Best practices for a diverse and inclusive workplace

Even though many businesses are trying to create and manage diverse workplaces, many are not aware of some of the best practices to follow.

Here are some of the must-follow diversity and inclusion best practices in a nutshell :

Equal access to opportunity

Opportunity to grow is one of the main factors that attract and keep talent within companies. Therefore, employers need to be careful about offering fair and equal growth and career advancement opportunities to their employees.

Fair treatment towards all employees

Fairness is one of the crucial prerequisites for employees to feel valued and accepted. Unfair salaries and benefits packages for employees from different backgrounds lead to unhealthy workplace culture and a lack of diversity.

Establish a sense of belonging

Establishing the sense of belonging is important for employees to bring the best out of them. Having a sense of belonging is one the most important psychological needs that has to be met in order for employees to feel connected with their employers and organizations.

A focus on innovation and creativity

In order to build a diverse workplace, companies must support creativity within their organizations. If innovation and creativity are not one of your main business goals, it will be hard to build and maintain workplace diversity.

Attract diverse talent by rewriting job descriptions and job ads

If you want to attract a more diverse talent, the language you use in your job posting makes a big difference. A study on job postings found those using masculine-type words like “ambitious” and “dominate” were less appealing to female applicants.

Education on diversity and inclusion (and belonging)

For diversity and inclusion to work within your organization, employees need to be educated about the benefits and best practices to support those initiatives. It is not enough for upper-level management to be aware of what diversity and inclusion mean for business success and company’s reputation.

Support teamwork and collaboration

Teamwork and collaboration are what employees expect from their employers to support. Therefore, in order to attract and keep a more diverse workforce within your organization, collaboration should be one of your main company core values.

Organizational flexibility, responsiveness and agility

Multiple research on workplace diversity found that one of the best workplace policies to attract diverse candidates is flexibility.

A PwC survey found that, compared to older generations, Millennials value company culture that supports work/life balance.
McKinsey’s research found that the #1 company value for women is a flexible work schedule.

Therefore, offering flexible work locations and hours helps you attract and retain more diverse employees.

Restructure your recruitment process

In recruitment, focusing on what company candidates worked at or what school they went to can often lead to a decrease in diversity of the candidate pipeline.

However, a valid and reliable personality assessments are great tools to measure candidates’ personality traits, motivations, and skills.

A study of 150 companies found that those that used a personality assessment in their hiring processes had more racially diverse workforces.