Without a Diverse Workforce, Your Company Will Be Left Behind

by Conor McCarthy, Vice President of Sales for Next-Generation Markets

As an Indeed executive overseeing our offerings in regions around the globe, I take pride in the positive impact our products and services can have on the organisations that we serve, and ultimately, the jobseekers who are applying through our platform. I also take pride in our commitment to diversity and inclusion, which informs every decision we make at all levels of the business. 

I suppose you could debate whether a diverse workplace is a moral imperative, but it is increasingly clear that it’s a smart business decision. I have seen first-hand how diversity brings numerous benefits to a company. 

Diversity Can Improve Almost Everything About Your Business

Seeking out employees with varied backgrounds and experiences brings fresh perspectives and ideas that help combat groupthink — sparking creativity and innovation and leading to better products, services and solutions. One study showed that companies with diverse management teams are 19% more likely to be innovative than teams with below-average diversity scores.

Diversity also leads to better decision-making. Studies show that when a team is composed of people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, they are more likely to identify potential problems and opportunities that might be overlooked by a homogenous group. Diverse teams are better at solving complex problems than homogeneous teams. They are also more likely to make decisions that are both innovative and effective.

Diversity can also lead to increased profits: Research demonstrates that companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians. Organisations with at least one female board member yield a higher net income growth than peers without any women on the board. 

Put simply: Diverse companies routinely outperform less diverse companies. And at a time of economic uncertainty, developing and enacting clear diversity policies should be a key priority for any organisation hoping to thrive and survive.

Companies that embrace diversity also form a better connection to the world around them. If a company has a diverse workforce that truly reflects its full customer base, it will be better positioned to understand its needs, preferences, and values. This, in turn, can lead to increased customer loyalty.

A company culture that garners a positive reputation helps to attract high-calibre applicants. For example, 83% of millennials believe that businesses should focus on more than just profits; they should also work to improve society. A company that builds a reputation as a forward-thinking organisation will attract and retain the best young talent.

In a recent study, 76% of jobseekers said that a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers. When employees see that their company values diversity and inclusion, they are more likely to stay with the company long-term. (At Indeed, we ourselves have seen how diversity can help improve employee morale and reduce turnover.) When people feel that their voices are heard and their perspectives are valued, they are more likely to feel engaged and committed to their work.

Concrete Steps to Take to Make Your Hiring Process More Inclusive

I encourage companies to reduce bias at every stage of their hiring process. It is important to do qualitative as well as quantitative research — it is not just about numbers. Talk to people and listen to them. Seek to understand just how representative your employees are at every level of the world we are living in and the clients you serve. Be transparent and open as you take stock, and if you determine that your current status is not great, accept that this is your starting point. Then set clear medium-term and long-term goals on representation, and outline the steps to achieve these goals. 

 A few things your organisation can do to attract and hire diverse talent:

1. Think carefully about the goals and objectives for each role you seek to fill and the skills and competencies that are likely to deliver the desired results. Make sure you are focused on finding candidates with those attributes and do not get distracted by other factors, like a degree from this or that institution. I am proud to work for an organisation like Indeed, whose products and services can help facilitate skills-based hiring as opposed to what we call “school-based hiring.”
2. Accept that bias — conscious or unconscious — will unavoidably creep into your hiring methods. Do your vendors have processes to detect and address algorithmic bias? Are you using the right tools to help you hire as fairly and equitably as possible?  
3. Hiring managers often complain that they struggle to attract a diverse range of applicants to open positions. If this is an issue in your organisation, it pays to analyse at what stage diverse candidates drop out of the hiring funnel, and to try to determine why. Are they reading about your positions but not initiating an application? Do they begin the application process but never complete it? If they are dropping out at the top of the funnel, it might be a sign that you need to work on your employer brand and the language and imagery you are using in your job advertisements.
4. You must make it as easy as possible for qualified applicants to quickly get a feel for what it is like to work for your company in advance of applying for one of your roles. For instance, if you have employee resource groups, can you showcase the work they are doing to create an inclusive culture? 
5. Look at your hiring process from a jobseeker’s point of view and ask yourself: is it too hard to apply? Complex application processes can cost you great candidates. Streamline the way that qualified candidates can see your jobs and apply for them, then get candidates to the interview and offer stages as quickly as you reasonably can. 
6. For high-skilled positions. In particular, make sure you have diverse interview panels that are representative of the general population –– which often requires additional effort. Make sure that you are posing consistent, equitable and transparent competency-based interview questions and using scoring matrices for shortlisted candidates.
7. One lesson I had to learn in my career was that you should never hire based on perceived cultural fit, as you will inadvertently discriminate against candidates that do not conform to your idea of what the culture of the business needs to be. Anyone coming into the business should be additive to the culture that's already in place — they will bring a new dimension, and that is actually much more important than fit.

Always remember that embracing diversity is not just about the talent you wish to attract to the organisation — you need to work hard to improve the experience of individuals in disadvantaged groups who already work for you.

Make no mistake: creating a diverse workplace is the right thing to do, but it is not easy to do. It requires a concerted effort by the company’s entire leadership and HR teams, and that’s just the start. Shifting policies and culture to embrace inclusion is not the responsibility of any one department. Everyone in the organisation has a role to play. But I know that companies that invest in diversity and inclusion and seek out employees with diverse backgrounds and perspectives reap the rewards of increased creativity, better decision-making, improved customer service and higher profits. The benefits of diversity are very clear—and they are too significant to ignore.