Inclusive Hiring: Everything You Need To Know

Hiring managers make every effort today to make a diverse workforce. The entire team of hiring managers fully focus on creating an environment that’s modern & engages all employees actively. 

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To enforce inclusion in workplace, it’s most important to embrace representation of all cultures and foster a healthy working space. 

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Like the U.S, many companies in the UK has opted for a sustainable choice in focusing on inclusion in the workplace. Companies are instituting quotas based on disability, gender, and a whole lot of criterias. 

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In knowing what inclusion means, we must delve a little into what ‘diversity’ really means. Broadly, there are two types of diversity. 

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Inherent diversity includes qualities like gender, race, age while beliefs, experience, skills, education are all part of acquired diversity. 

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What is workplace diversity?

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Workplace diversity is a phrase quite commonly associated with a company that accepts, understands, and values individuals from different ethnicities, genders, races, religions, knowledge, experiences, and more. 

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Why is diversity and inclusion hiring important?

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A company that has the values of diversity and inclusion is sure to benefit. How? Well, we can tell you that such values help companies hire better talents, improve performance, accelerate creativity, and make better business decisions. 

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How to ensure inclusive hiring in the workplace?

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Consider this to be a tutorial as to how inclusive hiring can be carried out within the organization. The hiring teams get a fair understanding of what all to do when they are trying to bring in a new team member. Critical considerations will include diversity and inclusion at each stage. 

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1. Get rid of bias from job advertisements

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Including diversity and inclusion in recruitment is a good way to look forward—if a company really wants to level up. Take a look at the recruitment process in place and assess the recruitment pipeline to identify loopholes. Such an assessment will give a better idea of the implementations that improve the status of diversity and inclusion. 

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Shifting away from the age-old style of posting job advertisements with specific requirements on the basis of gender—discouraging few groups from applying. 

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2. Keeping an open mind to all talent pools

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Now, recruiters have a lot more options to hire candidates from various talent pools. Diversify recruitment pool with the help of sourcing pools. 

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The best way to hire today is to move beyond the traditional hiring methods and exploring more options such as government agencies, educational institutions, rehabilitation centers, and more. This way you can hire diversified candidates from various sources. 

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3. Ask employees to keep note of their network

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To hire people from under-represented groups, you can try asking any of the team members you might have already. Referrals or recommendations from current employees is a great way to find candidates that you want to hire. 

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Recommendations help you to know the candidate better—the existing pool of candidates tell you how these candidates are or how well they fit in your organization.

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4. Offering internships targeted for specific groups

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By offering internship opportunities to individuals from a specific group can be a terrific approach! Collaborate with community organizations and educational institutions to support them to apply for roles they aspire to work for!

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5. Create a brand that preaches diversity

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While creating a brand identity, do not overlook to include the values of inclusion and diversity. Ask your employees to share their experiences of working with your organization. Employees from various backgrounds can be the voice for those who are willing to work for your organization!

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Stories & experiences from employees act as a great recruiting branding—pushing the individuals into applicant sourcing. Including diversity is definitely an effective recruiting strategy.

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6. Step up to the concept of blind recruitment

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Today, the industry is driven by a popular method called blind recruitment. This is quite effective because as per the method, essential information such as name, education, age, etc. are removed during the first stage of recruitment—to ensure bias-less judgement. 

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When recruiters do not get the basic information or get to see the candidates—they can qualify candidates to the next solely on the basis of talent. 

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Takeaways 

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Give proper thought to the factors that you consider while making hiring decisions. When you picture your ideal candidates, make sure they carry the values same as yours as an organization. The ideal fit is always going to align with your company values!

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For every part of the interview process, analyse your screening process to know whether your hiring process is biased towards some people or not. Know what you want from your candidates and implement actions based on the principles of diversity.

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