Diversity and Inclusion: The Secret to a Successful Workplace

Attracting high quality, ‘informed’ contractors and employees is increasingly challenging for businesses and it’s causing them to rethink their recruiting strategies, according to international job site Glassdoor.1

‘Informed’ candidates are well-researched about the business they are applying to, engaged and ready to ask relevant questions when in an interview.

According to Glassdoor, networking sites like LinkedIn are no longer as effective as they once were because these sites attract ‘passive candidates’ – as opposed to those who are out there actively researching potential employers and putting themselves forward.1

“Recruiting strategies of the past are no longer enough to attract today’s candidates who are more informed than ever before,” said Carmel Galvin, CHRO at Glassdoor. “Now that recruiting is more of a two-way street, the major challenge for employers is attracting quality job seekers. These informed candidates are well-researched, engaged, can reduce time to hire and result in more productive employees.”1

The benefits of interviewing informed candidates are:

  1. Improved candidate experience (38 percent);
  2. Reduced time to hire (34 percent); and
  3. Improved hiring manager satisfaction (34 percent).

The key benefits of hiring an informed candidates are:

  1. Better employee retention (42 percent);
  2. Greater employee productivity (42 percent) and
  3. A more engaged employee (41 percent). 1

So how do you attract informed candidates?

One way successful recruiters are attracting informed candidates is through diversity and inclusion initiatives.

According to Glassdoor, nearly one in five (18 per cent) of those who responded to a survey in late 2017 reported that diversity and inclusion initiatives had a strong influence on a candidate’s decision to join their organisation.2

One in three (35 percent) hiring decision makers expected investment in diversity and inclusion efforts to increase during 2018 and only three percent expected it to decrease.2

Interestingly, some hiring decision makers felt diversity and inclusion programs also impacted employee retention. In fact, 10 percent of respondents expressed concern that a lack of diversity and inclusion programs would lead employees to voluntarily leave their organisation within the next 12 months.2

“The opportunity today for employers is to highlight and leverage their company’s diversity and inclusion efforts by enabling their recruiters, employees and others to speak about it online and off so that job seekers can gain access to this valuable information where and when they need it,” said Galvin.2

It’s Not Just About Employment

Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace will bring other benefits to your business as well. For example, employees from different cultures and demographics bring with them diverse sets of skills and competencies that can add to your organisation’s capabilities and help upskill colleagues. They also bring with them different perspectives that can be invaluable when creatively solving workplace challenges. Importantly, a diverse workplace will give your business a diverse outlook which can be invaluable when serving the needs of a broad, multicultural market.

Find the Right Fit

Of course while it’s important to have diversity in the workplace, it’s also important to ensure employee personalities ‘fit’ into the workplace so that teams can work together harmoniously.

As Celia de Anca writes in her article in Harvard Business Review, “The beauty of diversity is to have different, unique people come together to work on a common project. And, because putting together different people tends to produce conflict, diversity needs to be managed, to turn a potential area of conflict into an opportunity.”3

Finding the right fit for your organisation can be a challenge. At Ayers Group we assist organisations with migration, onboarding and contractor management, freeing you up to spend time building inclusive, diverse teams that will maximise productivity. Call an Ayers Group expert today.

  1. www.glassdoor.com/press/glassdoor-survey-reveals-attracting-quality-candidates-is-top-challenge/
  2. www.glassdoor.com/press/glassdoor-report-reveals-one-third-of-hiring-decision-makers-expect-to-increase-investment-in-diversity-inclusion-programs-in-next-year/
  3. hbr.org/2016/04/why-hiring-for-cultural-fit-can-thwart-your-diversity-efforts