5 Tactics to Increase Workplace Diversity

I was on the train heading into the city the other day and couldn’t help but look around me at the diversity on the train – people from many different nationalities, speaking many different languages, heading off to different jobs with different skills. It got me thinking about how companies attract and market to diverse candidates.

I looked at 20 different websites and found a wide range of approaches that all had one thing in common; they had diversity information on their career site. Some of it was great, some of it was just so-so, but none of it would reach candidates who bypassed the company’s career site because they found a job on a board or aggregator.

Candidates don’t know about your great diversity programs if they never read about them. They don’t know if they’re going to be a fit with the culture at your company if you don’t get the chance to tell them.

What can you do? Actually a lot. Here are five simple steps you can take to increase your reach into the marketplace.

1. Go social – make sure you’re sharing anything related to diversity through your social channels.
2. Be authentic – if you have great diversity programs, do your employees know about them, support them, and champion them? If not, begin to educate your staff or you risk being inauthentic in the marketplace.
3. Add a diversity header / footer paragraph to your job descriptions – something that goes beyond an EEOC or accessibility statement.
4. Pepper your job descriptions with diversity language i.e., “You’ll be part of a team that celebrates and embraces diversity daily from religious holidays to pride week…”
5. If you don’t have a meaningful diversity program, get one. Diversity matters and can improve your bottom line. A study by Bersin found that diverse companies had 2.3 times higher cash flow per employee.

Bonus!

6. Use a Talent Relationship Marketing (TRM) platform like Phenom People to show off your diversity programs on your career site. With Phenom, regardless of where a candidate finds your job, they’ll land on your career site.

Look around your office. Do you have a diverse set of talent with different backgrounds who can bring innovation and creativity to your business strategy?