Taking action at work Part 1: Bringing folks in
Diversity is not your cop out.
Inclusion is messy and hard.
If you can get past these two things. You’re half way to taking your vision for inclusion from vision to action.
Diversity is wonderful and necessary, but just getting a diverse group of people through the door isn’t enough. In fact, if that is all you’re committed to doing, I strongly suggest doing nothing at all. Bringing in folks to be the token black, brown, disabled, etc person sets a dangerous precedent for marginalized people, and is expensive for you. Solving inclusion challenges must be structural. Don’t limit your solutions to what makes you comfortable - get messy, get complicated.
To help you get started, I’ve compiled a list of some big things you can do to address common inclusion challenges around planning, employee recruitment and retention. This list is by no means exhaustive and should be explored collaboratively with a member of the group(s) you’re working to include.
*IMPORTANT NOTE: The activities below are almost useless if you do not take the time to:
Get intimately familiar with your pain points, blind spots and pitfalls before attempting to employ solutions.
Set up systems to fund these efforts, hold all stakeholders accountable, and measure the success of these efforts: there must be budget for doing better.
Strategy should always lead tactics: Yes, the time to act is now. But that action needs to be part of a comprehensive plan that recognizes the challenges, how you’re addressing them and how to measure progress.
Bringing folks in (AKA recruitment)
Reimagine your hiring process so that it values inclusion over speed. Work with an inclusion expert, key members of your team and members of the groups you want to bring in through the door to asses how to implement structural changes including:
Before a job opportunity or call for applications is circulated, have an internal audit. Review who makes up your team at different departments and levels. Find patterns in hiring:
How often are people from equity-seeking groups hired, how often are they promoted, how long do they stay and how are they compensated?
Where have your last 10 hires been found?
If you find concerning numbers and patterns, hold off on hiring and deal with that.
Explore new and alternative platforms to post jobs eg. immigrant placement organizations
Review the language used in job posters not only to weed out exclusive language but to ensure you are posting information about compensation and benefits that are critical to marginalized applicants such as parental leave, Employee Assistance Programs, childcare funds and access.
Take time to engage with *paid* folks from those communities and understand what messaging speaks to them best eg. Does this community value positive community engagement and positive impact over compensation and gym membership?
Write results-based job descriptions that don’t weed out women and other groups who are less likely to apply for jobs based on checklists of requirements. Result-based qualifications instead focus on what successful candidates will be expected to accomplish.
Make space for difficult conversations about the value of certain requirements eg. bachelors degrees, international experience etc. Build a process (ie. metric) that hiring managers must go through to assess the value of each requirement and are able to understand and articulate who it excludes and how to mitigate that.
Adopt the Rooney Rule and require at least two or three (not just one) candidates from underrepresented groups be included in the final candidate pool for every manager or executive hire — and especially for board roles.
Ensure that underrepresented employees are included in your interviews - but don’t overload them. If candidates walk into your space and see no one who looks like them, they are getting the message loud and clear that they’re not welcome. If you have no employees from equity-seeking groups who would be a relevant addition to the interviews (don’t bring in the night cleaner because she’s the only woman!), make that known during the interview.
Don’t cop out on these steps and process when hiring non-permanent, non-full time staff.
Understand that although hiring software are meant to make your life easier, they are not actively anti-racist or anti-discriminatory. This is technology, built by human beings who have included their own biases into the algorithms of that technology - consciously or unconsciously.
When you get to the interview process consider these questions as a starting point:
Are you essentially asking applicants to perform unpaid labour (such as provide proposals on active company challenges or projects)? Is this necessary? Why? Is there an alternative to assess their skills?
Have you established the necessary protections to ensure applicants aren’t disqualified from the recruitment process if they are disabled, use public transport, might need/have to pay for childcare etc.?
Are you setting up the interview process so that an applicant can also interview you and the organization? This has to include more than asking “do you have any questions for us” at the end of an interview.
This is this first of two articles. The second will be a starting point on retention and building an environment internally that is inclusive and allows everyone to thrive. Check back next week for the second part, and be sure to check out my workshop for more information on how you can take your vision for inclusivity from ideas to action.
QuakeLab provides the tools, expertise and methods to take your vision for inclusion from idea to action. We use tried and tested design thinking frameworks and the QuakeLab Inclusion Method that positions inclusion as a functional part of your business structure, and not a buffer piece hidden within HR policy. This means that we support organizations to build inclusion not just into strategy, but into the way you hire, promote, market, sell, buy and more.