What is diversity? Diversity to me is basic individual differences that make people think and behave differently. These could be classified based on age, gender, race, ethnicity, country of origin, sexual orientation, physical ability to name a few.
Companies nowadays stress on being diverse and I believe that having a diverse workforce will only help the company build loyalty, trust and appreciation from all its stakeholders. These different spectrums bring to the table a variety of views, thoughts, ideas and ways of doing things.
To meet your staffing requirements and make your team stronger, I think it is important that you stress on diversity. Companies can do this by:
- Creating awareness among employees about diversity and its importance to the organization.
- Educating employees on diversity to avoid any miscommunication due to ignorance.
- Making sure that your company policy has diversity in the forefront and even your company website explains how important diversity is for you.
- Networking and reaching out to diverse groups will make some noise for the company within those groups.
- Stressing on diversity on your website and your affiliations to these groups will help attract more traffic.
- Maintaining a diverse workforce and implementing that through your recruitment practices will also make the difference.
Recruiting and staffing is the first step of acquiring diverse talented candidates. Here is what we can do as recruiters to keep the recruitment process as unbiased as possible.
- Post a clear job description free of any particulars about the candidate requirement other than his/her credentials.
- Concentrate on the similarities that the candidate has with the job description rather than the differences.
- Be open and communicate respectfully with the candidates giving very less to no attention to their physical characteristics like the color of their skin, accents, dressing, age physical disability and other such diversity factors.
- Be prepared to answer questions from them as they try to gauge how unbiased and diverse the organization is.
- Lastly, by keeping this approach standardized for all your staffing decisions will give your organization the authenticity and show your sincerity towards diversity and inclusion.
America is a land of immigrants and no one can understand the concept of inclusion more than Americans can. Very few have their roots here and we all should learn to engage and involve each other to get the best result for the organization and the society as a whole.