Companies with a diverse team in the top quartile consistently outperform less diverse bottom quartile counterparts by 39%. Businesses with a 30% or higher representation of women (top quartile) have demonstrated continual financial outperformance over those with 30% or fewer female team members.
The studies on this theory from various sectors are unfluctuating. Ongoing research shows a growing trend of financial and productive advantages in companies with racially, ethnically, and gender-diverse workers.
What does this mean for your tech company?
The more inclusive your team is, the higher the likelihood you’ll achieve and maintain success.
It all begins with your diversity hiring process. In this blog, we’ll share what diversity hiring involves and how to incorporate it into your company as a recruiter or hiring manager.
What is Diversity Hiring, Anyway?
When you find the right person for a position, all the expenses and time spent searching are worthwhile.
However, an integral component of the hiring process has been missing for a long time: diversity. According to the above-mentioned McKinsey reports, companies who rank in the top quarter for racial, ethnic, and gender diversity also have at least a quarter more reflected in their financial returns.
This information has made those in the human resources departments of many large and small companies focus on diversity hiring, a strategic process in which candidates with various abilities and backgrounds are targeted by recruiters and those in hiring capacities.
What Diversity Hiring Looks Like
Diversity hiring is a method of using objective criteria to choose employees. It eliminates biases such as age, gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, and other potential differentiators, docked under a category called DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Under this type of hiring process, old recruiting strategies are integrated with the target of actively seeking out candidates from various backgrounds and ethnicities.
Recruiting candidates using a diverse talent pool involves setting up job postings and offers from a targeted pipeline to ensure each person — regardless of background or representation — has an equal chance at a successful interview.
This step allows a company to organically find diverse individuals with the best skills, building a DEI-centric workplace culture.
Benefits of Diverse Hiring
Diversified talent acquisition actively removes bias from each stage of the hiring process. That way, your company’s brand improves, and you also receive the benefits of a diverse workforce, including:
- Attracting and retaining top talent
- Increased innovation
- Achieving higher financial performance
- Utilizing the power of different perspectives
Companies with diverse teams build environments where it’s okay to share differing viewpoints, it’s safe to be unique, and your background and experiences help turn discussions into rich, innovative ideas.
Why is Diversity Essential in the Tech Industry?
The tech industry continues to expand, even as we stretch our knowledge into areas never seen before. Specialists in artificial intelligence, machine learning, renewable energy, cybersecurity, spatial computing, and many other tech sectors are in high demand.
Innovation is a crucial part of the tech industry, but it often takes people working together with various backgrounds and thought processes to produce new ideas.
Through diversity, more users and needs are addressed, which aids in marketing, product development, and bias elimination, particularly in algorithms.
When you connect DEI teams together, the benefits can be far-reaching. The sharing of unique perspectives and experiences, as well as the inclusion of open problem-solving, creates innovative solutions. These effects drive economic growth and give diverse companies a greater competitive advantage.
Yet, even with this knowledge, women and marginalized groups continue to remain underrepresented in the tech industry. Companies like Obsidi® actively connect those in these groups to:
- Networks of similar-minded people
- Resources to help them grow in their careers
- Employers looking for diverse workers
What You Should Know About Sourcing Diverse Talent
You might have heard the argument that hiring someone based on their diverse background is unethical or illegal. The fact is, there’s a fine line here.
Hiring someone solely based on race, gender, and other personal demographics is illegal. However, recruiting in diverse areas reduces this concern, permitting you to eliminate bias and offer jobs to underrepresented groups.
If you’re not careful, the lines could get blurred, and someone could claim “reverse discrimination.” Since it’s crucial to choose highly qualified and diverse workers without discriminating against anyone, you must know the hiring laws enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and include them in your diversity hiring strategy.
ADA
The ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) prohibits discrimination against anyone with a disability in all aspects of employment.
You can’t hire, fire, promote, pay, or offer different benefits to someone because of their disability, and you must provide accessibility within the workplace.
Equal Pay Act
This act prohibits gender-based discrimination, requiring employers to offer equal pay for equal work to all. This includes:
- Salary
- Bonuses
- Overtime pay
- Stock options
- Life insurance
- Any other perks or benefits of the job
It also stipulates that pay cannot be equalized by lowering the salary of one gender to make up for the income disparity. The income must be the same if the job descriptions are equitable for males and females.
Title VII
In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII protects anyone from race, sex, religion, or national origin employment discrimination. It also covers the prohibition of employment decisions because of stereotypes or assumptions about performance, abilities, or traits due to bias.
Job policies that exclude minorities for non-job-related functions fall under Title VII.
Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)
The ADEA of 1967 applies to anyone 40 or older and protects them from age-based discrimination. Job postings that use terms such as “young” or “college student” or require applicants to provide their age before a job is offered fall under this category.
Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA)
GINA prohibits discrimination in the workplace as well as healthcare coverage based on genetics. Title I of GINA protects workers from discrimination regarding genetic information in health coverage, and Title II covers discrimination in the workplace.
Employers and insurers cannot discriminate against workers based on family history, genetic tests, or family genetics. This does not apply to the military, life insurance, disability insurance, or long-term care insurance.
How to Establish Diversity Hiring Protocols
When you’re ready to bring diverse candidates into your team, it starts with your hiring protocols.
From the job description to the corporate culture, everything matters. Here, we’ll share a step-by-step explanation of how to establish these diversity hiring goals in your workplace.
Start With Your Job Descriptions
Does the job posting you’re sharing accidentally exclude any particular demographics? Check the language you’re using for words with a “hidden code” behind them.
For instance, terms like “aggressive” and “confident” are considered to be male-coded, while “collaborative” and “compassionate” are targeted to female candidates. Avoid using terms like “strong English language skills” to prevent losing non-native English speakers who may be highly talented in the skills you need.
Then, use an assortment of job boards to post your description, going beyond the basic recruitment efforts for candidate sourcing like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and social media. Learn where your preferred candidates are “hanging out,” and post your jobs there to get the most diverse groups for your job offers.
To find the best Blach tech talent, that location is clear: Obisidi® Recruit.
Include DEI in All Stages of Hiring
Candidates want to know that the company they’re applying for reflects their values. If they only see a homogenous group of people representing the organization throughout the hiring process, they’ll likely assume that the entire workforce looks the same way.
For that reason, your ideal candidate may turn down your offer, thinking that they won’t fit into the work atmosphere. Yet, if you provide a diverse range of people for each applicant to meet throughout the various hiring stages, they’ll see that your workplace values diversity.
Train Against Bias From the Top Down
What happens when your C-Suite or those in leadership positions use unconscious bias or unfair treatment?
The atmosphere they’re building reflects in the whole company’s culture. To prevent this, your hiring process must include fair protocols and bias awareness training from the top down. This education helps spread understanding about unfair hiring processes and ensures employees know that a diverse, inclusive work culture is the goal.
Create a Consistent Interview Process
Job seekers appreciate candor and rapport-building during the interview process. But beyond that, having structure increases your ability to separate fact from bias.
Create a consistent interview process to give each applicant the chance to receive a fair assessment. You can do this using a premade set of bias-free interview questions and a rubric to score responses.
If your company requires reference checks, you should conduct them for every candidate who reaches a predetermined threshold in the screening process.
Expand DEI Into the Company Atmosphere
Using diversity hiring processes guides you as you bring new, diverse teams into the workplace. However, keeping your teams happy and feeling secure expands into the company culture.
How you actively work to build an inclusive environment — giving each person the freedom to be themselves — determines overall employee satisfaction. Make diversity and inclusion a regular topic of conversation with educational trainings and informal and formal discussions.
Actively Avoid Bias
Education and training reduce bias and discrimination in the hiring process. But many people aren’t aware of their unconscious actions and words. While you’re setting up your hiring steps, look for the following frequently unconscious bias aspects:
- Confirmation – Drawing conclusions about someone based on your connection (or disconnection) to their desires, prejudices, or beliefs instead of merit
- Halo and Horns – Focusing on just the positive or negative aspects of a candidate rather than the whole picture. This may happen when a recruiter has a particular person earmarked for a job position and wants to corral them strongly into (or out of) an interview.
- Social – Social judgment is usually unconscious and happens when an interviewer or recruiter judges an applicant based on a particular dataset about them and preconceived notions about that dataset.
Diversity recruiting starts with the job description, but it continues to be part of the company culture and initiatives.
It’s easy to pretend to be diverse-centric to hire your ideal candidate, but they’ll see through that quickly if the work atmosphere doesn’t reflect those values.
Partner With Diversity Professionals
A focus on diversity will put you face-to-face with the struggles minority and underrepresented groups deal with. Consider those obstacles and include a solution for them in your hiring process.
Some of the top Black talents in tech use platforms like Obsidi®. Obsidi®’s robust pipeline of workers, mentors, supporters, and major employers creates mutual connections that overcome barriers and bring success to everyone involved in a tried-and-true inclusive hiring workflow.
Conclusion
For decades, the hiring process included referrals from people who knew people. But now, the recruitment process needs more than names, resumes, and hard skill sets.
Companies want to set up their work atmospheres for success, which means fostering workplace diversity. Demographics like race and sexual orientation are not only no longer an issue, but differences are encouraged.
