The Best Practices to Build & Maintain a Diverse Workforce

 

Workplace diversity is and should be one of the key considerations for any organization in 2021. By hiring employees from various social and cultural backgrounds, an organization can widen its range of perspectives, knowledge, and approaches from which decisions are made. In fact, according to McKinsey, gender and ethnically diverse organizations have a greater commitment from employees, higher rates of productivity, and are more likely to have financial returns above their industry medians. That said, while many firms recognize the benefits of having a diverse workforce, there are many challenges that need to be addressed before a successful and balanced recruitment strategy can be implemented.

To better understand the obvious and the hidden obstacles organizations face when building a diverse workforce, we hosted a panel of diversity experts, that included Nicole Amiotte, People Programs Manager at ActZero, Jean-Pierre Fernandes, Sr. Diversity & Inclusion Specialist at The City of Toronto, and Noah Aiken-Klar, Director, Academic and Strategic Relationships, Early Tech Talent at RBC.

During this session, our expert panelists shared their insights on the essential components for a diverse workplace infrastructure, how to recruit diverse talent in a meaningful way, how to eliminate bias in the recruitment process, and how to create and support an inclusive workplace environment.

 

Key Takeaways:

25:30 – A diverse hiring strategy starts with an organization understanding what they are doing to get people to apply, what they are doing to get people into their pipeline, what they are doing in their outreach, who they are reaching out to, and what they are doing to keep this playing field equal to everyone. 

12:02 – Common mistakes that organizations make in regards to diversity and inclusion include: making decisions without considering the community they are trying to serve and relying on the wrong employee resources to create and implement DEI strategies. 

49:50 – In order for DEI initiatives to work, there needs to be commitment from the leadership team. This commitment is about creating the space for the work to be done, implementing it into daily practices, figuring out who is leading the work, and making sure there is full support for implementation.

15:01 – The goal of diversity and inclusion efforts is to get to a matter of belonging. In order to do this, it is really important to make sure that decisions and processes are inclusive, in which they are embedded throughout the organization at every level, and are constantly raised as questions.