for in a face-to-face interview apply here, too. An extra red flag would be if the candidate was indifferent or seemed to do other things at the same time.

Recorded (or asynchronous) video interview: In this type of interview, the interviewer provides candidates a series of questions and asks them to record their answers. The interview doesn’t take place in real time and you can assess candidates’ answers along with your teammates at your convenience. Make sure that the questions you ask are clear enough and do not require explanation (although, it’d be good to give candidates details of a contact person they can reach out for questions, should they have any).

Also consider that candidates know the questions beforehand, so they shouldn’t seem unprepared or give unclear answers.

Background checks: Searching for more

You’re closer to making up your mind about your next hire, but wait: it’s time to look deeper into their background. Even though they have demonstrated consistent behavior and ability throughout the candidate screening process, it’s wise to conduct a background check to uncover issues that haven’t come up until now. Make sure to follow all the legal aspects of this process, respecting the candidates’ privacy and integrity. It’ll be wise to have a clear company policy in place to ensure compliance during this potentially sensitive stage.

You can order background checks for:

• Criminal history
• Driving records
• Credit reports
• Verification reports (e.g. identity, educational certifications)

Depending on the position, you can also examine other aspects, such as drug use history, during the selection process. In any case, inform the candidate about these checks and why you conduct them. Here’s a guide on choosing background check providers and how to spot red flags.

Another way to check the candidate’s background is through referrals. Typically, companies ask candidates to provide the names and contact details of two references. These references are usually past managers or supervisors. Ask questions to learn more about candidates’ previous job responsibilities that relate to the position you’re hiring for, how they dealt with complex and stressful situations and how well they work in a team.

Job trials: Challenging the finalists

During the job trials, the employer invites the candidates in-house to assess their skills on the spot for a few hours, or even a full working day (with payment). The finalists are challenged to complete certain tasks that represent key responsibilities of the role. Job trials are also a good way to assess how the candidate coordinates with the rest of the team and how they match the company culture. After the job trial, ask yourself these questions:

• Did they manage to complete the tasks? Did they face any difficulties and if yes, how did they react to them?
• How well did they collaborate with the rest of the team?
• Is the candidate the best fit for the role?

Remember: always value the candidate’s time during job trials and don’t take their availability for granted. Design the assignments in a way that does not wear them off or overly stresses them. Make them feel welcome and at ease and you will have higher chances to see the best version of themselves.

And the best candidate has shined through!

You have officially completed the selection process – good job! It’s definitely a long and challenging process but with good planning, it’s worthwhile.

In general, a good applicant tracking system (ATS) can help you manage these steps better, with automated resume screening tools, evaluation cards, etc. For example, Workable enables easier interview scheduling, effective communication with team members, and better evaluation through scorecards, among others.

Last but not least; now that you have finished screening applicants, it’s time to assess your own process. Go through each of the screening techniques you used and identify opportunities for improvement in your hiring process going forward.

The post Screening applicants: best methods and handy tips appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

HackerRank makes evaluating and interviewing developers easier, faster and fairer. And it does this on a global scale. It has 1,500 customers, has assessed over 20% of the developer population and shared over 21 million coding challenges. Combine that with Workable’s own set of stats—20,000 customers across 100+ countries, 75 million candidates, 1 million hires–and you’ve got one powerful hiring machine.

“This was a natural partnership for us to make,” says Rob Long, Workable’s VP of Partnerships. “Like us, HackerRank serves companies looking for the best tech talent around the world, from smaller startups to enterprise companies. And, like Workable, it also supports the tech community by making it easier for top developers to find the right jobs. Working together, we’re vastly improving the interviewing experience, not just for recruiters but for candidates too.”

Supporting recruiters and the developing community

When it comes to evaluation, what you assess is important but how you do it matters too. Providing a positive candidate experience is more likely to turn your favorite candidate into your next great hire. The good news? Integrating HackerRank with Workable makes technical hiring seamless for everyone. Recruiters can source, assess and track candidates on a single platform, while candidates experience a clear, consistent and considered end-to-end experience.

“We’re on a mission to match every developer to the right role, and improving the actual recruiting workflow is central to our goal,” says Josh Zaroor, HackerRank’s Head of Business Development.

Our customers have long loved Workable and the data it provides them. With this integration, we’re meeting widespread customer demand, simplifying the hiring funnel for everyone involved and bringing HackerRank’s powerful tech hiring solutions to Workable customers everywhere.

Three major wins for Workable customers

What’s in it for you? Integrating your Workable account with HackerRank delivers three game-changing benefits:

1. Seamless evaluation: From viewing, selecting and sending tests to managing assessments, results and feedback recruiters can do everything without leaving Workable’s ATS.
2. Data confidence: Centralizing all candidate information into one single source of truth, recruiters have fast and easy access to the latest data and can see at a glance the status of each application.
3. Faster, fairer hiring: Objective skills assessments eliminate bias, while also efficiently filtering out unqualified candidates. Time saved interviewing weak candidates can be reinvested into product development.

Ready to integrate with HackerRank?

It only takes a few minutes to set up and use HackerRank with Workable. Once activated you can add any of your HackerRank assessments to relevant pipeline stages and send the test from a candidate’s profile. When a candidate completes an assessment the results will appear on their Timeline and you’ll be notified. Got a question? We’re here to provide more info whenever you need it—just get in touch.

The post Grow stronger engineering teams with HackerRank and Workable appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

This deadline is for data on wages and hours from the 2017 and 2018 reporting periods. Employers that employed more than 100 employees during the 2017 and 2018 “workforce snapshot periods” need to submit component 2 for each reporting year and for all full-time and part-time employees. (Note: the “workforce snapshot period” is an employer-selected pay period between Oct.1 and Dec.31).

Contents:

• Recent history of EEO-1 component 2 data
• Component 2 vs. Component 1
• EEOC will not renew data collection

Any other employer (including federal contractors with fewer than 100 employees) isn’t obliged to submit component 2 data in their EEO-1 report.

Recent history of EEO-1 component 2 data

The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) had decided to ask employers to start submitting paydata for the 2017 EEO-1 reporting period on. However, that decision was then stayed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

In the beginning of 2019, that stay was in turn overruled by Judge Tanya Chutkan in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The EEOC was ordered to collect component 2 data after all.

Component 2 vs. Component 1

After paydata collection was ordered by Judge Chutkan, the EEO-1 report consisted of two components: component 1, or demographic data (employees broken down by gender, race/ethnicity, job category), and component 2, or paydata (employees’ W-2 income information broken down by gender, race/ethnicity, job category).

Employers needed to submit component 1 by May 30, 2019, while September 30, 2019 was set as the deadline for component 2.

EEOC will not renew data collection

Because of the Paper Reduction Act (PRA), the EEOC needs approval from OMB to continue collecting data in EEO-1 reports. While the EEOC decided to ask OMB to renew approval for component 1, it announced that they won’t submit a request for approval for component 2 data: “the EEOC is not seeking to renew Component 2 of the EEO-1”.

The court’s approval for Component 2 collection will expire no later than April 25, 2021. The stay of the OMB is now pending on appeal (National Women’s Law Center, et al. v. Office of Management and Budget, et al., Case No. 19-5130 (D.C. Cir.).)

None of these affect the upcoming deadline for component 2 data for 2017 and 2018. Covered employers are obliged to submit this data as instructed. But, it’s possible employers will not have to gather and submit component 2 paydata in the years to come.

The post What is component 2 data in EEO-1 report? appeared first on Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better.

Contents:

• What is diversity in the workplace?
• Diversity and discrimination
• What is diversity and inclusion?
• The importance of diversity in the workplace

To better understand and define diversity, we can think about it in a social context. For example, at work, you might interact with coworkers of different genders, age groups, faiths and so on. Likewise, at school, students may come from different socio-economic classes and have different personalities and physical abilities.

While the first things that come to mind when we talk about diversity are race and gender, there’s more than that. For a deeper analysis, you can refer to the breakdown of the different types of diversity.