Inclusive hiring: The key to maximising diversity

Diversity needs to be considered from the very beginning of the employee life cycle if an inclusive workplace is to be maintained. Here are some ways to achieve this.

Inclusive job descriptions

The beginning of the employee life cycle includes posting the job advertisement. Avanti Search founder and chief executive Sabrina Houssami said this is where inclusivity must begin.

“Inclusive language immediately illustrates that you’re an inclusive workplace,” explained Ms Houssami.

“It allows the candidate or new hire to ‘see themselves’ reflected in the role because of language they can relate to – language that they feel applies to them as an individual. It removes the sense that the hirer is looking to hire same-same people into their team.”

Eliminating bias in interviewing

The second stage of the employee’s journey to being hired is the interview. Unconscious bias can play a deciding role in many decisions, which is why care must be taken to avoid falling victim.

“Play the Circle of Trust game to uncover unconscious bias. Ask your hiring managers or recruitment team to write down the six people closest to you (outside of family) in a column on the left-hand side of a page,” said Ms Houssami.

“Then read out diversity traits such as race, gender, language, accent, ethnicity, education, [and] religion, and ask participants to place a tick next to each of their ‘six’ who is similar to them in that trait. Participants usually discover that their trusted six display very little diversity. Their inner circle consists of people with backgrounds similar to their own, and therefore who they inherently ‘trust’ and want to hire out of a candidate pool may already be quite similar to themselves.”

Being flexible with the process can help promote diversity: “Offer flexibility within the interview process. Let candidates know you’re here to support any adjustments they need and that you can also make things happen outside of traditional work hours in the case of primary carers,” Ms Houssami outlined.

“Remove long assessments from your interview process (i.e., a two-to-three-hour pair programming test for software developers). It’s an inherent barrier to entry, as long assessments tend to favour those who are able to focus for long periods of time (i.e., candidates free of neurodiversity or secondary carers who don’t need to look after the kids during the day).”

Looking towards the future

Implementing change that will help businesses to thrive in the future of work should be of utmost importance.

The benefits of building a diverse workplace are entering discussions more and more, but despite this, the value is being missed by leaders. Getting ahead of the crowd will help businesses to outperform those who may be left behind.

Ms Houssami noted some ways to lead the charge: “Skills-based hiring is a very hot topic right now, especially as new types of jobs are being created, with little-to-no precedent for hard experience in that field. Hiring candidates based on their skill set rather than hard experience is likely to result in a more diverse pool being considered and therefore employed.”

“Skills-based hiring forces hirers to consider people who may not have been educated in a certain way or may not have been born into certain professions through their family or network.”

She concluded: “More emphasis on recording data from candidates (not just employees) to find out what they want and need so that leaders and recruiters can influence policy and culture.”