How to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion in your SME recruitment strategy

Promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in workplace is not only for mega corps and industry giants. No matter the size of your company – whether you’ve 3 or 300 employees – you’re never too small to think big and be fair. And remember, it’s not enough to simply be aware of DE&I. To build and sustain a business that is fair and open to all, it’s not about passive tolerances and empty promises. It’s about proactive DE&I advocacy throughout the career path in your company, starting with recruitment.

Creating a diverse workforce is quite simply just the right thing to do. But not only that, there is evidence to show it improves the creativity, revenue and profile of your company. Read on to find out how and why SMEs should embed and promote DE&I in everything from a job description to a training plan.

What do DE&I look like in SMEs?

First, let’s take DE&I one at a time.

Diversity is anything that makes us different from each other, whether it be age, ethnicity, gender, religion, neurodiversity, sexual orientation, education, disability and so on. Embracing diversity is about empowering people, respecting what makes us different and opening our workplaces up to those differences in a positive, safe and nurturing way.

Equity in the workplace is ensuring everyone has access to the same employment, benefits, training and development opportunities.

Inclusion is about tailoring the working environment, communication, language, publicity and branding to ensure everyone feels seen and heard.

Diverse, inclusive hiring and selection processes

Diversity hiring is not a one-size-fits-all process. It has to be tailored to your business to ensure you welcome a diverse group of talented people with a variety of visible and non-visible differences to work for you.

By its very nature, this is tricky. These aren’t the sorts of details that candidates put on their CVs. And because humans are naturally in many ways unconsciously biased, it is vital that you work to reduce any potential bias in your recruitment practices.

There are simple steps you can take to help mitigate unconscious bias and achieve diversity throughout the hiring process:

1. Check your website celebrates and reflects genuine diversity so that when potential candidates inevitably look your company up online, the images, reports, press releases, values and branding represent everybody, equally. In a 2020 survey 76% of the jobseekers and employees interviewed reported that, when checking out a potential employer, a diverse workforce is an important factor in their decision-making.
2.  Review and revise recruitment documents to ensure that the language you use in job descriptions, application forms and interviews isn’t subconsciously targeting a certain demographic or deterring particular groups of people from applying. For example, use non-gendered pronouns ‘they’ and ‘you’ rather than ‘he’ and ‘she’, and neutral job titles like ‘Chair’ instead of ‘Chairman’. Be aware of phrases that might act as deterrents to certain groups, e.g. ‘digital native’ might exclude experienced older candidates and ‘highly experienced’ might deter an otherwise qualified recent graduate.
3. Advertise vacancies in new, varied and/or targeted places, that is, somewhere other than your usual platform, somewhere you might attract a wider variety of candidates, like on specialist job platforms, online forums or in special interest magazines.
4. Anonymise applications by removing information that identifies age, gender and other identifying features.
5. Review your interview panel membership and questions to bring in different perspectives and insights that will influence and shake up the way the interview is conducted and show the candidate how inclusive the company is.
6. Hold structured interviews and skills-based assessments so that you’re using the same questions in the same order for each candidate. The answers can then be scored against pre-set criteria. This helps to minimise bias and level the playing field.

Diverse, inclusive professional development and performance management

There are no losers when everyone, regardless of ethnicity, age, sexuality etc has the same opportunities to progress in their careers and achieve their potential. Your professional development plans and performance management programmes should reflect your company’s values to ensure all workers feel valued and respected.

Here are some tips to help you ensure your approach to developing and evaluating staff performance is inclusive and equitable:

1. Base performance on fact not opinion by setting clear goals and expectations for your employees. This ensures that performance is assessed against specific objectives rather than a manager’s opinion.
2. Get feedback from several sources for a more balanced review, lowering the chance of bias and prejudice from a single member of staff.
3. Encourage leaders to use inclusive language in their feedback to avoid discrimination of any kind. You can do this by leading by example, politely nudging people to use appropriate phrasing and including a note on having a respectful tone and inclusive language in company guidance for managers giving reviews.
4. Use surveys and 1:1s to ask employees how they feel. Questions might include whether employees feel they can be their authentic selves at work, whether they feel they need to conform to progress and be successful.
   
   

Diverse, inclusive support for retention

Best practices in DE&I create a working environment and atmosphere that is welcoming to workers, helps them feel comfortable being who they are, empowers them to speak up when they need support and makes them feel valued and secure. All of this combines to make your place of work the place they want to stay, reducing the likelihood of them seeking employment elsewhere.

For more information, read this CIPD guide on the dos and don’ts of DE&I recruitment.

If you need help with recruitment, contact one of our friendly experts at Key Appointments on 0844 504 4666 or drop us a line at info@key-appointments.co.uk.