Workplace diversity is one of the topmost priority for employers as diversity reduce the potential biases in sourcing, screening and shortlisting. Many types of research have been done and each concluded that diverse hiring can reduce biases based on age, race, gender, or religion that are unrelated to work.
Volar Media House, a renowned digital agency organization based in Pune believes in diverse hiring and conducts a diversity hiring audit on the current hiring process. They pick one metric to improve diversity hiring. They show workplace diversity by offering workplace flexibility. Not only do they offer work from home options and flexible work hours but also use pre-hire personality assessment that is racially diverse.
There are few ways more to attract diverse candidates
1. Internships or scholarships: Offering internships or scholarships to. underrepresented groups. Ask minority organizations or colleges to help in promoting internships and scholarships among their members.
2. More diverse job descriptions
Instead of going for the “equal employer” phrase, find creative ways to encourage diverse candidates to apply for the job. Create a diverse pipeline to source women candidates.
3. Diverse referrals
Offer referral bonuses to employees who recommended candidates. More points to those if the candidates are from underrepresented groups.
4. Organize diversity training
Teach recruiters to avoid biases during training and be more sensitive to diversity issues. This training enables teams to learn, recognize and fairly evaluate them.
5. Diverse interview panel
A diverse interview panel reduces the chances of biases leading to the hiring of more diverse candidates. A diverse interview panel also helps to choose candidates from underrepresented groups.
Diversity Hiring in India
In India, senior managers and decision-makers are focusing more on retaining staff from different genders or socio-economic backgrounds to relate to and retain a wide range of diverse customers. Now they are preferring teams with different educational tracks and using tools and processes to decrease built-in biases. For skill development, accessible platforms are enabled for women looking for avenues to bridge the gap of employability.