How to achieve workplace diversity

Diversity and inclusion have long been on the workplace agenda, yet many employers still come up short in their efforts. Is it time to re-engineer the broadest component of the talent funnel: the recruitment process?

It’s often said that leaders who manage diversity well manage their companies well. If that’s the case, there are a lot of poorly managed companies out there.

Achieving a diverse and inclusive workplace is often presented in terms of a journey. Along the way there will be major steps forward, a few steps back, times when the debate loses momentum and other times when it becomes a hot topic.

Right now, diversity is hot. Google hit the headlines in June when it released statistics on the diversity of its workforce. Despite efforts to the contrary, the company has struggled to diversify its workforce in a sector traditionally dominated by white males. A disheartening 70 per cent of its total workers are male, and 61 per cent are white.

Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter soon followed suit with their results, all showing distinctly homogenous workforce compositions.

There is obviously a long way to go on this journey.

The Australian story

According to Viren Thakrar, regional research, development and innovation manager at global recruitment agency Hudson, it will take 284 years at the current rate of change in Australia to achieve gender equality at senior levels.

While gender diversity captures the headlines – simply because the number of people it impacts is so vast – mature-age workers are also misrepresented and discriminated against in the corporate world. In fact, one in 10 business operators surveyed for an Australian Human Rights Commission report in 2013 admitted they will not recruit people over 50.

There are similar discouraging results for people of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. One study shows that while 9.3 per cent of the Australian labour force is from an Asian background, only 4.9 per cent advance to senior executive level. And only 1.9 per cent of ASX 200 company executives have Asian cultural origins.

People with disabilities, LGBTI employees and Indigenous Australians also report ongoing discrimination at work.

Recruiting diverse talent

There are relatively easy steps organisations can take to improve the diversity of their work teams. The critical first step is to be aware of unconscious bias. We all hold bias, whether we are aware of it or not, and this bias can significantly impact our decision-making ability.

“People like to think they make decisions rationally, based on logic, yet unconscious bias affects everybody, and it can impact the selection process,” says Thakrar.

Bias can be combated by a range of measures:

1. 1.Use different data sets

Thakrar refers to ‘data triangulation’.

“Just as you would read reviews online, do a test drive and ask others who have made a similar purchase before buying a car, use different data from different stages of the recruitment process. The interview itself, assessment centres and psychometrics and reference checks should all be drawn upon.”

2. 2.Use a recruitment panel

“Consider having a diverse expert panel of people trained in objective assessment. The panel’s role is to challenge the hiring manager’s decision-making process.”

3. 3.Embrace standardisation and scoring

“Firstly, determine criteria that’s important for the role, then score people against that criteria. Your scores should be able to articulate why, if you’re using a 1–5 scale, someone gets a 3 instead of a 4. This provides clarity around why you are progressing someone or not.”

4. 4.Take a ‘holistic lens’ approach

It’s not just about getting diverse people into the organisation, but keeping them engaged throughout the employee life cycle.

“Employers should be thinking of what will benefit everyone, such as flexible work arrangements, instead of focusing on one group over another.”

Build the business case

The old maxim “what gets measured gets managed” holds true with diversity initiatives. Thakrar suggests building a business case around diversity and tying it specifically to what is important to business leaders.

“When you look at what CEOs are most concerned about, one of them is the leadership pipeline – where will future leaders come from? From there, ask yourself the question: how can we increase the talent pool and build a pipeline that reflects the broader society we live in?”