How to Improve Diversity in the Workplace in 5 Easy Steps

In this day and age, diversity in the workplace is simply non-negotiable.

The more we know about this social issue, the more we learn how to correct our mistakes and reap the benefits of doing so.

However, implementing diversity measures in your company takes time and effort, so you need to do it right.

Here are five proven and tested ways that you can increase diversity in your workplace organically.

Why is Improving Diversity in the Workplace Important?

There are plenty of philosophical and moral reasons why we should improve diversity in the workplace, but it might take more than those to truly create a persuasive argument for your team, superiors, or stakeholders.

Diversity in the workplace isn’t just a philosophical achievement; it also creates appealing results. Here are a few good examples.

1. Creating a positive employer brand

Research has shown that millennials, specifically, care about diversity and inclusion in their workplace.

In other words, they want to work for a company that values social justice and equity. So, when you build up your diversity efforts, you also build up your employer brand. 

2. Encourages better decision-making

Decisions inherently come from our experiences in life. The more similar a group’s experience is, the more narrow their perspective tends to be on certain things.

Due to this, the more diverse a team is, the better the decisions they can make as a whole. In fact, a study by Deloitte revealed that diverse teams are at least 30% more likely to notice mistakes and at least 20% more innovative.

3. Increasing productivity

According to a 2015 report by McKinsey, racially and ethnically diverse companies are likely to outperform their industry medians by about 35%. Gender-diverse companies, meanwhile, by about 15%.

More recently, a 2018 report by Accenture showed that about $25 billion could be added to the United State’s GDP if just 1% of the unemployed persons with disabilities demographic became employed.

Lastly, research by the Wall Street Journal also revealed that over a 5-year-period, the stock offerings of more diverse companies performed about 4.8% better on average than less diverse ones.

5 Steps to Improve Diversity in the Workplace

Now, we know how diversity in the workplace has quantifiable and concrete benefits to a company. But how exactly can it be improved? Here are five easy steps.

1. Acknowledge Your Shortcomings

The first step to improving diversity in the workplace is simply acknowledging that there’s still room for improvement.

With D&I starting to become the new norm, more and more companies are becoming more diverse. However, many businesses worldwide are still not as diverse as they can be.

According to a 2020 article by the FE News, only half of UK workers surveyed believe that their companies are putting in the effort to be more diverse.

The article also cited the Global Workplace Providers study by Instant Offices, revealing that white individuals still tend to be hired more than any other ethnic group, particularly for senior and professional roles.

Don’t be discouraged if your company doesn’t have the best D&I policy. Instead, you can focus your time on creating a plan to actively change that. Here are a few tips.

• Conduct a diversity and inclusion audit. Look at your organisation on a deeper level and figure out how diverse and inclusive your current employee roster is. Don’t be afraid to come up with accurate figures – you’ll need that to proceed to the next steps.
• Identify exact shortcomings. With a thorough audit completed, identify precisely which parts of your organisation lack diversity and why.
• Create systems to address your imperfections. Lastly, lay out a comprehensive, sustainable system that will improve your metrics. The exact solution will depend on your findings and your specific company.

2. Use an ATS with D&I Features

Now that you have a pretty solid idea of your company’s diversity-related issues and how to solve them, using an ATS can bring you nearer to your goals faster.

Most importantly, the best value that an ATS can offer when it comes to your diversity and inclusion efforts come from data centricity and the ability to hide candidate personal data.

This means an ATS with diversity and inclusion features like SeeMeHired allows you to hire candidates based solely on their skills and qualifications while showing you dedicated D&I reports. Ultimately, this helps you build a more balanced workforce and minimise instances of unconscious bias.

3. Educate Employees on Diversity in the Workplace

Diversity training is an essential part of any diversity strategy; one must not simply assume that all their employees have the same level of knowledge about D&I efforts. Educating your employees about diversity gives them the required foundations to be on board with new policies and procedures.

Here are a few tips to implement effective D&I training:

• Make it as convenient as possible. Schedule these sessions where the least amount disruption will happen. You can also provide snacks and meals.
• Make it worth their while. Your employees are not blind to modern issues. Avoid discussing elementary topics that any adult would know. Instead, focus on topics that are interesting, stimulating, and complex.
• Be creative about D&I education. Seminars and workshops aren’t the only way. Build D&I into the fabric of your workplace through various means, such as marking important events on the calendar like religious holidays, LGBTQ+ visibility days, D&I causes, etc.

4. Hire a Diversity Manager

Hiring a diversity manager will help your organisation reach its goals faster. Implementing policy changes across the entire organisation is a huge project, so having diversity managers lead and oversee these efforts will make things run more efficiently.

In fact, a report by Glassdoor states that two of the requirements to make a diversity program succeed are leadership involvement and diversity advocate hiring.

Support from the very top must be visible, as it sends a message that the organisation is taking the issue seriously.

With enough leadership support, diversity and inclusion efforts can get all the funding and management that it needs to succeed.

5. Foster a More Inclusive Company Culture

Generally, diversity and inclusion efforts should be subjective to your corporate identity and workplace culture, and it’s your job to find ways to make this happen.

Designing an inclusive company culture is a sure-fire way to not just introduce D&I but also to make it stick and prosper.

Once inclusivity is ingrained in your culture, it becomes part of your corporate identity, and it will evolve more organically. Your employees themselves will be champions of diversity.

Here are a few tips to help impact your company culture:

• Promote genuine relationships. Don’t limit your interactions to business and work; create a culture that promotes strong bonds, such as events, outings, and sports teams.
• Create safe spaces. Designate prayer rooms, offer unisex bathrooms, improve mental health benefits, and form support groups, among other things.
• Implement an inclusive recruitment process. Attract diverse talent to solve D&I issues from the get-go.
• Celebrate various backgrounds. Be creative. You can hold lunch parties featuring food from employees’ home countries, or organise company holidays celebrating various cultures.
• Gather feedback consistently. This is your most measurable way of evaluating success and rooting out problems, so create a system for easy and regular feedback.

Improving Diversity in the Workplace with SeeMeHired

Diversity in the workplace isn’t just optional anymore: it’s a crucial aspect of every workspace in any industry. If you’re not undertaking efforts to be more diverse, you’re lagging significantly behind your peers.

Luckily for you, one of the easiest ways to promote D&I in your organisation is by using an ATS with a diversity and inclusion module, such as SeeMeHired. SeeMeHired enables you to make unbiased hiring decisions to be more equitable in your hiring process.

Schedule a demo now to learn more.