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Diversity Recruitng

Strategies To Improve Your Workplace Diversity

William Wong, June 2019

Achieving greater diversity in the workforce may have started as a noble and perhaps compliance-related goal, but it is now sought after for it's very tangible boost to a company's competitive advantage.

Reports are coming in from all sides confirming that a diversified workforce is a productive, innovative and creative workforce.

"Companies that embrace diversity and inclusion in all aspects of their business statistically outperform their peers." - Josh Bersin

So the question is not on why we should have it, but rather how do we go about developing a hiring strategy that has diversity in mind, doesn't alienate anyone and is still merit based?

McKinsey’s research shows that gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform their peers and ethnically-diverse companies are 35% more likely to do the same.
Catalyst research shows that companies with more women on the board statistically outperform their peers over a long period of time.
Deloitte Australia research shows that inclusive teams outperform their peers by 80% in team-based assessments.

A Holistic View

The first step is to arm yourself with a better understanding of what it means to be "diverse". If you asked this question a decade ago, the typical response would have centered around race.

Now, we've come to realize what makes us unique goes beyond color lines and spans across gender, age, experience, religion, sexual orientation (LGBTQIA+), gender identity and expression, disabilities (seen and unseen), veteran status, socioeconomic levels, educational experiences, skillsets, neurodiversity, etc. This is the type of diversity we aspire to obtain.

Goal of Diversity Recruiting

Contrary to some beliefs, diversity recruiting is still merit-based. It doesn't give preferential treatment to specific groups for the sake of diversity. The top goal remains on finding the best possible candidate, we just make sure that it's a process that's free from biases for or against any individual or groups of candidates.

Roadmap to Diversity & Inclusion

The key to a successful strategy involves a 3 prong approach that requires each to play their own part. A diversity recruitment plan does not begin and end within talent acquisition. It needs to start at the top of the organization and flows thru every single employee. Training is a crucial element in this equation - anyone that is involved in the hiring process (not just Hiring Managers) should be coached on how to reduce bias. The last and final piece is to implement diversity sourcing tactics and seed underrepresented groups into the pipeline.

[ 1 ] Corporate Responsibilities

State of D&I Initiatives

Diversity and Inclusion has been the talk of the town for the last several years. Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft led the charge in 2014 by releasing their first diversity reports - revealing a workforce that was predominately white and Asian men. Leaders began making D&I a priority, with Tim Cook even promising Apple would be "as innovative in advancing diversity as we are in developing products."

Unfortunately, like most trends, they tend to exit the gates hot but quickly fizzle out of steam. There is a huge disparity between what companies hope to achieve in this space and the reality of their efforts. Critics like to point out that despite having millions poured into tackling the problem, there has been very little change.

Critics say Google and Microsoft's black and Hispanic workforce rose by less than a percentage point if you compared their 2019 and 2014 numbers. They like to point out that Apple's black technical workers remained unchanged at 6% when there are 13% of blacks in the US population.

But you know the adage about statistics "There are three types of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics." On the surface, these numbers report very little change, but if you consider that these companies have doubled and in some cases quadrupled it's headcount since 2014, you'll quickly realize the D&I team has been working their butts off (to maintain their numbers, they would've had to hire a much larger diverse workforce). Take Facebook for example, who had 6,818 employees in 2014 and 2% of those were black (~136). In June 2019, Facebook had 39,651 employees and 3.8% black, which comes out to 1,506.

Diversity efforts are also hampered by social and population issues. If you look at Apple's ~80k employees in the US, California holds the highest concentration of technical employees (Austin, TX comes second). The 2018 census pegs CA with 6.5% black and Austin with 7.62%. So yes, while there are 13% blacks in the entire US, there just isn't that many in the areas that Apple hires tech workers. Couple this with the fact that only 9% of college students graduating with a CS degree was black and you've got a major issue of supply and demand. Temporary fix is to relocate black workers into C/Austin or allow them to work from home. Long term wise, you just need to grow them. The industry has been pouring money into programs to encourage underrepresented groups into tech. And it shows - Apple said in 2019 their most diverse group is under 30 years old. This group currently represents a third of the total workforce and continues to grow.

So while there is much the industry can do and should do (especially in the retention space), I think it's important to note that it hasn't been all bad, that it works and i'm confident that it will get even better. If we constantly think D&I efforts are ineffective and a waste of money, then we're only adding fuel to the fire on a self-fulfilling prophecy to fail.

Roadmap to Diversity & Inclusion

When it comes to achieving diversity in the workplace, the burden typically falls squarely on the shoulders of staffing professionals. "Not meeting your diversity goals? Blame the Recruiter."

Despite the general consensus, a diversity recruitment plan does not begin and end with talent acquisition. A D&I initiative needs to start at the top of the organization and executed thru the actions of every single employee. Training is a crucial element in this equation, and anyone that is involved in the hiring process (not just Hiring Managers) should be coached on how to reduce bias.

Only once those two components are met can the talent acquisition team implement diversity sourcing tactics to seed underrepresented groups into the pipeline. Details of this 3 prong approach is described below.

Corporate Responsibilities

The benefits of diversity in the workplace are staggering. Even if a fraction of what's being reported is accurate, it's still more than enough to make anyone realize Diversity & Inclusion is not an HR issue, it's a business issue. It needs to be elevated to the top, with the focus and strategy created at the CEO/COO/CHRO level, and a top executive assigned as a champion and tasked with leading and sponsoring the program. This is a crucial step in the process and will kick start a plethora of goods to make your life in talent acquisition easier.

[ 1 ] Inclusion and Equity Program. The I and E plays a very important part in our efforts to increase diversity numbers. While the Talent Acquisition team is responsible for injecting more diverse folks into the workforce, we require a strong Inclusion and Equity program to keep them there. If not, then the TA team is just a bunch of replacers instead of recruiters. There needs to be a comprehensive program in place to make sure everyone feels safe, encourages an environment where team members respect and support each other, and folks are getting a fair shot at promotions. In 2018, Google took it one step further and along with the diversity report, they released their attrition data. These numbers showed black and Hispanic employees quitting at a much higher than that other groups. Having concrete data in hand, they created a new role called Retention Case Managers to help underrepresented groups feel safe, have a voice and connected. You don't need to have deep pockets like Google to take a stance, your leaders just needs to realize equity and inclusion must play substantial roles in their efforts to retain talent.

[ 2 ] Beef up your diversity branding. How is the company being portrayed to the outside world? Does your website have a section dedicated to diversity, with pictures and/or awards? Are your social media channels expressing this as well? It could be something as simple as pictures on glassdoor. The important takeaway here is how your company is making an impression on people.

[ 3 ] Consider offering a flexible schedule. Research have found one of the main reason why people leave their job is because of a long commute. Stack that up with the fact that diverse neighborhoods are typically further away from downtown/expensive part of town and you've got yourself a strong correlation. By offering solutions like shuttles or flex schedules, you're dramatically increasing your odds of hiring and retaining diverse employees. Want to attract more females? Then consider this - according to the institute on aging, more than 75% of caregivers are female and they spend as much as 50% more time providing care than males. This number grows even higher when it comes to caring for children. If you want to incentivize women to work for you then offer up a flex schedule and don't punish them for taking it.

[ 4 ] Don't just say you love diversity, embrace it! Celebrate international holidays and allow your staff to take time off for community activities.

Gauging Corporate Dedication

Now that we've covered how important it is for the company to take a stance on Diversity, let's try to figure out how much skin your company has in the game. Below are some questions I've gathered via the web, from co-workers and experts in the field.

Has your C-suite formally committed to tackling Diversity in the workforce? Who is the D/I champion?
Does your company have a diversity mission statement?
Does your company have a code of conduct and non-discrimination policy that is highly visible and promoted? Who receives/conducts training/refreshers on this and how often?
Does the company have any employee resource groups or affinity groups? Are there any formal mentoring/sponsorship programs?
What safeguards are in place to make sure promotions are free of bias?
Is there a flexible work option?
How frequently does underrepresented talent get promoted compared to their white/male/cisgender/heterosexual counterparts?
Is there pay equality? How much do underrepresented employees get compensated compared to the majority counterparts that that hold similar roles?
Does your benefits take into consideration for underrepresented groups (e.g coverage for domestic partners, health care plans for transgender, etc.)
Does your company/team celebrate more holidays that focus on women, minorities and cultures around the world (e.g. Gay Pride Week, International Women's Day, Black History Month, etc.). Are employees allowed to take their religious/cultural holidays?
Are social events inclusive? Happy hours are great but would alienate parents, caretakers, non-drinkers, etc. Does the company change up social events to include everyone?
Does the company have inclusive restrooms? Do gender restrooms have signs that point to the gender neutral ones?
Do employees use their pronouns in email signatures? Does the company provide training on respecting someone's pronouns?

Training / Awareness / Engagement

OK, now that we have the Execs on board and the company is doing their part in our D/I efforts, our next stop is to tackle the workforce itself. There is quite a bit of misconceptions on diversity recruiting and this leads to poor adoption. First we share with the team on the benefits on a diverse workforce and then educate them on what Diversity Recruiting really means. Once the team is on-board, we'll train them on what unconscious bias is and how to reduce them in an interview process.

[ 1 ] Training: Benefits and Definition of Diversity Recruitment. A clear messaging on the importance of diversity should have already been delivered on the corporate level. Next step is to follow that up with training for anyone who'll be part of the interview panel. I recommend a revolving training session that managers/employees attend but if that is not possible, then create an ad hoc session for each hiring team. These training should be conducted in a small group setting to encourage interactions/discussions. Your job as the TA leader is to ask questions and act as the facilitator. You want to encourage discussion and allow the the audience to come up with the answers instead of a pure lecture. I often play the devils advocate by bringing up opposing viewpoints or topics too taboo for others to mention.

I often start off asking the question "What is a diverse workforce and why is everyone talking about it?" This allows people to chime in and provide their thoughts of what a diverse workforce looks like and why they think it is (or not) important. Follow up with factual info on benefits. This first part of the session is to win their hearts - cause if they don't see a value in a diverse workforce, they definitely won't embrace a recruitment strategy to obtain it.

Then I ask "What is diversity recruiting?" Again, I let them have the room to discuss and call on individuals for more engagement. There is quite a bit of misconception surrounding diversity recruiting and this is where I provide clarification. Here are the usual suspects:

Lowers the Bar: People often think diversity hiring lowers the bar and will become frustrated on why we're doing it. Take this opportunity to clear it up - that Diversity Recruiting is still about hiring the best person for the job, and it doesn't exclude or is anti non-minority talent. All we're trying to do is make sure everyone has an equal chance by eliminating any procedures and biases that may have kept the best and most qualified talent from being hired.

Diversity Recruiting is actually more merit-based than people give credit for - it opens up your talent pool and raises the bar by encouraging a greater amount of talent to be seen by the team.

Feelings of Being Threaten: This is a symptom that could be exhibited by what ever group is the majority in an organization (often white, cisgender, heterosexual men). They sometimes see themselves as being on the wrong side of what the company is trying to do, and that the company is trying to exclude them. Ensure them that there is no wrong side to diversity and that it works both ways.

For example, before we start a search, we always take a look at the demographics of the group and think what's missing. If the group consisted predominately Asian females, then white men would be part of our diversity search. Diversity recruiting is about looking to balance out whatever is missing. Also make a point to ensure them that they matter, because they're part of the melting pot.

Tried It Before, Nothing Happens or It's Too Hard: This sort of diversity fatigue often comes from ones that truly championed the idea in the past but saw very little progress/outcome. They were simply burned out. Praise these individuals for their efforts and reassure them that progress takes time because it requires tremendous work to dismantle the years of implicit biases and ingrained perceptions that everyone carries with them. D&I is a long game and it's OK to feel discouraged but you need to stay in the fight. Just know that you're helping regardless of what the numbers say.

Speaking of numbers, to help with this type of diversity fatigue, make sure you set realistic expectations or else it will only demoralize everyone involved. Make sure to celebrate the small successes.

[ 2 ] Training: How to Reduce Bias. The objective of this section is to provide awareness training. The hiring process can be bias and unfair. Unconscious racism, ageism and sexism will alter which candidate receives an interview, determine how a candidate performs during that interview and ultimately which candidate gets selected for the role. This step will help unravel unconscious bias by directly talking about it. It allows the team to understand what hiring prejudices are, how to avoid them, and hopefully identify their own. Facebook offers a really good training program on this. Our goal is to make sure the interview process is as free from bias as possible. After training the team on unconscious bias, we go thru the following:

Standardization. Identify the factors that will have a direct impact on the performance of the role. Create a uniform set of questions ahead of time for each. Then use an interview scorecard to grade their responses to each question on a predetermined scale. This way we're being objective about the skillset of the person vs their likability.

Rework Job Requirements. An HP internal report showed men apply for jobs they are 60% qualified for while women apply only if they meet 100%. A gender insight report from LinkedIn showed women are 16% less likely than men to apply to a job after viewing it, and they apply to 20% fewer jobs than men. With these staggering numbers in mind, a Recruiter you should always review the job description with the manager to re-evaluate if certain skillsets or years of experience is necessary for the job.

For example, do you really need 5 years of React or can someone do the job with just 2? How about an alternative? I know Angular is in the opposite camp, but would that work? Or better yet, how important is any of this to the job? What if front-end dev is only 5% of the job. In this case I would recommend the HM set it as a preferred vs required. The key is always ask if we can reduce or remove skillsets.

Scrub-a-dub-dub. At the sourcing stage, scrub the resume to remove as much bias as possible before presenting it to the hiring panel. This includes DOB, years attended school or graduated from school, personal info, street address, etc. When it comes to STEM positions, studies have shown hiring managers (whether male or female), rated male candidates more favorable than female candidates. When possible, consider deleting the name or use initials to remove gender out of the equation. This tactic also helps remove any bias toward race. *This only works if you have direct access to the hiring manager and isn't effective or possible if you're subbing into a VMS or operating thru an MSP.

Interview Availability. When it comes to scheduling interviews, the onus is often on the candidate to conform to the interviewer's schedule. "Can't make the provided times, then too bad, they're moving on to others." We all have busy schedules and projects to deliver, but be as accommodating as possible when it comes to scheduling interviews if you want to bring in folks who may be working several jobs or supporting their families.

Audit Job Ads. Studies on job postings found females gravitating away from roles with masculine-type words like "ambitious" and "dominate." Are some of the language you're using in the ads more geared toward a specific demographic of experience level? Consider altering your ads to make sure it speaks to a broader range of candidates. Use this tool to audit your ads.

Rethink Schools. When it comes to education, a lot of preference is given to those that graduated from a top tier school. Ivy leagues are all the rage, with state schools at the bottom. Although education matters, how a person relates to customers, employees and others is more important than his/her school of choice. A school is just a starting point and not the end all solution. When it comes to diversity, a lot of URGs don't have access to these top tier schools. For example, Harvard has a huge gap in their ethnic diversity. Their enrollment consists of 40% white with the 2nd highest % at 14, which goes to Asians. Cornell has a 39% white population. Princeton has 39% white and 29% Asian. MIT has 34% white and 25% Asians. If you're looking to increase blacks and latinx, then consider HBCUs and HSI. But this means you need to educate your managers on not focusing purely on popular schools.

I recently rescoped the definition of "Top Tier Schools" from Ivy Leagues to any college or university that has a 4 year degree. The team couldn't be more happier with their results.

Talent Acquisition

Alright everything is all queued up for TA to finally play ball. But before you start crafting any diversity strategies, consider looking at your sourcing and hiring data to ask "why" and ask it often. Do the KPIs make sense? Are they realistic? Why are certain hiring KPIs not being met? Is there truly a lack of demographic makeup of certain roles? How does the retention numbers look for underrepresented talent and are certain teams having more difficulty than others? You can obtain many of these questions from exit interviews, candidate interview debriefs and from underrepresented talent that's still with you - so are you? Routinely revisit these questions to gauge for change and craft a new plan. Rinse & repeat.

Demographic Survey. Take a snapshot of your organization's last 10 years to see where things stand. You never want to start on any diversity searches until you understand what you're lacking and where. You can nab this info from HR's EEOC data and see if you can sort them out by gender, race, age, department, role and seniority level. If you have data on the rest of the items we search for in diversity that would be great, but it's very difficult to obtain (so your data will be inaccurate). See where everything stacks up.

For example, maybe your company has a split of 50/50 male to female, but find all of your female employees are in sales and marketing while males dominate leadership and engineering roles. So on the surface everything looks great when it really isn't. Cool part about having this data? You now have a baseline to work off of. If the needle moves in the correct direction, then that's a reason to celebrate. If not, then go back to the drawing board and keep asking the "whys".

KPIs. Work with your leadership team to come up with high level diversity goals, then translate those into bottom-of-the-funnel KPIs. Let's use the above scenario where we're lacking females in engineering and leadership roles. A bottom of the funnel goal could be to increase the number of female engineers by 15% and females in leadership roles by 5% within 2 quarters. Once we have this directive in hand, the TA team can create their top-of-the-funnel metrics to ensure the diversity goals are met.

An example could be to seed 50% females into initial tech screens and at least 2 females into onsite interviews for leadership roles. You can get creative with what the actual KPIs look like, but make sure they are realistic. One thing to avoid is quota hiring where you create a KPI that mandates 100 female hires per quarter. Not only is that illegal (EEOC prohibits us from discriminating base on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or protected Veteran status - although I would throw in age as well), but the point of diversity hiring is to discriminate only on KSA but give URGs a fighting chance.

Dedicated Diversity Teams. I'm starting to see dedicated teams pop up and I think it's a wonderful idea. In a traditional setting, TA has diversity in mind, but their main focus is to fill the role as fast as they can, with the best possible candidate. This becomes extremely hard with niche positions. So while the intentions are good, the needle doesn't really get moved much.

Instead, have a dedicated team help by sourcing URGs to feed into any roles within the organization (say all tech roles). This way they're not tied to a single role, but have access to all of them. This is the same principle as how some companies manage referrals. They have a dedicated TA team that looks at incoming referrals, talks to them, and then figure out the best possible role(s) within the company.

One suggestion: I would avoid having the word diversity in your TA's title. We have the best intentions, but some candidates may feel like you're reaching out to them to fulfill a quota vs. for their skillset. I wouldn't take the risk even if there's a 1% chances of that happening.

Diverse Channels. Align with different organizations that are key to building pools of diverse talent. Examples can include: Women in Technology, Society of Women Engineers, Society of Hispanic Engineers, Jopwell, Connected Marines, National Society for Black Engineers, Lesbians Who Tech.

Mentorship Programs. Engage in mentorship programs such as e-mentor and Veterati to assist military veterans and identify transferable skills.

Diverse Job Boards. Use them, they work!

Diversity Working (largest online diversity job board)
Hire Autism (for individuals on the autism spectrum)
Hire Purpose (for veterans, service members and military spouses)
Recruit Disability (for those who have disabilities)

Referrals. You know what they say about birds of a feather. Collect referrals from existing diverse employees.

Keyword Search: Women. Of the 4 methods, female names have the best yield. Mark Tortorici provides a nice tool here for us to use. He also created a custom search engine (bless his heart).

Pronouns. Search for (her OR she). This is especially effective on LinkedIn because it's mentioned on their summary and recommendations section of women profiles.
Women's Universities and Colleges.
Sorority Search.
Popular Female Names: These are the top 200 female names from the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.

Internships. Work with ethnically diverse colleges to source candidates for internships. You can also reach out to ethnic community groups in the area to figure out how to reach out to these students.

Seed your Pipeline. There's an article in the Harvard Business Review that states if the final candidate pool has one minority candidate, he/she has virtually zero chances of getting hired. While i think the research is flawed in many ways, it does bring up a valid point, which is, if you want your workforce to be diverse, then make sure you seed enough underrepresented groups into the mix. I'm not saying submit token candidates - they still have to be qualified for the job. But planting more diverse groups into your pipeline gives them a fighting chance.

Post Interview Debrief. Every recruiter conducts this to gauge their candidate's performance, but I also train my staff to take this opportunity to validate if the interviewing team is following a bias free approach. If they are not, then find out why and fix it immediately. More info here.

Challenge Interviewers. Sometimes the reason for hire/decline comes down to a "gut feeling" or a "culture fit." If an interviewer provides this type feedback as the primary basis for their decision or if it held a strong influence over their decision, then I will bring in another person to interview to provide another viewpoint. This is also a coaching opportunity to make sure this individual understands the "affinity bias" and coach them on how to avoid by focusing on key competencies and value alignment vs how much they get along with them.

The Shadow Workforce

If achieving a diverse workforce is the ultimate goal, then conventional wisdom suggest we ought to look at every talent pool that adds up to the total workforce of a corporation. Unfortunately when the subject of "workforce" comes up, people tend to only think about the traditional employer-employee type typically known has permanent or Full Time Employees (FTE). We neglect to take into consideration the contingent workers, independent contractors, project-based employees and part-timers.

Illustration: Michael Deforge/Bloomberg

And yet, these folks are sharing the same office space, dining at the same facilities and often functioning in high contribution roles. Some estimate that 40% of the workforce is contingent and for some corporations, the shadow workforce has overtaken their perm counterparts (wink wink Google). So why are statistics on these shadow workforce no where to be seen on any of the diversity reports? Companies can spend all their money and efforts to increase diversity, but if they fail to consider the total workforce, then they're only fighting half the battle... or at least 60% of it.

Want to hear my thoughts on it? Go here.