<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*9VnOdnoVrDjRZJr8klsAxQ.png"></figure>Protests against systemic racism over the past couple of years have led many companies to double down on their equity and inclusion efforts. While for many DEI commitments were no more than <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/empty-words-just-wont-cut-it-9a5100083739">empty words</a>, the fact is many candidates and employees are no longer interested in joining work environments where they don’t experience a sense of belonging. In response to the growing demand for equitable and inclusive workplaces, positions such as Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Chief Diversity Officer, and many more variations on the title, are being introduced throughout workplaces. Organizations from every industry, from retail to education, to tech have joined in the trend. But what does a Diversity Officer do, and what are the motivations behind hiring one?
<h3>What Does a Chief Diversity Officer Do?</h3>
A Diversity Officer is usually responsible for developing and implementing organization-wide strategic plans relating to diversity and inclusion. In other words, a CDO is an organization’s strategist on matters pertaining to equity and inclusion. They often:
<ul>
<li>handle discrimination and harassment strategies (often including complaints) within the organization</li>
<li>gather, research, and analyze data on diversity and inclusion within the organization</li>
<li>support the implementation of initiatives to foster diversity and inclusion, or bring about culture change</li>
<li>advise executive and leadership teams on equity, diversity, and inclusion.</li>
<li>ensure compliance with equity regulation (in collaboration with HR and other departments)</li>
</ul>
In the past, companies have created such positions in response to publicized claims about discrimination or harassment. Today, growing public demand for accountability is forcing companies to take matters more seriously.
And now that the business case for diversity has been established, companies are even more eager to diversify their workforces. The role is as a result growing in importance and may include a wider set of responsibilities. In today’s business environment, a CDO might (in addition to the aforementioned responsibilities) also be asked to:
<ul><li>align business goals with DEI goals.</li></ul>
In many organizations, this new position is created to ‘fix’ a company’s discriminatory culture. Uber, for instance, was accused of a toxic culture. Among other complaints, a former Uber employee wrote a<a href="https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber"> public letter</a> detailing the sexism and harassment she experienced while working for Uber, as well as the complete lack of response from the company’s HR team. This public scrutiny led to, among other things, Uber hiring its first-ever Chief Diversity Officer. Uber’s discriminatory environment continued to headline the news, showing, unsurprisingly, a Chief Diversity Officer position alone won’t solve all your problems.
<h3>Supporting Your Chief Diversity Officer</h3>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*9VrgRJmysqSTO_y1.png"></figure><h4>Make sure this is not your way of placing the onus for diversity and inclusion on one individual</h4>
When you create a position specifically for diversity and inclusion, you risk placing the majority of the responsibility for such practices on a single person, rather than your entire leadership team. If the company continues to experience issues after hiring a Chief Diversity Officer, or if, even worse, another scandal surfaces, some companies will place the bulk of the blame on the Chief Diversity Officer. Often to improve the optics of a company, the person holding such a position is even replaced in an attempt to save face.
<h4>Provide the necessary resources and support</h4>
A single individual cannot be held responsible for ensuring employment equity, including creating strategies for attracting and retaining diverse pools of talent and transforming a company’s culture, without dedicated resources and support. Transforming a workplace into an inclusive one is a difficult task in environments where marginalization is systemic, the norm. Moreover, improvements in inclusion can be difficult to measure. Being a CDO is a difficult job, and one that could not possibly be effective without the necessary resources, be it financial or human resources.
Without the necessary executive power, it’s difficult for a Chief Diversity Officer to truly transform a company’s culture, issues of inclusion are difficult to uproot, and they exist even at the leadership level, where they are even more challenging to address. Since leadership teams tend to be quite homogenous, being predominantly white and male, bringing diversity and inclusion to these higher levels may require executive powers.
<h4>To change your company culture, hold ALL of your employees accountable to equity and inclusion standards</h4>
Equity and inclusion should be prioritized at all levels of a firm. Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer will not magically resolve all your past issues. The importance of an inclusive and equitable workplace culture should especially be felt by executive teams, after all, strong leadership can have ripple effects: a visible commitment to inclusion amongst the leadership team can truly alter a company’s culture. In other words, to change your organization’s culture, you must begin with your own behavior, challenge your own biases, and put in the work even when it feels inconvenient and uncomfortable.
Overall, while hiring a Chief Diversity Officer may be a step in the right direction, a company’s efforts cannot end there. Organizations must ensure that the Chief Diversity Officer has the necessary resources, power, and support at their disposal.
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<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/hiring-a-chief-diversity-officer-wont-solve-all-your-problems-88fb9e2c24e6">Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer Won’t Solve All Your Problems</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/">The Bridge by Divercity</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*9VnOdnoVrDjRZJr8klsAxQ.png">Protests against systemic racism over the...

Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer Won’t Solve All Your Problems

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*xJidg8IsGczG0N8p.png"></figure>You should care about inclusion because chances are your candidates and employees do too. A recent McKinsey survey found that 39% of applicants say they have turned down a job offer due to perceiving a lack of inclusion. McKinsey also found that employees who have experienced microaggressions at work are three times more likely to consider leaving their jobs.
Suffice it to say, inclusion matters to your employees, and if you don’t start prioritizing it, chances are you’ll push away talented employees, and end up with a monolithic workplace. And a lack of diversity, aside from being inequitable, translates to stagnation in today’s business environment.
The recent shift to remote work has complicated the question of what it means to be an inclusive company. As companies around the globe make the transition to virtual work environments, people are increasingly asking “<a href="https://www.divercity.io/remote-dei-guide">How can I foster inclusion in my remote team?</a>”
Let’s take a look at some steps you can take to make your remote work environment more inclusive. The tips presented here are just a starting point for fostering inclusion in a remote environment. As the shift towards remote and hybrid work continues, it is likely that many more inclusion challenges will surface, and with them many new tips and strategies.
<h3>Invest in training</h3>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/897/0*wLcG8Wc-_gygQ1dl.png"></figure>When it comes to the effectiveness of diversity training (such as unconscious bias training), the <a href="https://www.divercity.io/blog/article/what-is-implicit-bias-and-what-can-you-do-about-it">evidence is mixed</a>. It’s still unclear whether such programs are truly successful in minimizing bias in the workplace. However, unconscious bias training is not the only form of training available. You can host actionable training sessions on how to be a better ally, or how to minimize bias in recruitment.
There is no reason why a remote work environment should get in the way of that. Training and educational sessions can easily be conducted online.
The degree to which such education and training are prioritized can speak volumes about the extent to which an organization values inclusion. When candidates are deciding whether to join your team, the availability of diversity training might be a good indicator of an inclusive culture. It suggests to candidates that diversity and inclusion are on your radar as a company.
<h3>Take your ERGs to Slack</h3>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/884/0*1W74J4ZanDqPgjeE.png"></figure>Employee Resource Groups involve employees coming together and creating community on the basis of shared identities or life experiences, for instance, you can have a Working Parents ERG, or a Women in Tech ERG. The point is to provide community and support, surface common challenges, and help contribute to professional and personal development.
Remote environments lend themselves to isolation, rendering it challenging to build trusting relationships between team members. ERGs are a good way for a remote company to help break those isolation barriers and foster trust amongst team members.
There’s no reason that ERGs should be halted in a remote environment. There are ways you can adjust them to work remotely. Many remote teams have slack channels in place of ERGs. <a href="https://www.divercity.io/blog/article/12-tools-to-optimize-your-remote-workspace">Slack</a> channels can provide ERGs with a base from which to connect and organize. They may be even more easily accessible than traditional in-person ERGs, as they allow for real-time updates, resource sharing, as well as creating a central base or hub, which may not exist in a non-remote environment.
Make sure your ERGs have the support needed to continue remotely. While ERGs are a good way to create a sense of belonging for employees from underrepresented backgrounds, they are unlikely to be effective without sufficient support. Resources to sustain the ERG and help with things such as securing external speakers, as well as documentation support, can go a long way in helping ERGs run smoothly and effectively. Just as essential is top-down support from leadership. ERGs must be integrated into the business and aligned with its values and priorities to successfully affect culture change. In other words, outline how ERGs align with and serve your larger company DEI strategy.
<h3>Documentation is key</h3>
Remote work, until the recent pandemic, was seen as a novel and disruptive way of working. A quick Google search of ‘diversity in remote work’ returns a plethora of articles hailing remote work as the more equitable and inclusive way of working. And it is true to some extent. An obvious DEI advantage of remote work is that remote companies can hire talent almost anywhere, which opens doors to finding candidates outside of the typical spaces. But of course, <a href="https://divercity.io/blog/article/equity-and-inclusion-in-remote-work-part-1-challenges">remote work brings in DEI challenges of its own</a>.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*fxOAqKZ8YFt0BJ7m.png"></figure>Yet this view of remote work as the progressive way of working often results in under-prioritizing inclusion. This is where documentation of company culture and values comes in. This documentation should ideally clarify a company’s stance on inclusion in the workplace. Some companies document standards for a civil conversation, accountability, and consequences for inappropriate behavior. Likewise, protocols to keep everyone in the loop and to make sure everyone’s contributions can be heard are especially important in a remote environment.
<h3>Try a digital assistant for remote work culture</h3>
It can be particularly difficult to voice inclusion concerns in remote work. The tendency towards isolation in remote work can render it difficult to address conflict or seek support. This is why it’s essential to pay attention to employee morale and to provide team members with accessible avenues for feedback. Just as important is using that feedback to build a more inclusive environment that enables all employees to thrive.
Fortunately, new solutions for diversity pulse checks and employee retention are becoming available. Employee retention platform <a href="https://www.humaxa.com/">Humaxa</a> is a great example of this. Humaxa has come up with an easy and creative solution for engaging employees on D&amp;I matters and gathering data on workplace inclusion: Max, an AI assistant for remote workplace culture.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*v0nr3Kb4m1hsHIyu.png"></figure>The digital assistant asks team members <a href="https://medium.com/@betterallies/looking-out-for-four-guys-named-dave-and-other-actions-for-allies-227840150ca2">questions such as</a>:
Max: “You know, it’s true that diversity and inclusion come up a lot these days — even among us bots! But ensuring inclusivity at work is no joking matter. Do you feel that this organization makes people with diverse backgrounds feel valued and included?”
—
Employee: “Hi, Max. I feel like my job growth is stuck and my manager just doesn’t have time to help.”
Max: “Oh, I understand. I could try to arrange a mentoring activity so that you could get some of the professional development you’re looking for. What do you say?”
Feedback is measured over time, and if negative responses are frequently detected, the administrator is notified and can take action to address any inclusion concerns and setbacks. Amongst the many things Max can do, is suggest how employees can minimize bias and help foster an inclusive environment, and Max can even mentor them to this end!
Humaxa came out of CEO and CoFounder Carolyn Peer’s background in Cognitive Neuroscience and Instructional Technology research, and nearly 20 years in the HR Tech industry. Peer’s clients repeatedly voiced the need for a solution to engage employees and help them perform their best:
“I would ask them what they were doing to figure this out,” Peer tells us. “They would usually mention employee engagement surveys or workforce assessments. Coincidentally, I was using similar tools with my own teams and my employees would say things like “Carolyn, do we really have to take this survey? Can I just put all 5’s? Nothing ever happens anyway…”
Unlike traditional surveys, Humaxa’s Max allows employees a comfortable space to voice inclusion concerns, something that is not always easy to do in person. As CEO and CoFounder Carolyn Peer mentions: “Research shows that when it comes to sensitive issues like equitable pay, diversity/equity/inclusion, job growth/promotions, etc. — people are more likely to open up and chat with an anonymous, friendly bot than they are with a real person.
An anonymous bot like Max could be a great way to detect inclusion concerns that may not show up in a traditional survey on employee morale. Moreover, unlike traditional surveys where results have to be compiled and analyzed before any changes are made, an AI assistant is more directly actionable, providing team members with immediate assistance tailored to their needs, while also allowing for data collection to address inclusion challenges at a systemic level.
It is critical to stay up to date on the rapidly changing nature of the workplace today. While a top-down emphasis on inclusion is critical, fostering inclusion is ultimately a collective responsibility.
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<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/how-to-foster-inclusion-in-your-remote-workplace-f72f922a25de">How to Foster Inclusion in Your Remote Workplace</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/">The Bridge by Divercity</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*xJidg8IsGczG0N8p.png">You should care about inclusion because chances...

How to Foster Inclusion in Your Remote Workplace

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*8BTapKU78TyWBUfd.png"></figure>Remote work environments can lend themselves to isolation. In a virtual office, it can be easy to stick to work-related conversations and skip the usual watercooler conversations that organically arise in an office. As a result, and especially in cases where co-workers have not previously shared an office, it can be difficult to create genuine connections. Likewise, remote work can lend itself to burnout, as many who work remotely work long hours to demonstrate their effort and commitment to employers who can’t see them and may not trust that they are being productive.
As more and more people demand hybrid and remote work environments, isolation, disconnection, and burnout become important issues to tackle in a remote work environment. One way to approach these issues that inevitably arise in virtual workplaces is by instilling a culture of trust.
To understand why trust is central to cultivating a healthy remote work environment, we need to look no further than the Netherlands and Finland. <a href="https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?query=BOOKMARK_DS-052914_QID_-50734B6_UID_-3F171EB0&amp;layout=TIME,C,X,0;GEO,L,Y,0;SEX,L,Z,0;FREQUENC,L,Z,1;AGE,L,Z,2;WSTATUS,L,Z,3;UNIT,L,Z,4;INDICATORS,C,Z,5;&amp;zSelection=DS-052914WSTATUS,EMP;DS-052914FREQUENC,USU;DS-052914INDICATORS,OBS_FLAG;DS-052914AGE,Y15-64;DS-052914SEX,T;DS-052914UNIT,PC;&amp;rankName1=WSTATUS_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName2=UNIT_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName3=AGE_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName4=FREQUENC_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName5=INDICATORS_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName6=SEX_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName7=TIME_1_0_0_0&amp;rankName8=GEO_1_2_0_1&amp;sortC=ASC_-1_FIRST&amp;rStp=&amp;cStp=&amp;rDCh=&amp;cDCh=&amp;rDM=true&amp;cDM=true&amp;footnes=false&amp;empty=false&amp;wai=false&amp;time_mode=FIXED&amp;time_most_recent=false&amp;lang=EN&amp;cfo=%23%23%23%2C%23%23%23.%23%23%23">14.1%</a> of the Finnish and Dutch workforce worked remotely even prior to the pandemic, as compared to 3.6% of the U.S. workforce. In both cases trust has been cited as the key element in making remote work a smooth experience.
The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200623-what-the-dutch-can-teach-the-world-about-remote-work">BBC quotes</a> Organizational Psychology professor Aukje Nauta from the University of Leiden who suggests that in the Netherlands:
<blockquote>“Values such as democracy and participation are deeply rooted in the Dutch working culture, so managers place more trust in their workers than elsewhere”.</blockquote>
Likewise in <a href="https://www.citymetric.com/fabric/see-how-city-embraces-remote-work-just-look-helsinki-5227">an interview with CityMetric</a> professor of Knowledge Management at LUT University Kirsimarja Blomqvist argues that trust is foundational to effective remote work culture, stating that in Finland there exists “a rich history of cooperation between trade unions, employers, and employees to set up innovative working practices and make workers feel trusted and valued”.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*4Y50xv9F2btsInn4Pa1qhQ.png"></figure>Both the Finish and Dutch examples ultimately indicate that a culture of trust is essential for remote work to be a smooth experience for all team members. Naturally, trust is not the only prerequisite. Both countries also boast a widespread availability of WiFi. In the Netherlands, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200623-what-the-dutch-can-teach-the-world-about-remote-work">98%</a> of households have access to WiFi. Meanwhile, in Finland, the government has made unrestricted high-speed WiFi available for <a href="https://www.citymetric.com/fabric/see-how-city-embraces-remote-work-just-look-helsinki-5227">free from hotspots</a> around the capital Helsinki. In the US <a href="https://broadbandnow.com/research/fcc-underestimates-unserved-by-50-percent">13% of Americans</a> (42 Million Americans) lack access to WiFi.
Access to WiFi is an essential consideration for remote work, but a culture of trust is just as foundational, especially when it comes to tackling the erosion of work-life balance that comes with remote work. Unfortunately, a wider culture of trust does not exist in the US workplace.
While not much can be done about changing the larger national culture around work in the short term, there’s no reason why that should stop you from cultivating a culture of trust in your own team. Not to mention, that small steps in this direction can help contribute to a larger culture of trust in the workforce in the long run.
<h3>A Trusting Work Environment is a More Inclusive Work Environment</h3>
A recent McKinsey study suggests that more and more underrepresented professionals are seeking hybrid workplaces, and are in fact suggesting that they’d leave their jobs, if not offered a hybrid work option. This is, of course, unsurprising given the day-to-day microaggressions and inequities that many underrepresented professionals face at work. What it does suggest, however, is that we need to start getting serious about building inclusive virtual environments.
McKinsey’s study also suggests that trust is an important inclusion consideration in virtual environments. When asked to choose between various proven inclusion practices they’d like to see their organizations improve, trust was one of the most commonly cited practices. This tells us that a trusting environment may help with job satisfaction and, ultimately, may improve retention.
<h4>Plan Social Activities Regularly</h4>
Being intentional about scheduling social time is foundational to building connections between team members while working from home. Scheduling a bi-weekly hangout, adding fun icebreakers to team meetings, and scheduling virtual games, are all great ways of getting team members to connect with each other beyond work. Some all-remote companies schedule retreats that allow team members to come together on a regular basis. Chat threads for shared interests are another great way of encouraging people to form connections organically.
Improving informal connections can also help foster a culture of trust and openness, where employees feel comfortable voicing concerns about burnout with their colleagues and leaders.
<h4>Share Schedules Among Teams</h4>
Having shared schedules that indicate all team members’ preferred hours, and when they will and will not be available, can go a long way in solidifying boundaries between work and life. If these schedules can include important deadlines and priorities, this can be even better for syncing team efforts and creating transparency that enables a culture of trust.
<h4>Lead by example</h4>
It is especially important for team leaders to set their hours and commit to communicating with their team members within those hours to avoid setting up expectations of productivity at all hours of the day. Of course in teams distributed over multiple time zones, there may need to be some flexibility. But even in those cases, leaders have a role in encouraging employees not to work outside of their dedicated hours.
Curious about what your organization’s diversity score is? <a href="https://app.divercity.io/score/">Find out here</a>
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<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/do-you-trust-your-team-84a43755d010">Do You Trust Your Team?</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/">The Bridge by Divercity</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*8BTapKU78TyWBUfd.png">Remote work environments can lend themselves to...

Do You Trust Your Team?

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*inMIEQFIItRxB63mmaMvTQ.png"></figure>As companies around the globe began making the transition to virtual work environments, we slowly came to the realization that remote work, while it has its own set of diversity and inclusion concerns, also comes with advantages. Now companies are in the position of having to decide whether to go back to in-person work environments, remain remote, or go hybrid. One way to determine which work environment to favor would be to look at how inclusive each of the three models is in comparison to the others.
One clue as to the relative inclusion gains comes from a recent article by McKinsey <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/hybrid-work-making-it-fit-with-your-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-strategy">study</a> which suggests that employees from underrepresented groups may have a greater preference for hybrid work than their peers. This, of course, is not surprising given the microaggressions and day-to-day inequities that plague many in-person work environments.
McKinsey found that 85% of employees currently working in hybrid environments prefer to stay in such environments. Employees with disabilities, nonbinary employees, and LGBQ+ employees were even more likely to show a preference for hybrid work environments than their peers.
Among those who showed a preference for hybrid work, McKinsey found that many traditionally underrepresented groups of employees were more likely to leave their jobs if they find themselves in organizations that fail to provide hybrid work options, this includes:
<ul>
<li>Younger employees (18–34 years)</li>
<li>LGBQ+ employees</li>
<li>Nonbinary employees</li>
<li>Employees with disabilities</li>
<li>Black employees</li>
<li>Women employees</li>
</ul>
As McKinsey outlines, taking employee preferences into account is essential, especially amidst the Great Resignation trend, which has more and more employees leaving their jobs even in the absence of alternative job offers. If companies choose to go hybrid, however, they’ll need to align their hybrid work environments with their DEI strategy.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/908/1*tgTaSi5_VULRXRlYX50-YA.png"></figure>To find out how companies can best make their hybrid environments inclusive, McKinsey asked survey participants to identify practices conducive to inclusion that they’d like to see prioritized in a hybrid work model. Most demographic groups surveyed agreed on the following three practices:
<ul>
<li>work-life support</li>
<li>team-building</li>
<li>mutual respect</li>
</ul>
Work-life support is taken to represent a recognition that employees have responsibilities, interests, and goals outside of work. They might have family and care obligations, they may have hobbies and desires besides their jobs. A company that recognizes this, may offer remote work flexibility, or flexibility for parents and caregivers, and other such systems in place, which recognize that team members are more than just employees. To understand why trust is central to cultivating a healthy remote work environment, we need to look no further than the Netherlands and Finland. In both countries, <a href="https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?query=BOOKMARK_DS-052914_QID_-50734B6_UID_-3F171EB0&amp;layout=TIME,C,X,0;GEO,L,Y,0;SEX,L,Z,0;FREQUENC,L,Z,1;AGE,L,Z,2;WSTATUS,L,Z,3;UNIT,L,Z,4;INDICATORS,C,Z,5;&amp;zSelection=DS-052914WSTATUS,EMP;DS-052914FREQUENC,USU;DS-052914INDICATORS,OBS_FLAG;DS-052914AGE,Y15-64;DS-052914SEX,T;DS-052914UNIT,PC;&amp;rankName1=WSTATUS_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName2=UNIT_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName3=AGE_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName4=FREQUENC_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName5=INDICATORS_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName6=SEX_1_2_-1_2&amp;rankName7=TIME_1_0_0_0&amp;rankName8=GEO_1_2_0_1&amp;sortC=ASC_-1_FIRST&amp;rStp=&amp;cStp=&amp;rDCh=&amp;cDCh=&amp;rDM=true&amp;cDM=true&amp;footnes=false&amp;empty=false&amp;wai=false&amp;time_mode=FIXED&amp;time_most_recent=false&amp;lang=EN&amp;cfo=%23%23%23%2C%23%23%23.%23%23%23">14.1% of the population</a> worked remotely even prior to the pandemic, as compared to 3.6% of the U.S. working population. In both cases trust has been cited as the key element to making remote work a smooth experience. The Finnish and Dutch examples ultimately indicate that a culture of trust is essential for remote work to be a smooth experience for all team members.
Meanwhile, a work environment that prioritizes team-building, is one that fosters trusting relationships between team members and prioritizes healthy conflict resolution. Healthy conflict resolution and trust can be generated through team-building exercises, and through practices that minimize excessive monitoring and micro-management. Trust can be especially important in a remote work environment where employees can’t always see one another.
Finally, mutual respect here implies respect for and between employees, a commitment to treat one another fairly, as well as a genuine concern for the wellbeing of employees or fellow team members. That is, it boils down to genuine, not cosmetic, respect and fairness.
Naturally, it is just as essential to prioritize these aspects in a physical work environment. However, remote work environments, because they can lend themselves to isolation, and disconnection between team members may require more intentional efforts to make these practices explicit.
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<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/what-does-inclusion-look-like-in-hybrid-work-5546c2d42557">What Does Inclusion Look Like in Hybrid Work?</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/">The Bridge by Divercity</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*inMIEQFIItRxB63mmaMvTQ.png">As companies around the globe began makin...

What Does Inclusion Look Like in Hybrid Work?

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*rv6fjn1XU-uaFWgCxAsxbA.png"></figure>The abrupt shift to remote work over the last few years has been an adjustment for most of us, and to be sure not everyone has had the privilege of working from home. But we’ve seen the inclusion benefits that come with remote work: it has the potential to allow for a more diverse workforce, it can help organizations be more <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/is-your-workplace-parent-friendly-44e1177c67a3">inclusive of parents</a> and caregivers, and can reduce the number of microaggressions that many marginally placed employees have to face at work. More importantly, we learned that if organizations are planning to go back to in-person workplaces, they’ll need to prioritize creating and sustaining inclusive environments. An essential prerequisite to generating sustainable change is tackling stereotypes head-on.
<h4>The Impact of Stereotypes</h4>
In his FastCompany article “<a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90741384/theres-a-scientific-reason-rules-alone-wont-end-discrimination-heres-what-will">There’s a scientific reason rules alone won’t end discrimination. Here’s what will</a>”, Sian Beilock notes the importance of tackling stereotypes for an inclusive environment that fosters a sense of belonging for diverse identities. In his research on the relationship between emotional regulation and performance, Beilock (and co-authors) found that a sense of community and belonging <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1808589116#executive-summary-abstract">can help fight inequality</a>. Studying student performance in STEM fields, they found that students of lower-income backgrounds experienced greater test anxiety due to the weight of stereotypes and the lack of alternative opportunities such as tutoring, that are available to students from higher-income backgrounds. The study found that students from low-income backgrounds performed better on tests after being given the opportunity to offload their worries or express their fears. Fear of performance combined with the weight of stereotypes, Beilock concludes, can make it difficult for underrepresented folks to perform. This tells us that an important step to creating inclusive workplaces is taking stock of stereotypes that animate a work environment, and tackling them head-on.
<h4>Creating Community</h4>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*p8qY-PBJ1mIg9Sb-wguG3A.png"></figure>Another implication of Beilock’s research is that employee resource groups and similar opportunities to form community can be critical to creating a sense of belonging for all identities in a work environment. Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) allow employees to create communities on the basis of shared identities or life experiences, for instance, being a parent, or an employee of color. ERGs allow employees to discuss shared challenges and provide avenues for professional and personal development.
Do you work in a remote environment? No problem! ERGs can easily be moved to slack. Remote environments can lend themselves to a sense of isolation. ERGs are a good way for a remote company to help break those isolation barriers and foster trust amongst team members. Many remote teams have slack channels in place of ERGs. <a href="https://www.divercity.io/blog/article/12-tools-to-optimize-your-remote-workspace">Slack</a> channels can provide ERGs with a space to connect and organize. They may be even more easily accessible than traditional in-person ERGs, as they allow for real-time updates and resource sharing. Slack-based ERGs can also serve as a central hub, which may not exist in a non-remote environment.
Make sure your ERGs have the resources needed to continue remotely, including essential support from leadership. ERGs must also be integrated into the business and aligned with its values and priorities to successfully create culture change. In other words, it’s important to outline how ERGs align with and serve your larger company's DEI strategy.
Needless to say, diversity and inclusion prop each other up. Creating an inclusive environment is just part of the work, but you’ll also have to make sure you’re adjusting your recruiting processes to minimize unconscious bias as much as possible and to proactively look for underrepresented talent.
Check out your organization’s <a href="https://app.divercity.io/score/">diversity score</a>, and gain key insights to diversify your team and make your work environment more inclusive.
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<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/tackling-stereotypes-is-key-to-fostering-inclusive-work-environments-11989ab04831">Tackling Stereotypes is Key to Fostering Inclusive Work Environments</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/">The Bridge by Divercity</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*rv6fjn1XU-uaFWgCxAsxbA.png">The abrupt shift to remote work over the ...

Tackling Stereotypes is Key to Fostering Inclusive Work Environments

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*fZtb4QytU5PVqUgSXSBYeQ.png"></figure>This guide is designed to help you recruit with diversity and inclusion in mind. In Part 2 of this guide, we go through the selection, hiring, and onboarding stages of the recruitment life cycle, identifying important equity and inclusion considerations for each step.
<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/your-guide-to-diversity-hiring-part-1-preparation-sourcing-and-screening-9a83a279d8bf">You can read part 1, of this guide here</a>
<h3>Step 4 — Selecting</h3>
After sourcing your candidates, you’re ready to move on to the crucial selection stage. This is the stage where you'll be scheduling and conducting interviews, arranging for assignments, testing candidates on various skills, and providing them with feedback on their performance. The success of the selecting stage also depends on strong communication with the hiring manager. As a recruiter, you’ll want to sure that you’re looping in the hiring manager about your shortlisted candidates and their performance in the various activities that make up this stage.
The expected outcome of this stage is a smaller pool of candidates who are more enthusiastic and well-suited to the role. This stage also allows the hiring manager to get a better sense of how each candidate might fit into the team and what amount of training they might require.
It is your responsibility as a recruiter to ensure the process runs smoothly for all involved, especially the candidate. Once the logistics of scheduling interviews and collecting assignments are taken care of, the process of evaluating the candidates becomes the key priority in this stage.
Some popular interview scheduling tools that you can use include <a href="https://calendly.com/">Calendly</a>, <a href="https://vidcruiter.com/">Vidcruiter</a>, and <a href="https://www.goodtime.io/">GoodTime</a>.
Here are a few tips to ensure that you can keep this stage as inclusive as possible:
<ol>
<li>
Accommodate special needs and requests — Before the interview, ask if the candidate requires any special accommodations. This may be due to a disability, or their physical location (in the case of in-person interview mandates). Try your best to accommodate their needs and judge the candidates only on their ability to perform the job you are hiring for.</li>
<li>
Ensure consistency in the interview — Interview experiences can be stressful for some candidates and easier for others. Having a consistent interview experience starts with ensuring that the candidates are in a relaxed enough state to discuss the position effectively. To add to this, it’s best to follow a consistent interview structure for all candidates. This will allow you to minimize unconscious bias and make more objective assessments of candidates.</li>
<li>
Schedule flexibility — Some candidates may only be available at set hours of their day due to work, school, or other commitments. In such cases, the recruiter and hiring manager have to be able to open up their schedule and try to meet the candidate mid-way. Giving sufficient time to each qualified candidate is important to make a more inclusive decision.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Step 5 — Hiring</h3>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*PsWGfvk6RhUZ9KlSJfpn6g.png"></figure>You’ll enter the hiring stage when you’ve narrowed down your applicant pool to the final few candidates, usually between one to three. Now it’s time to perform reference checks or background checks for the shortlisted candidates.
Reference checks are a way to confirm your perception of the candidate and gather additional information from multiple perspectives. This becomes especially useful if you doubted a certain competency or skill during the interview. Background checks will vary with the type of position, the kinds of stakeholders your company works with, and the country you are in. You can learn about some of the common types of background checks <a href="https://hires.shareable.com/blog/types-of-background-checks">here</a>.
Once the checks are complete, it is time to make a decision. While the full cycle recruiter is (heavily) involved in each step of the process, the final hiring decision lies with the hiring manager.
The expected outcome of this stage is getting a better sense of the candidate’s background better and deciding on the candidate to whom you’ll extend an offer.
Here are some ways to make this stage more inclusive:
<ol>
<li>
Focus on skills over background — Your candidate pool might have people with different profiles, countries of origin, universities you may not have heard of, and varied sets of experience. For this reason, you’ll want to focus more on the tangible skills that the candidates have gained throughout their careers, rather than just the contexts in which they gained them. You can use tools such as <a href="https://www2.skillsurvey.com/products/reference-checking-solution/">SkilSurvey</a>, <a href="https://www.xref.com/">XREF</a>, and <a href="https://www.crosschq.com/">Crosschq</a> to helo you in this effort. Make sure to discuss the candidate’s skills and references with your hiring manager.</li>
<li>
Conduct detailed reference checks — Asking generic questions like “What can you tell me about Carter?” will lead to equally vague answers. Asking questions on the specific concerns about the candidate you’d like to address will help their past colleagues answer more accurately. Ask about situations where the candidate demonstrated leadership qualities or went above and beyond with an assigned project.</li>
<li>
Communicate with candidates about reference checks — Let the candidate be aware that you are going to be conducting reference checks for the position. Do not try to contact anyone from the candidate’s current or past places of work without their explicit permission. You can also ask the candidate some thought-provoking questions about their past experience such as: “ what would your past employer say are your best team qualities?”</li>
</ol>
<h3>Step 6 — Onboarding</h3>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/955/1*hdprTuuAlYu1X3odDkXbFA.png"></figure>The onboarding phase introduces a new employee to their position, team, and organization. A good onboarding process is crucial as it is the first opportunity for the candidate to establish themselves at the company.
Building trust is a crucial step in the onboarding process, and once candidates have offered you their trust, you want to avoid a discordance between their expectations and reality. Providing the new employee with a point person to whom they can direct questions, feedback, and concerns, and being honest and transparent, can help you here.
A few things that could be a part of onboarding are settling the new employee into their position, intro sessions with the team, and sharing the company mission and vision. Create a unique experience, to make employees feel included from day 1, even if this means you have to slow down a little.
The expected outcome of this stage is the successful integration of the new member into the team.
Some tips for making the onboarding process more inclusive:
<ol>
<li>
Incorporate a session on inclusion define it and explain its importance to the organization. Provide some examples of previous employee experiences, and channels for communication if they were to face any issues. Make the employees feel included from day one!</li>
<li>
Communicate about resources for accommodations. Ensure your onboarding materials are accessible and that new employees have a full understanding of the resources available for accommodations and how they can go about accessing them.</li>
<li>
Inform your employee about support, if you have any ERGs or special interest groups, now is the time to tell your new hire about these.</li>
<li>
Set up a feedback meeting after the first month of employment. Take into consideration their feedback and improve your onboarding process.</li>
</ol>
Looking for tools to help you with diversity hiring. Head over to <a href="http://divercity.io/">divercity.io</a> and try our candidate sourcing and diversity recruiter’s dashboard.
<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=1ae205143248" width="1" height="1" alt=""><hr>
<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/your-guide-to-diversity-hiring-part-2-selecting-hiring-and-onboarding-1ae205143248">Your Guide to Diversity Hiring Part 2: Selecting, Hiring, and Onboarding</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/">The Bridge by Divercity</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*fZtb4QytU5PVqUgSXSBYeQ.png">This guide is designed to help you recrui...

Your Guide to Diversity Hiring Part 2: Selecting, Hiring, and Onboarding

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*PveKm5NQh3FsmA5B4QGPOg.png"></figure><h3>Step 1 — Preparation</h3>
The initial stage of the recruitment process typically consists in communicating with hiring managers to understand the requirements for the vacancy, including the skills, and qualifications of a suitable candidate. As a recruiter, you will then use this information to create a job description. The job description serves as a basis for the job ad for candidates.
The expected outcome of this stage is a job posting that truly reflects the nature of the skills and experience necessary for the role.
<h4>1. Avoid Gendered Language</h4>
One of the most important steps to attracting a diverse candidate pool is using inclusive language. You can think of gendered language as gendered if people with different gender identities respond to it differently. There’s plenty of research to show that certain language used in job descriptions tends to discourage various groups of underrepresented candidates from applying. For instance, <a href="https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/business/en-us/talent-solutions-lodestone/body/pdf/Linkedin-Language-Matters-Report-FINAL-02.08-1.pdf">research has shown</a> that women are less likely to apply to jobs where the job description mentions terms such as “aggressive” or “demanding”. By avoiding such language, you encourage a more diverse applicant pool. Thankfully there are tools out there to help you analyze your job description for non-inclusive language patterns, such as <a href="https://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/">Gender Decoder</a> and <a href="https://textio.com/">Textio</a>.
<h4>2. Focus on the Core Skills</h4>
<a href="https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless-theyre-100-qualified">Research suggests</a> that men will apply for a job when they meet 60% of the qualifications listed, yet women are more hesitant to apply unless they meet 100% of the qualifications. Unfortunately, research is still lacking on how this applies to non-binary applicants. This hesitancy might be explained by the fact that women are more likely to be hired on the basis of their experience, while men are more likely to be hired on the basis of potential.
As a recruiter, you may want to counteract this by pushing the hiring manager to narrow down their list of requirements to the most essential skills for the job, you can still include additional nice-to-have qualifications, but make sure you clearly communicate which skills are absolutely essential. You can then translate those into a job advertisement.
<h4>3. Be Specific About Your Diversity and Inclusion Commitments</h4>
Underrepresented candidates are less and less interested in joining workplaces where diversity and inclusion are not respected. Most job ads will include a statement on a commitment to equity in the hiring process. To demonstrate a company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, a job ad will need to go beyond this standard statement. One way to do this is to ask the hiring manager about specific standards the company has put in place to ensure equity and inclusion in the workplace, for instance, you can mention their willingness to provide accommodations for applicants who have disabilities or are neurodivergent or specific measures they take to ensure all candidates have an equal opportunity for job advancement. With this information, you can write a job advertisement that better signals to applicants the company’s commitment to DEI.
<h3>Step 2- Sourcing</h3>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*m0KkiPtDotSaSqXnPAKenQ.png"></figure>This stage is designed for the recruiter to identify the most qualified candidates for a new job opening, often using various platforms such as job boards and social media. You’ve probably heard of some of the popular job boards, but there are also industry-specific ones, such as our tech recruiting platform <a href="http://divercity.io/">Divercity.io</a>.
The expected outcome of the sourcing stage is that your job posting attracts a talented and diverse set of candidates to apply for the new job opening and move to the next step of the process.
<h4>1. Learn about unconscious bias</h4>
Going into this stage, make sure you have a clear understanding of the requirements for the vacancy. An important step toward a successful recruiting strategy is learning about unconscious bias and how it impacts you as a recruiter. An unconscious bias limits your ability to find the correct candidate by clouding your judgment about what the right candidate might look like or how they might present.
<h4>2. Use Multiple Outlets</h4>
Use multiple sources when making the job post live, this will ensure that you reach a number of audiences. You can rely on different job boards, social media, or proactively post on <a href="http://divercity.io/">diversity-focused job boards</a>. Make sure to keep your job posts updated at all times to ensure more visibility and set the right expectation for the candidates.
<h3>Step 3 — Screening</h3>
After you’ve sourced your candidates, it’s time to screen them. This is the stage where you consider the extent to which each candidates’ experience and qualifications match the criteria set up by the hiring committee. This stage tends to begin with a resume screening to make sure the basic skills are there. The initial resume screening is often followed up by a phone screening. A phone screening helps to ensure the recruiter and candidate have a shared understanding of job expectations.
Paying attention to potential unconscious or implicit bias is again essential in this phase. This is a pivotal stage and it’s important to make sure To use just one example, a 2016 <a href="https://peerj.com/preprints/1733/">Github study</a> compared acceptance rates of contributions from male and female coders in the open-source software community. They found that contributions from women were more likely to be accepted than those from men, but only when the women weren’t identifiable as women. Once gender was factored in, they found that women’s rate of acceptance had dropped by 10%. Research hasn’t yet elucidated how this applies to other gender identities.
The resume screening phase may be completed manually but is often done with the help of resume-screening tools to help assess the degree to which a candidate’s experience matches up with the job description.
The expected outcome of this stage is to narrow down your applicant pool to a shortlist of applicants to be interviewed.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/989/1*I_41pFfXw1O-qyuaREbnQg.png"></figure><h4>1. Establish Guidelines for Evaluating Resumes</h4>
It’s important to begin by setting guidelines for evaluating resumes before beginning the screening process, together with the hiring committee. This can help ensure consistency when reviewing the resumes and can also be a good step toward minimizing unconscious bias.
At this stage, it’s important to be mindful of some evaluation tactics that serve as barriers for underrepresented talent:
<ul>
<li>
Work gaps: often candidates without major work gaps are often favored over those who do have gaps. This tends to negatively impact women, who are more likely to take time off for family responsibilities.</li>
<li>
Attending lesser-known institutions: Often candidates are passed over during the screening process in favor of others with similar qualifications who come from higher-rated institutions.</li>
</ul>
If your hiring committee is insistent on evaluating candidates along these lines, you’ll need to remind them that work gaps and institutions hardly tell the full story. Ask the hiring committee the hard questions to understand what skills they’re attempting to gauge via these hiring criteria, this may expose their own unconscious biases to them.
<h4>2. Safety Test Resume Screening Tools:</h4>
If AI is being relied on at this stage, it’s <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/3-tips-to-reduce-ai-bias-in-hiring-3a9031543feb">important to perform safety tests</a> on your algorithms to ensure that there are no built-in biases that disqualify underrepresented candidates. You’ll also want to make sure to consistently test your algorithms for biases over time.
Look out for part 2 of our diversity recruiting guide, where we’ll be talking about diversifying the remaining three recruitment life cycle stages: selecting, hiring, and onboarding.
Head over to <a href="http://divercity.io/">Divercity.io</a> for more tools to help you recruit with diversity in mind.
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<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/your-guide-to-diversity-hiring-part-1-preparation-sourcing-and-screening-9a83a279d8bf">Your Guide to Diversity Hiring - Part 1: Preparation, Sourcing, and Screening</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/">The Bridge by Divercity</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*PveKm5NQh3FsmA5B4QGPOg.png"><h3>Step 1 — Preparation</h3>
The initial...

Your Guide to Diversity Hiring - Part 1: Preparation, Sourcing, and Screening

We sat down with <a href="http://carolyndmack.com/">Dr. Carolyn D. Mack</a>, a Senior Recruitment and Admissions Analyst, to learn more about how bias plays into recruiting decisions, and how organizations can best approach DEI and strategize around it. Dr. Mack, who holds both an MBA and a Doctorate in Business Administration, never sought a career focused on diversity and inclusion, yet as an underrepresented professional, DEI inevitably factored into her work experience.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*0XzEsbb_YSTIj86mvfOMdQ.jpeg"></figure>You mentioned that was not a goal or role that you sought, yet inevitably it became an important aspect of your work experience. How and why did you begin to focus on DEI?
“My focus on DEI grew out of an inherent knowledge that my lack of career opportunities had less to do with my skill set or abilities, and was more about someone else’s views and beliefs about my personhood based on how I showed up in a space. I began reviewing the behavior patterns and types of rejections that I encountered when attempting to get promoted or make career moves. I noticed that other people were offered opportunities to try new things and grow into a role while I was required to come with already proven experience.
Once I received my doctorate degree in social impact management, I decided to leverage my stature as a colleague and also exercise my social impact muscles, to have some frank and uncomfortable conversations with my department administrators about the idea of opportunity vs. experience. I asked specifically why it was necessary for me to have significant experience relative to an opportunity while others were offered chances without familiarity in the area. This was the beginning of the perfect storm as it was six months before the COVID-19 lockdown and nine months before the murder of George Floyd.
Once the murder of George Floyd occurred, I became a hot commodity at my institution. I again leveraged my status as a colleague and a person of color, to go beneath the surface of subtle racism and unconscious bias. I coached people into examining how they express institutionalized, systemic patterns that limit diversity. I had opportunities to speak to students, staff, and faculty to raise awareness about everyone’s role in intentionally increasing diversity. This also allowed me to examine accepted archetypes of institutional operations that may be contributing to a lack of diversity in the organization.
I knew that although I may say things that caused the majority to bristle, there was no way that they would jeopardize their claim of championing diversity by firing the “only” African American, female, non-physician colleague. Did I take advantage of my ethnicity and gender to accomplish a goal? I certainly did. Once I realized that there was a necessity to have a person in a space like this, I became that person.
In what way do corporate cultures hinder promotion and growth opportunities for underrepresented professionals?
Corporate culture hinders adequate promotion and growth opportunities for underrepresented professionals because “upper management” is a closed ecosystem designed to cater primarily to white men. Organizations tout their diversity of employees in general, however, when employment numbers are stratified based on title or level, it becomes more noticeable that the higher the level of responsibility, the less diverse the groupings become.
The promotion pickle is the journey of experience vs. opportunity. People of color often must have more than the prerequisite requirements to receive a promotion. A diverse candidate must be exceptional and present as a star, and even then, is still not guaranteed an interview, much less a promotion.
Corporate culture and personal biases play large roles in this conundrum. Many organizations like to tout artificial intelligence (AI) as the great equalizer for hiring diverse talent, however, studies show that because most AI engineers and developers are majority people, discrimination is built into the process. And because AI builds its own data scripts, it can perpetuate the lack of diversity based on the choices made by hiring managers who subsequently add their biases to the selection process.
What are some measures that organizations can take to attract underrepresented talent?
“Attracting underrepresented talent requires understanding how job descriptions are evaluated by diverse candidates. Then if AI is used for sorting candidates, there must be an iterative process of auditing and evaluating rejected applications to determine if there is AI discrimination against diverse candidates and why.
Application verbiage can also be a hindrance for diverse candidates. Diverse candidates view applications with a belief of “all or nothing” and think that if they are unable to check at least 90% of the requirements for the position, then it is likely that they will not apply for the position even if they know that they can do the work. This is not because of a lack of qualifications from the applicant but more about increased scrutiny from a non-diverse hiring committee.”
You mention that “there is no standardized approach for DEI implementation.” Are there some essential considerations that companies should factor in, or typical problem areas that they should look to in attempting to improve DEI efforts?
“Organizational diversity is a lifestyle not an issue to be addressed. Without going into industry, company sizes, and other variables that can impact DEI for organizations, here are some essential DEI considerations that any company can start with to develop a DEI culture:
<ul>
<li>
Create a diversity culture in the organization. This diversity mission starts at the executive level. A goal can be to make the organization’s diversity percentages match that of the nation. It is a bold notion, but if consistently worked on, then the results would be significant.</li>
<li>
Continually speak diversity. Diversity is not a side issue. And as such should hold a place of prominence in every organization. Until it has an appropriate place, it will not receive the attention that it deserves. It should permeate the organizational culture.</li>
<li>
Diverse succession planning and mentoring. Sustainable internal succession planning along with mentoring is an excellent way to increase diversity in upper management. If diverse employees know that they are guaranteed to mentor for career advancement, there is a chance for increased loyalty.”</li>
</ul>
What are some biases that, in your experience, tend to show up in recruitment processes?
<ol>
<li>“One form of recruitment process bias comes in performance testing. While performance testing is informative, it is not definitive. Test anxiety and biased testing materials can cause challenges in the recruitment process and if the test is based solely on the score, then great, diverse candidates are not hired. These types of tests bias toward ableism and perceived intelligence.</li>
<li>Another bias in the recruitment process is AI. Once people learn to game the system to put in the keywords then they can bypass the system and get to the interview stage. Others who are not successful with the algorithm but may be equally qualified are sometimes rejected. I witnessed AI gaming bias first-hand. An employee worked as a contractor and wanted to get a federal position. The management team was on board with the person receiving the selection for the job because they were well-qualified, and the recruited position was the role they were already doing. The challenge was that the person could not beat the algorithm to make the selection list. Therefore, the hiring team kept rejecting the AI candidate lists until they finally got a list with the person on it that they wanted to hire. I am unsure of how many rounds of lists they rejected, but this is the conundrum encountered when an AI algorithm becomes the determining factor of selectees.</li>
<li>Video interviewing can present the typical sensory biases based on race, gender, and ethnicity.</li>
<li>In my experience as a candidate, the most common biases that I have encountered are racism disguised as a lack of experience or education. I would not get a promotion because I lacked “experience”, however, they would hire a majority candidate with no experience in the organization or the industry, simply because they had a higher degree. I did not even get a contingency offer of promotion while I wait to complete my next degree. Other majority people would get that option and simply could not understand why it did not happen for me. When I would point out that it was because of my race, they would laugh nervously and dismiss it.</li>
</ol>
Diversity is an intentional act that requires deliberate thoughts, planning, and execution. There is no easy way to become diverse in recruitment and hiring without a willingness to identify systemic racism in thoughts, policies, and procedures and then to make new policies that work for everyone. Authentic DEI systems for recruitment are in their infancy. Many are attempting to use primal AI and create a patchwork system with bells and whistles that they believe speak to DEI.
However, intentional, well-thought-out processes for creating dynamic, intersectional diversity systems with checks and balances that will embrace us all equally (or as close as possible) are still just concepts. Whoever can design, perfect, and get consistently sustainable results from a genuine DEI system concept is going to be well-remembered and in much demand.
To think of diversity in recruitment, you must reverse-engineer what you want to achieve because of that diversity. Organizations hire diverse candidates every day. The challenge is not the hiring but the sustaining. I would say that for a well-implemented diversity system one must think outside the box, but for DEI, there is no box. There is only a blank canvas. Expansive thoughts are required. It will take all of us.”
In what way has organizational attitude toward DEI shifted since the racial equity movements of the past few years?
“Organizational attitudes have shifted only in that there is a greater acknowledgment of DEI, and as more than just a way to count the beans. Some businesses are making meaningful strides to delve into the fact that people are much more complex than the peripheral, sensory impressions that we gather at first sight. This acknowledgment creates some dissonance for those in executive positions who believe themselves to be champions or proponents of diversity when they operate on a surface awareness of DEI. Once exposed to the depth, breadth, and density of significant and substantial DEI for an organization, many are unprepared for how or where to start in expanding the diversity field beyond bean-counting and are more concerned about how it will impact the bottom line for their businesses.”
Visit <a href="http://divercity.io/">Divercity.io</a> for tools to help you recruit underrepresented talent.
To learn more about Dr. Mack’s work, on her websites: <a href="https://taylormckiney.com/">taylormckiney.com</a> and <a href="http://carolyndmack.com/">carolyndmack.co</a>m. You can also connect with Dr. Mack on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyn-d-mack-mba-dba-79732323/">LinkedIn</a>.
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<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/recruiting-with-diversity-in-mind-6ea3f45651c9">Recruiting With Diversity in Mind</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/">The Bridge by Divercity</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We sat down with <a href="http://carolyndmack.com/">Dr. Carolyn D. Mack, a Senior Recruitment and Admissions Analyst, to learn more about how ...

Recruiting With Diversity in Mind

While getting a diverse set of candidates through the door is important, it certainly isn’t sufficient for making sure that your top talent will stay. Beyond focusing on DEI in your recruiting efforts, building an inclusive work environment is key to keeping your teams diverse. In this guide, we’ve compiled a list of our resources to help explain why equity, diversity, and inclusion are imperative considerations for recruiting and retaining top talent.
<h3>Understanding the Problem</h3>
<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/equity-diversity-inclusion-whats-the-difference-32a9d7871b1e">Equity, Diversity, Inclusion: What’s the Difference?</a>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*QPV4oVopCR7UkAC90_M3Iw.png"></figure>Getting candidates through the door is one thing, getting them to stay is an entirely different ball game. Understanding what Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion mean, is a necessary initial step to understanding how DEI, recruitment, and retention are interconnected. While the 3 words are often used interchangeably they refer to different things. Learn more about the distinctions between these notions and why it is essential to tackle all of them if your goal is to build a diverse organization, in <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/equity-diversity-inclusion-whats-the-difference-32a9d7871b1e">our article Equity, Diversity, Inclusion: What’s the Difference</a>.
<h3>Recruiting with Diversity in Mind</h3>
With an understanding of what DEI entail, you can now consider what gets in the way of building diverse teams in tech? In her article “<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/dei-is-the-duty-of-every-recruiter-f6f99885854b">DEI is the Duty of Every Recruiter</a>” Technical Recruiter Moly Garner gets into some of the recruiting observations she’s made throughout her career, and how they get in the way of building diverse teams. For instance, <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/dei-is-the-duty-of-every-recruiter-f6f99885854b">Garner suggests</a> that there tends to be “a recipe” when it come to Software Engineer hires. Something along the lines of:
Top CS School + Experience at Another Enterprise Tech Co. = Offer-able Candidate
This will exclude up to 85% of underrepresented professionals from the candidate pool, she suggests. <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/dei-is-the-duty-of-every-recruiter-f6f99885854b">Read Garner’s article</a> to find more tips for rethinking your hiring strategies, and disrupting recruiting norms that lead to homogenous teams.
<h3>Inclusive Work Environments</h3>
Once you’ve come up with a plan for diverse and inclusive recruiting, you’ll want to understand how you can ensure your company culture is an inclusive and equitable one.
You should care about inclusion because chances are your candidates and employees do too. A recent McKinsey survey found that employees who have experienced microaggressions at work are <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/diversity%20and%20inclusion/diversity%20wins%20how%20inclusion%20matters/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters-vf.pdf">more likely to consider leaving their jobs</a>.Moreover, the US workforce is growing more diverse, and young job seekers are increasingly prioritizing diversity and inclusion in their career decisions. <a href="https://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/diversity/">Glassdoor</a> surveyed its active and passive job seekers to understand the importance of diversity in the job search process, they found that two-thirds (67%) of job seekers consider workplace diversity an important factor when considering employment opportunities.
Suffice it to say, inclusion matters to your employees, and if you don’t start prioritizing it, chances are you’ll push away talented employees, and end up with a monolithic workplace. And a lack of diversity, aside from being inequitable, translates to stagnation in today’s business environment.
<h3>Inclusion in Remote Work</h3>
The recent shift to remote work has complicated the question of what it means to be an inclusive company, and as companies around the globe make the transition to virtual work environments, people are increasingly asking “<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/sustaining-inclusive-virtual-spaces-64efc35fd7ca">How can I foster inclusion in my remote team?</a>”.
Remote work can certainly minimize many of the biases common to physical workplaces. Remote work is not, however, immune to diversity and inclusion challenges. As the world shifts to a new virtual normal, it is essential to be cognizant of the equity and inclusion challenges that remote work introduces, or fails to resolve. You can learn about tech solutions for inclusion on remote teams in our <a href="https://www.divercity.io/dei-guide">Remote DEI guidebook</a>. Key challenges discussed include biases that tend to plague virtual meetings, inequitable work environments, as well as the difficulty of voicing diversity and inclusion concerns in remote work environments.
<h4><a href="https://blog.divercity.io/trust-is-foundational-to-a-healthy-remote-work-environment-c2b7f4ba5fda">Trust is Foundational to a Healthy Remote Company Culture</a></h4>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*OVAvgUAEbEqFZ4Qz"></figure>Both of these factors are in some form connected to trust. Remote work environments can lend themselves to isolation as it can be easy to stick to work conversations and skip the usual watercooler conversations that organically arise in an office. As a result, and especially in cases where co-workers have not previously shared an office, it can be difficult to create genuine connections. Thus, it organically creates a sense of trust amongst team members. Likewise among the reasons why many in the US work long hours is to demonstrate their effort and commitment to employers who can’t see them and may not trust that they are being productive.
You can <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/trust-is-foundational-to-a-healthy-remote-work-environment-c2b7f4ba5fda">learn more about the value of a trusting company culture here</a>.
For a more comprehensive of some of the equity and inclusion challenges commonly faced in remote work environments, along with some strategies for tackling these challenges, download Divercity’s <a href="https://www.divercity.io/dei-guide">Remote DEI Guidebook</a>.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/552/0*73GXp-MzSek2nGW8"></figure>Ultimately hiring and retaining top talent is a matter of creating equitable and inclusive recruiting strategies, and work environments that enable your employees to feel a sense of belonging in the company, and to ultimately be able to thrive and achieve their fullest potential. In order to ensure that all employees have a fair chance at thriving and achieving that sense of belonging it is imperative to be mindful of common equity and inclusion challenges that may arise.
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<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/hiring-and-retaining-underrepresented-talent-952a3cb92440">Hiring and Retaining Underrepresented Talent</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/">The Bridge by Divercity</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.


While getting a diverse set of candidates through the door is important, it certainly isn’t sufficient for making sure that your top talent will s...

Hiring and Retaining Underrepresented Talent

Diversity is first and foremost a matter of equity and fairness. Allowing equal access to opportunities for underrepresented candidates is just the right thing to do. Bringing a diverse set of candidates through the door is only part of the solution. But without ensuring an inclusive and equitable environment, free from discrimination and harassment these candidates are unlikely to stay.
Beyond fairness, diversity is also a driver of business success. A more diverse team means a more diverse set of ideas are shaping your product or service. It’s no surprise, then, that greater diversity translates into better innovativeness and performance.
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*jzfNu7kPQgvR77db1TIrjg.png"></figure><h3>The U.S Workforce is Becoming Increasingly More Diverse</h3>
Millennial and Gen Z are some of the more diverse generations: <a href="https://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/diversity-millennials-boomers/">44% of millennials</a> in the U.S. are white, as compared to 72% of the baby boomer generation. To tap into this growing diverse talent pool you’ll need an equitable approach along with an inclusive environment to attract and retain employees and enable them to thrive. In fact, in a recent <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/about-deloitte/us-inclus-millennial-influence-120215.pdf">Deloitte study</a>, 83% of millennial respondents said they were more engaged when their organization fosters an inclusive culture.
Unfortunately, only 55% of American workers agree that their workplace has put in place diversity and inclusion policies according to a <a href="https://www.gallup.com/workplace/215939/invest-diversity-inclusion.aspx?utm_source=link_wwwv9&amp;utm_campaign=item_236264&amp;utm_medium=copy">Gallup survey</a>. This leaves almost half of Americans in workplaces where DEI fails to receive adequate attention.
<h3>Diverse Companies Are Profitable Companies</h3>
Diverse companies consistently financially outperform their industry peers. <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Featured%20Insights/Diversity%20and%20Inclusion/Diversity%20wins%20How%20inclusion%20matters/Diversity-wins-How-inclusion-matters-vF.ashx">A McKinsey report</a> surveying 1000+ large companies in 15 countries, found that companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity in their executive ranks are 36% more likely to achieve financial gains above industry medians. Meanwhile, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 25% more likely to reap financial gains above industry medians. The report also found that the higher the representation, the higher the likelihood of outperformance.
What’s more, the likelihood of outperforming industry peers, for diverse companies, has risen over the years. As McKinsey’s survey suggests, diversity is a competitive differentiator, moving market shares towards more diverse companies over time. If you fail to prioritize diversity you’re pretty much setting yourself up for failure. Of course, diversity alone is insufficient, and an equal focus on inclusion is necessary to sustain diversity, and unlock its advantages.
Takeaway: As McKinsey suggests, diversity is a competitive differentiator.
<h3>Diverse Companies Are Innovative Companies</h3>
<a href="https://hbr.org/2018/01/how-and-where-diversity-drives-financial-performance">An HBR study</a> surveying 1700 companies across the U.S. France, Germany, China, Brazil, India, Switzerland, and Austria found that companies with higher than average diversity had 19% higher innovation revenues.
Valuing multiple forms of diversity can catalyze innovation. <a href="https://hbr.org/2018/01/how-and-where-diversity-drives-financial-performance">An HBR study</a> In this study, ‘innovation revenue’ was taken to be the percentage of revenue gained from products introduced in the last 3 years, while ‘diversity’ was calculated as an average across six areas: migration, industry, career path, gender, education, and age. All six categories of diversity showed statistically significant correlations with innovation, but ultimately gender, industry, and nation of origin had the largest effect.
Takeaway: Valuing multiple forms of diversity is highly beneficial to innovation.
<h3>Diverse Leadership Unlocks Higher Growth</h3>
<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*iToH4jlW0UPzch4UL4RYaw.png"></figure><a href="https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-diversity-can-drive-innovation">An HBR study</a> found that companies with “two-dimensional” diversity are 45% more likely to have reported a growth in market share over the past year and 70% more likely to report that they have captured a new market.
The word “two-dimensional” is used to describe what HBR calls inherent and acquired diversity. While ‘inherent’ diversity refers to traits we are born with, such as race, ‘acquired’ diversity refers to traits gained through life experience, for instance working in a different country. Companies whose leaders demonstrate at least 3 inherent and 3 acquired diversity traits are two-dimensionally diverse.
Takeaway: the more diversity the merrier. A broad approach that includes multiple diversity dimensions fosters an environment where unconventional or ground-breaking ideas are welcomed.
<h3>With More Women in Leadership Come Greater Returns</h3>
<a href="https://www.catalyst.org/research/the-bottom-line-connecting-corporate-performance-and-gender-diversity/">A Catalyst study</a> found that higher representation of women in leadership positions results in 34% greater returns to shareholders
Companies with more female representation in executive or leadership positions consistently outperform companies where less than half the leadership positions are filled by women
That’s not all: while only about 5% of companies on the Fortune 1000 list are led by a female CEO, those<a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3048342/the-business-case-for-women-in-the-c-suite"> corporations contribute 7%</a> of the revenue of the Fortune 1000 list.
Takeaway: breaking that glass ceiling and inviting more women to the boardroom will unlock greater revenues.
These numbers clearly indicate that much stands to be gained from diversity. In fact, CompTIA CEO Todd Thibodeaux argued that diversity could net the IT industry a whopping<a href="https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-much-is-diversity-in-tech-worth-400b-says-comptia-ceo/"> $400 billion in revenue</a> per year!
Of course, a focus on <a href="https://www.divercity.io/blog/article/equity-diversity-inclusion-what-s-the-difference">diversity alone is insufficient</a>. Getting people through the door is one thing, but without an inclusive environment, they are unlikely to stay. To foster diversity and unlock higher levels of success and innovation, equal attention must be placed on inclusion.
<h3>What You Fund is What You Value</h3>
<a href="https://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/diversity/">Glassdoor</a> surveyed its active and passive job seekers to understand the importance of diversity in the job search process, they found that two-thirds (67%) of job seekers consider workplace diversity an important factor when considering employment opportunities. Diversity was an even more significant consideration for minority job seekers. Moreover, more than 50% of those surveyed, want their workplace to do more to increase diversity. This combined with the growing diversity of the U.S workforce means that companies that fail to prioritize diversity and inclusion may lose talent to companies that do.
The business case for diversity is well-documented. With more and more employees valuing diversity, and with the growing diversity in the US workforce, a failure to prioritize diversity and inclusion is likely to place a company at a disadvantage. Organizations that have been unwavering in their valuation of equity and diversity are increasingly in a great position to thrive. They will likely have more inclusive cultures, to help attract and retain happier, more diverse teams, who will, in turn, enable businesses to unlock innovation and success.
<a href="http://divercity.io/">Diversify your team</a> and unlock these benefits with our <a href="http://divercity.io/">diversity recruitment tools</a>.
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<a href="https://blog.divercity.io/diversity-a-driver-of-business-success-cffe2385b30e">Diversity: A Driver of Business Success</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.divercity.io/">The Bridge by Divercity</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.


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