6 Ways to Improve Diversity at Your Business

Diversity can be a controversial topic, but if your business strives to create a multi-cultural oasis of talent, it shouldn’t be. Creating a diverse workforce has huge benefit for employers. The studies show that increasing corporate diversity improves the financial performance of a company on average by 19%. This proves that diversity is good for business, no matter what industry your company is in.

 

Here are six easy ways to promote diversity at your business and reap the rewards that it brings.

 

Measure Your Business

Set a baseline for where your company is in terms of your diversity goals. It’s important to recognize that diversity is about more than race or culture. Look around your business at gender, education levels, political affiliations, physical abilities, religions, socio-economic status and more. Measuring where you are now in terms of your own particularly corporate diversity goals is the first step toward improving the makeup of your team.

Set Recruiting Goals for Diversity

A great way to find more qualified candidates of all types is to expand your search over a broader geographic area. One way to do this is to reach out to a staffing firm like Twin City Staffing. Recruiters spend an enormous amount of time building a network of passive job candidates. You can work hand-in-hand with a recruiting team to broaden the target audiences you’re trying to reach.

Retain Your Existing Teams

If your organization is trying to grow, make sure you do a nice job retaining your existing team to keep them long-term. If you’re losing employees, conduct exit interviews to understand what is driving people away. Then, fix any issues and keep the people you worked so hard to find. Particularly focus on retaining employees whose backgrounds fit the profile for the diverse candidates you want to ultimately attract. If your employees are already a diverse crew, it will be easier to attract more people like them.

Pay Close Attention to Your Existing Cultural Norms

Sometimes the hardest questions are most worthwhile. Ask yourself and your team if the organization is working to promote inclusiveness in their daily activities. Are there subtle or not-so-subtle attitudes preventing people from feeling at home? These issues must be addressed or your business will suffer.

Provide Diversity Training

It may be a good time to have diversity training on inclusion and the subtle biases people exhibit that keep us apart. This should include candid discussions of what your workforce looks like from the top of the ladder to the bottom rung.

 

Attract New Candidates by Using New Tools

While working with a staffing agency is one way to improve your candidate pool quickly, consider attending job fairs or other recruiting activities you have never tried. You could also change the benefits structure to include flexible work arrangements for your employees. Do you have jobs that could allow telecommuting or the ability to flex your schedule in other ways? These options will attract additional candidates you’ve probably never considered.

 

The team at Twin City Staffing is standing by to help you diversify your talent pool. Contact us—we can help.