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5 Unconventional Strategies to Use When Hiring for Diversity

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If the last year taught us anything, it’s that we must re-examine any foregone conclusions we have about the workforce. The global pandemic, focus on racial inequity, and a looming “great resignation” are affecting every organization. As a result, organizations must now navigate talent strategies that will still advance their diversity agendas.

We are now collectively writing a new playbook for work. One of the most critical chapters will address how organizations can sustainably ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion—starting with recruiting. To drive change, we will need to break the mold of the way we recruit.

Certainly, unconventional times call for unconventional measures. The truth is that the systems in place led us to today’s lack of representation in the workforce. We need to reimagine our hiring strategies.

During the past couple of years, I worked with my team at Mathison to study the equitable hiring strategies of hundreds of employers and featured findings in my book, Hiring for Diversity. Mathison’s 2021 Diversity Hiring Study revealed that 62 percent of underrepresented job seekers observe bias in the hiring process. Twelve job-seekers communities –from people with disabilities to those formerly incarcerated—are all underrepresented in the workforce.

Here are five unconventional strategies for mobilizing your diversity recruiting. Each of these strategies is not only possible for any organization, but they also require no monetary investment.

1. Clarify what you mean by diversity—and be inclusive.

Research repeatedly shows that leaders have vastly different definitions of diversity. Many only acknowledge physical, visible aspects of diversity, which leave entire communities out. I recommend shifting your emphasis to underrepresented job-seeking communities and building awareness of each group across your organization. These groups include people you may not think of such as older and experienced workers, refugees, and immigrants. You may also include the LGBTQIA+ community, people with disabilities, veterans, and formerly incarcerated individuals. Don’t forget to solicit the Black, Hispanic, Latinx, Indigenous, and Native American communities. In addition, women, the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, and working parents also merit inclusion.

2. Empower your people to be aware and reach to underrepresented communities.

Your organization’s awareness of and advocacy for different communities really depends on each team member. Explore a more holistic definition of diversity as an organization. Then, prompt each team member to reflect on their personal awareness and have them reach out to each community. Mathison designed a free assessment that your team can leverage to visualize their reach and awareness of each community mentioned.

3. Institute an alignment meeting for every new role.

Much of the bias and inequity in hiring rests on existing job requirements and processes that everyone agrees to upfront. To ensure everyone concurs about the most accessible requirements, host a 15-minute alignment meeting with all hiring stakeholders. In this meeting, ensure that the job role is aligned with the most essential requirements. Also, secure the agreement of everyone as to the hiring process, and the role each will play. Doing so helps drive accessibility and consistency in the process and enables to get buy-in from everyone involved.

4. Send interview questions to job seekers in advance.

This idea might come as a surprise! But the purpose of interviews isn’t to catch job seekers off guard or to test their improvisation abilities. It is to see if they have the skills and experience needed to be successful on the job. Sending questions ahead lets job seekers come prepared, present their best selves, and feel empowered by and confident in the process.

5. Ask job seekers for their feedback on how to make the process more inclusive.

It doesn’t matter whether you extend an offer to a candidate or not, or if they accept or decline. This is the time to ask for feedback—to see where you can make your process more accessible and inclusive. Mathison’s research revealed that 67 percent of applicants reported completing an interview and never receiving feedback. This is a simple step that most employers never think to take. It is the best time to learn from job seekers what is missing—in the job description, hiring process, and more. Not to mention, the nature of asking this question signals that you are listening.

To sum up, these are just a fraction of the creative and unconventional ideas that make hiring for diversity more equitable and inclusive. In the new playbook for inclusive hiring, it requires us to stray from the norm and lead with empathy. There is so much more to discover. I, for one, am excited to see the growth of this new, human-centered list of ideas.

3 Ways to Improve Black Labor Market Outcomes

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The racial gaps that exist between White and Black Americans are astounding. From social injustices to economic disparities, Black Americans face significant challenges trying to thrive in life each day. Fortunately, we can all play a role in deconstructing racism, discrimination, and the many other injustices they face.

HR professionals, specifically, can create a welcoming and supportive work environment for Black Americans. This will contribute to a better economic state and encourage all Americans to appreciate differences and look at them as a benefit to our entire world.

Improving black labor market outcomes is highly dependent on our acknowledgment of their current state. Improvement is also dependent on a commitment by organizations to foster a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

First, let’s learn a bit about the economic state of Black America.

The Current Economic State of Black America

One of the most significant challenges impacting the current economic state of Black America is the pay gap.

“Today the median annual wage for Black workers is approximately 30 percent, or $10,000, lower than that of white workers,” according to Mckinsey Global Institute. “[It’s] a figure with enormous implications for household economic security, consumption, and the ability to build wealth. Black workers make up 12.9 percent of the US labor force today but earn only 9.6 percent of total US wages.”

In other words, Black people receive far less money than their white coworkers. Much of the wage gap centers around the manufacturing, financial services, construction, professional services, trade, transportation, and utilities industries.

The quality of education Black students receive also contributes to a complex economic landscape for Black America. They still don’t receive the same access to internships, mentorship programs, afterschool activities/clubs, and so forth, all of which contribute significantly to becoming financially independent as an adult.

Lower quality education, lack of personal and professional development resources, and accessibility issues also lead to underrepresentation in higher-paying industries. Although entrepreneurship is rising among Black Americans and, in turn, bettering representation rates in specific industries, there’s still a long way to go.

In light of this research on the current economic state of Black America, the U.S. must do many things to address and resolve these economic challenges wholly. All companies across all industries can start in their recruiting processes.

Three Actionable Tips for Employers to Better Address the Issues Black America Faces

Recruiting and hiring with diversity and inclusion at the forefront of your process creates a workplace environment that supports Black Americans.

Address the issues Black workers face by implementing the following:

Offer Personal and Professional Development Opportunities

Ensure that you offer personal and professional development opportunities specific to Black workers and share them in the recruiting process. They face particular challenges like racism and discrimination, which undoubtedly affect how they develop personally and professionally. So, ensuring they have allies to confide in and support systems that are mindful of their specific circumstances is beneficial.

For example, Black people only account for a small percentage of the STEM workforce. Therefore, HR professionals in tech companies could share professional development opportunities like internships and mentorship programs with Black candidates.

Set Up Employees for Financial Success

Black Americans struggle with managing debt. And that negatively affects their ability to save for the future and pursue next-level financial options like investing. So, resources that aid long-term wealth would be especially attractive to Black workers.

For example, if you don’t offer a 401(k) option for employees, there are other ways to contribute to their long-term wealth. Like encouraging them to take their retirement savings and investments into their own hands by opening an Individual Retirement Account.

Create an Inclusive Work Environment

To improve Black labor market outcomes in the long-term, you must create an inclusive work environment in your company. Start by eliminating any unconscious biases in the recruiting process. For example, not moving forward with specific applications because of names, location, or lack of educational background.

Then create an intentionally diverse workplace that respects individuals of all backgrounds, races, ethnicities, abilities, and so forth so that Black employees will stay long term by:

  • Drafting and implementing inclusivity policies
  • Reforming the recruitment process with methods that attract workers of all ages, cultural backgrounds, races, and abilities
  • Partaking in job fairs, career days, campus activities, and so forth in underrepresented communities
  • Designating someone as the resource for anything to do with diversity and inclusion
  • Making an effort to speak with each person in your workforce and gauge their commitment to diversity and inclusion

Ultimately, it will take time to improve black labor market outcomes. But you can begin to do your part by diversifying your company with the above tips.

Image by GaudiLab

How to Create an Inclusive Culture for Foreign Workers

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Businesses don’t tend to thrive in an echo chamber. In fact, precedent shows you need the contribution of multiple perspectives to inform processes, build a richer cultural environment, and inspire innovation. An inclusive culture combined with a diverse workforce — with representation at all levels, from entry to executive — is essential to success.

One of the ways to enable this is through an international workforce. Thankfully, we are living at a time where global contribution is more practical than ever. Whether you are participating in temporary placement drives, permanently hiring refugees, or operating a remote workforce from across the planet, there are tools and processes in place to help. However, one of the most important elements you need to ensure that you, your employees, and your customers enjoy the most positive experiences, is a robust culture of inclusion.

There are certainly ethical imperatives to enabling a generally more inclusive culture in your business. However, we’re going to focus specifically on how you should proceed from foreign workers’ perspectives. What policies and procedures should you include? What are some of the common challenges, and how can these be addressed?

Provide Support

Empathy is a crucial element when it comes to running any successful business. It is particularly vital when creating an inclusive culture for foreign workers.

You must take the time necessary to understand not just how they can be an asset to your business, but also the challenges that your international employees can face. As such, one of the elements you should make a cultural priority in your company is a robust support system — one that specifically targets foreign workers’ needs.

The legislative minefield that often accompanies the immigration system is one of the common issues foreign workers face. This process can be very complex, particularly in the U.S. So you should have protocols in place to provide assistance even before you have selected your candidate. To start, your human resources (HR) department should know what types of visas are most appropriate for the positions for which you’re hiring. For example, H1B visas are for specialist jobs, H2B for non-agricultural temporary workers, and L-1 if your employee transfers from a foreign branch of your global business. Where appropriate, discuss the process for visa sponsorship with the candidate and your procedures for guiding them through the process should they need assistance.

It may be that your foreign employees need access to additional resources. For instance, consider their need for linguistic assistance; a Pew Research study found that 47% of immigrants are proficient in English. Though merely being around native speakers all the time can help with the acquisition of the language, it can be wise to provide them with information on, and even subsidize, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses.

Encourage Connections

Creating an inclusive culture is not simply about focusing on what can be done to help your workforce’s foreign employees. It also requires attention to creating a positive environment for everybody involved, and empowering all workers to build supportive relationships together. Indeed, this lies at the heart of what it means to foster a truly diverse and inclusive workplace. One tip: Ensure workers from all backgrounds gain a genuine sense of belonging. Start by taking opportunities to celebrate the differences each contributes to the overall culture of your business.

Facilitating socialization is also a significant step here. Of course, it is essential that workers — foreign and domestic — recognize one another’s professional skills. But they should also learn to appreciate one another as humans. By organizing social events, you create the opportunity to gather your employees in a setting that is not affected by the pressure and expectations of the workplace. When workers can relax and have fun together, aspects of their personalities, their interests, and their diverse cultures will come to the fore in a way that is missing in the working environment. This level of familiarity allows employees to understand one another a little better. Over time, it forges stronger bonds of friendship that aid inclusivity.

Connection = Caring About What Matters Most

Building connections should also extend to understanding the issues and cultural practices important to your foreign workers. Whether they are physically in your U.S.-based office, or you are engaging freelancers around the world, get input from workers about what matters most to them:

  • What holidays do they celebrate?
  • What activities do they undertake in their spare time?
  • Which charitable or social causes do they support?

Make time to share in these, to discuss them. Celebrate their holidays and their variations on those already observed within the company. Consider including all staff involved in activism or fundraising for the issues your foreign workers feel are critical to them. Perhaps just as important, ask how you can help bring their customs and traditions into the workplace as their employer.

Utilize Tools

One of the advantages of living in a technological age? Businesses have access to many tools especially useful for ensuring that foreign workers don’t feel excluded. As part of your broader cultural inclusion planning, investigate how your company can implement these tools and technologies. Your goal: To support and integrate all employees.

Communications platforms are most important here, particularly when your workers are operating remotely from across the planet. Don’t just rely on a single contact method that native speakers may feel less confident in engaging with one-on-one. Ensure you have collaborative tools in place that provide opportunities for audio, video calls, and text-based chat. Slack and Microsoft Teams are among the most popular examples and integrate well with most project management processes.

It’s also worth providing access to translation and language learning software. After all, there may be times when language barriers lead to misunderstandings. When left unresolved, these simmering workplace conflicts can lead workers to feel distanced. Lingvist and Duolingo are relatively accessible language learning apps and are popular in helping gain linguistic confidence and fluency in a relatively short period. From a translation perspective, Linguee and MemoQ are both software platforms that allow documents and text to be converted into most languages while also using the context of phrases to enhance accuracy.

Bottom line: Want to build a culture of inclusion for foreign workers? Make even a small attempt to speak their language. And help ensure they speak yours.

Create Your Inclusive Culture

There are distinct business advantages to engaging foreign workers as part of your workforce, not to mention the ethical imperative to improve diversity. However, it’s vital to ensure that you make concerted efforts to encourage a culture of inclusion. Gain an understanding of what areas of support are most needed. Then enable deeper connections between staff members, and explore relevant tech tools.

Only then you can start to provide the best possible workplace for international and domestic workers alike.