Tips to kick off your organization’s diversity recruitment strategy

The case for employing a diverse workforce

As the modern workplace continues to evolve, an inherent driver of that change is diversity and inclusion. Research and statistics have proven the benefits of employing a diverse workforce—according to BuiltIn, diverse companies generate 2.5% more cash flow per employee, and employees who report their organization as having an inclusive culture are three times more likely to be engaged with their work.¹

As important as it is to focus on diverse sourcing efforts, there is also an increased need for organizations to ensure that internal processes and protocols are set and continuously reevaluated in order to retain diverse talent. Partnerships, both internal and external, and inclusive measures are the keys to creating and sustaining effective diversity recruitment strategies.

Strategic partnerships to support diversity recruitment plans

The most effective practice for building a diverse recruitment strategy is developing alliances with appropriate stakeholders to support these efforts.

Internal partners

In the first phase of your strategy, gaining alignment from various internal teams is recommended—diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), talent acquisition, internal communications, human resources (HR), and senior leadership. With buy-in from these important players, a diversity audit can be deployed to guide future efforts.

Consulting organizations such as The EWGroup have outlined steps and methods to deploy a diversity audit within your organization.² These audits provide a holistic snapshot of the current workforce demographic makeup, employee attitudes, inclusivity of current policies, practices, and more. The audit can be broken down into an in-depth analysis for internal teams to actively plan around and senior leadership to uncover insights and takeaways from. With the data in hand, talent acquisition, DEI, and learning and development teams are great resources to help build training content specific to diversity recruitment so that recruiters are empowered to upskill and leverage best practices.

External partners

Once internal areas for improvement are identified post-diversity audit, teams can begin to identify gaps and focus areas for their diverse sourcing strategy. At this point, partnering with external organizations can be an effective way to fulfill your company's diversity recruitment needs. For example, if the workforce has low representation of Black/African American Gen Z employees; an intersectional approach can be taken to partner and recruit from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).³ This strategy could build a strong pipeline of interested younger African American talent. Comparatively if there is low representation of employees who identify as LGBTQI+, a partnership with an organization that focuses on the professional development and advancement of individuals in the LGBTQI+ community could be beneficial.

It’s important to note that partnering externally doesn’t always have to incur a cost; unique connections and knowledge-sharing initiatives can often be facilitated via Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).

Inclusive measures inform a diversity hiring strategy

Partnering externally can be a great starting point in implementing a diversity recruitment strategy, but there are also inclusive measures that can be implemented within your business to advance diversity sourcing efforts.

Being equitable and inclusive is about meeting your candidates where they are and ensuring your roles are easily accessible. Traditional in-person hiring practices may not apply—pun intended—if your ideal candidates are across the country or overseas. At CAI, many of our roles are remote ↗, which enables us to tap into regions that are rich in diversity to support our recruitment initiatives. With remote roles, organizations can source from regions with diverse demographic makeups, which can be identified by utilizing US Census data.⁴

An additional untapped talent pool that is an important part of CAI’s DEI commitment is the neurodiverse community. By connecting business needs with attention to detail, keen concentration, sharp problem-solving skills, and exceptional pattern recognition which are key strengths of neurodivergent individuals, organizations can unlock new paths to heightened innovation and value. The impact of neurodiversity employment can be seen in candidate success stories like Robert’s, whose work with a national leader in education testing helps to keep the organization digitally secure and compliant.

Internally, employee referral programs put your employees in the driver’s seat and incentivize them to help you tap into new talent pools. This dimension of diversity recruitment can be self-sustaining by encouraging members of ERGs to leverage the referral program to bring in diverse talent. Since ERGs are affinity-based groups, encouraging members of the ERGs to share roles with their networks can create connections with new candidates who align with your DEI culture.

Start small, make a great impact

There is a myriad of ways that your organization can implement diversity sourcing efforts. The key to a successful and sustainable strategy is to get a pulse-check on your company’s maturity in your DEI journey. From there, identify the tools and mechanisms that can be leveraged both internally and externally to further your diversity recruitment journey.