How to ensure you hire a diverse team

A warm welcome to our blog! Today we wanted to go over how you can ensure your hiring process emphasizes and includes diversity. It is important to understand why diversity is beneficial and how to hire and maintain a diverse team.

There are many reasons why diversity is a key factor in driving the success of businesses. Here are some of the reasons:

• Increases revenue. Businesses with diverse teams earn 19% higher revenue than businesses without diverse teams. This is an important aspect where diverse teams with different backgrounds provide your business with new ideas and perspectives.
• Makes businesses change ready and innovators. Companies with diverse workforce are more inclined to be able to handle change and drive innovation. It is studied that diversity makes companies 1.7 more likely to be innovation leaders.
• Increases growth and access to new markets. Employees working in companies with an active diversity hiring and policy are 45% more likely to report growth in the company’s market share and 70% more likely to report their firm was able to open up a new market.
• Improves your business brand. Companies with diverse teams will be perceived as open and undiscriminating. This will help your company attract top talent from all backgrounds.

Now that we have noted it is important to hire and maintain a diverse team, let’s delve into how you can best formulate your strategy. These are the five key steps you can take towards building your diverse team.

1. Put in place a diversity and inclusion policy. Having a policy that clearly states your business is supportive of diversity and inclusion shows that you are serious about creating a positive environment for people of all backgrounds to work. If your business already has one, it would be beneficial to regularly review and update your policy.
2. Craft a pro-diversity hiring strategy. If you are hiring, it is important to get things right from the start. Advertising your diversity policy along with your business brand will show that you are open to all candidates. Other hiring strategies include asking for referrals from diverse employees and placing job ads where diverse candidates are available.
   https://www.bcg.com/en-us/publications/2018/how-diverse-leadership-teams-boost-innovation
   https://www.bcg.com/en-us/publications/2018/how-diverse-leadership-teams-boost-innovation
   https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-diversity-can-drive-innovation
3. Go beyond the culture fit. Although businesses wish to maintain their culture fit, it can sometimes be limiting to diversity where you would like people with different cultures to join your team. It is beneficial to review if your workplace culture supports diversity and hire candidates that add to your business culture.
4. Offer internships to diverse groups. Providing internships to people with different backgrounds or unprivileged groups will enable your business to open up to diverse teams. This will also be a good chance to find talented individuals that contribute to your business.
5. Create supportive work environments for employees. Finally, it is important to continue to make diverse employees feel welcome and at home in your business. There are creative ways to retain your diverse employees including native holidays off or making room for remote work.

Partner with us to build and maintain your diverse team

At AJ Connect, we go beyond the standard hiring practice to provide you with diverse qualified candidates to help build your ideal team. We build first class partnerships with the businesses working with us. Join us so we can support you in ensuring you hire diverse candidates that move your business forward.