5 Common Barriers to Diverse Hiring and Ways to Overcome Them!
You may have heard about a diverse workforce if you are a recruiter. Diversity and Inclusion have now become buzzwords that are ruling the corporate world. Many organizations have understood the importance of a diverse workforce. These companies are implementing different D&I initiatives to create a competitive workplace where everyone feels respected.
Employees now look for companies that promote diversity. It assures them that everyone will be respected regardless of their differences. Moreover, an expanded candidate pool will enhance your ability to fulfill future goals easily. When people of different ages, races, genders, and backgrounds work together, they bring different perspectives. With their innovative ideas, businesses can grow at a scale. So try to build a diverse workforce if you want to increase your business profitability. However, many organizations have expressed a strong commitment to D&I, but you must know that there may be roadblocks along the way. In this blog, we will discuss some ways to overcome common barriers to diverse hiring. But first of all, let’s talk about what the common barriers are. Overcome the following barriers and build a diverse workforce.
Common barriers to a diverse workforce
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Unconscious bias
Making decisions on pre-existing assumptions is human nature. We all have gone through situations where we have made certain decisions based on our assumptions. The same goes for the recruitment procedure. Unconscious biases are so common when hiring candidates, and it is one of the major barriers to creating a diverse culture. You can’t get the right candidates onboard if you are making biased decisions. Unconscious biases are mostly combined with affinity biases, where recruiters are aligned with candidates with the same background or experience as them. With biased decision-making, you can never create a diverse workforce.
To eliminate bias in recruiting, you must opt for video interview software. These modern tools have the capability to remove unconscious bias, and you can easily make data-driven decisions. Send pre-recorded interviews and evaluate candidates easily to make an informed decision.
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Speed pressure to hire faster
Speed is the top priority in most companies. Multiple surveys show that talent acquisition teams want to hire people as fast as possible. Time to fill open positions is one of the most critical metrics for hiring managers. Speed is the primary focus for both hiring managers and recruiters, but it will definitely slow down your process of creating a diverse workforce. Your diversity efforts can fail due to the underlying pressure of filling roles quickly. To foster diversity, you need to take your focus off the speed of your hiring.
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Hierarchical approach
Lack of meritocracy at senior levels is one of the major drawbacks of creating a diverse workforce. It simply means the same level of assessment processes for employees of all levels. Many organizations don’t use rigor in assessments for senior employees. These companies create the same tests for employees at the lower, middle, and higher levels. You can’t make a good judgment about candidates with these tests. This can break the diversity agenda of your company.
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Leadership skill gap
You need skills to establish and manage diverse teams. Leaders don’t have the kind of understanding or skills to create a diverse workforce. They are neither fully trained nor equipped to manage the diverse team. Companies need to offer Diversity & Inclusion training programs to all leaders to capitalize on the diversity dividend. When leaders have the appropriate skills to create a diverse workforce, it becomes easy to manage diverse teams.
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Quotas to promote diversity
Many companies follow the tick-box approach to promote diversity, which rarely works. This simply means that these companies have policies where there is a specific quota to foster diversity. With this approach, they can get better diversity numbers, but it doesn’t help with drivers of belonging and inclusion. Quotas tend to force interventions, which is not very good for your Diversity & Inclusion goals.
All these are the common challenges in hiring diverse candidates. To overcome these barriers, you need to apply some needed steps. To ensure that all members of your team feel involved, consider the following steps.
How to overcome these common challenges?
If you want to ensure that more diverse candidates walk through your company’s doors, then check out these couple of suggestions.
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Have an honest conversation with the team.
To overcome these challenges, you must lead an honest discussion with your entire hiring team. Ask them if they are having trouble filling the open positions or if they have any suggestions regarding the hiring process. An honest discussion with your team will help to overcome many challenges. Tell them that their focus should be on spotting potential candidates rather than speed. They must make strategies accordingly.
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Be deliberate and intentional.
HR professionals should be deliberate and intentional. They should know that nothing happens by luck. Be deliberate and shape the agenda for Diversity & Inclusion with your goals. Leaders should create important strategies to promote diverse hiring, and all team members should follow them.
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Focus on quality and diversity instead of the time-to-fill factor.
Many Hr professionals try to fill their open positions as fast as possible, resulting in losing the best candidates for the job. Identify important metrics and diversity goals to hire more and more diverse candidates in your organization. Talk to your team about the values of your company and how you measure success. They should know that the time to fill is not the primary concern. Instead of speed, your hiring team should emphasize diversity and quality.
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Find the right leaders.
Look for leaders who have the capability to drive the Diversity & Inclusion agenda. Empower those leaders as they will lead with resilience. Hire people who are willing to convert a regular business to a diverse business. With this, companies can easily foster a diverse workforce, which will take them to another level. The wrong leader can really impede the progress of the business.
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Focus on the big picture rather than role requirements
Instead of focusing on the little details of the job requirements, you must focus on the overall mission. These little details can make candidates self-select as not a perfect fit for the job. Connect with candidates’ passion for getting a more genuine response to your job opening. This doesn’t mean that you have to choose unqualified candidates for the job. But many times, a degree is listed as a requirement when it is not really needed. You should be open to people with requisite skills rather than a degree.
With all these steps, you can easily overcome challenges to diverse hiring. Build a diverse workforce, and enhance your productivity.
Summing it up
Diverse hiring is more important than ever to ensure maximum profit. By empowering the diversity of people and cultivating an inclusive culture, companies can lay the foundation to thrive. Companies that successfully deal with Diversity & Inclusion create a path to success both in terms of overall profitability and customer satisfaction. Moreover, individuals seek companies that value them and respect them. But creating a diverse workforce is not a simple task; you may face various challenges in hiring diverse candidates. Implement the necessary steps, and overcome these common barriers at ease.
