Recruitment is a difficult process for many businesses. The right candidate can make or break a team, which puts recruitment teams under significant pressure to find the right person for the job. 

However, most businesses look at recruitment the wrong way, especially when it comes to equality and diversity. Many look at diverse recruitment from a legal position, meeting diversity targets instead of the many benefits that come with diverse teams. 

In this article, we’ll outline what diverse recruitment is, how it can benefit your business and how it can be implemented into your recruitment process. 

What Is Diverse Recruitment?

Diverse recruitment is the process of hiring an individual without involving any biases against an individual or group. It provides equal opportunity for all candidates, no matter their background or ethnicity. 

Diverse recruitment policies ensure discrimination and stereotyping are avoided and allow businesses to recruit the best person for the job based on experience and skillsets. Employers who take this approach are often perceived as a fairer (and happier) place to work, with employees having higher job satisfaction. 

With that in mind, here are 6 benefits of equality and diversity in the recruitment process. 

Benefits Of Diverse Recruitment Policies

1. Unique Perspectives

The great thing about a diverse talent pool is the different perspectives you gain. If a team consists of different social, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, they’ll offer a different perspective on challenges faced by the business. 

These unique perspectives can help teams generate innovative ideas, come up with better solutions to problems and look at current problems with a whole new perspective. This adds extra depth to employee collaboration and will ultimately result in better output from meetings. 

2. Opens The Door For International Business

Globalization has changed the way we do business. Historically, only larger corporations could expand globally. Now, smaller businesses can get involved in the international market with just a few employees. And if employees are from the countries a business is looking to expand into, they have a huge advantage. 

Diversifying into another country is extremely difficult, and many businesses get this wrong. Tesco and Chevrolet are two examples of this. However, if you have an employee who already understands the language and culture of another country, it's significantly easier to build relationships and get your foot in the door. 

3. Attracts The Best Talent

Alongside greater work-life balance and financial incentives, diversity and equality have been ranked among the top 5 things employees look for in their employer. By including diversity in your recruitment process, you open up not just the people that can apply, but also the quality of candidates. 

By attracting applicants with different backgrounds and experiences, you dramatically increase the likelihood of finding the best individual for the job. This increases the likelihood of finding a good applicant straight away, dramatically decreasing the risks associated with an unqualified individual. 

4. Promotes Positive Workplace Environments

There’s nothing worse for a business than a room full of yes men. People who will agree with new ideas even if they don’t believe they’re best for the business. Workplace diversity counteracts this problem. By recruiting a diverse workforce you can create teams whose skill sets complement each other, leading to better decisions. This improves organisational performance, employee satisfaction, and overall morale. 

5. Improves Company Reputation

The best businesses are those that take a human approach to work. Think Ben and Jerry’s. Despite being an ice cream brand, the brand is better known for its approach to climate change, social change and other humanitarian efforts. 

When your business is known for its diverse recruitment policy, you begin to build a positive reputation as a fair business. This improves relations with your clients who want to be associated with your brand and also creates stronger loyalty amongst current employees. 

6. Increases Profits

Alongside a range of social benefits, equality and diversity in the recruitment process can increase your profits down the line. 

A 2017 study by McKinsey & Co found that on average, executive teams with gender diversity outperformed their competitors by over 20%. Further studies by McKinsey showed that firms with more diverse cultural and ethnic groups are 33% more likely to experience industry-leading profits than those with non-diverse teams. 

This research suggests that a diverse recruitment process can drastically improve performance and profits in the long run. 

How To Create A More Diverse Recruitment Process

If you want to create a more diverse recruitment process but you’re unsure how, here are 3 tips to get you started. 

1. Check How The Job Post Is Written

Research by McKinsey found that the way a job post is written can impact who applies. For example, words such as “dominate” and “ambitious” commonly attract male applications. 

On the other hand, language such as “flexible schedule” and “company culture” was more appealing to female candidates. Therefore a combination of language can be used to create a more diverse recruitment process from the moment you start advertising a job position.

2. Diversify Your Assessment Process

Businesses tend to use the same process every time they need to hire someone new. They ask for a CV and a cover letter, both of which will usually include prior experience, schools the candidates went to and references (which can often be well-connected family friends). This process limits the diversity of candidates. 

An alternative option is to use a personality assessment. These assessments look at factors such as personality traits, skill sets and reasons for their applications. This process naturally results in a more diverse application pool, which can lead to many of the benefits mentioned above. 

3. Consider Flexible Working Options

Research has found that flexible working options attract more diverse candidates. A study conducted by PwC found that Millennials prioritize work life balance more so than any other generation. With flexible working hours, millennials can base their work around their life to create that balance. 

In addition to this, research by Totaljobs has found that almost 50% of employees have considered quitting due to their commute. On top of this, commutes are often more difficult for individuals living outside cities and areas correlated with more diverse neighbourhoods.

Businesses can offer flexible working options (such as working from home) to open up their recruitment process to a range of candidates, giving more individuals opportunities to work without having to make a commute. 

Is A Diverse Recruitment Process The Future of Business?

With so many benefits associated with a diverse workforce, it’s only a matter of time until businesses worldwide begin to adopt diverse recruitment processes. As more research is done on the subject and long term results are discovered, it’s likely that diverse recruitment policies will become the norm, with diversified assessment processes and working options available to build the teams of the future.