Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace
‘We need support with our diversity recruitment strategy’,
‘Our industry is misrepresented’,
‘How can I break the gender imbalance in my industry’.
Sound like you? This is one challenge we hear from employers on a daily basis.
Here at Careermap Media Group, we recognise the importance of taking a collaborative approach to a diverse and inclusive workforce.
We’re here to support you on your way to creating a diverse and inclusive talentpool that supports your wider recruitment strategy. First off, we’ve got some generic tips that you can put into action yourselves and then we’ll share some hints and tips on how we can support you:
1.Are your external communications working for you?
Make sure you’re featuring a diverse and representative workforce in your communications. From your email campaigns to social media outreach and partner emails. You want to show potential candidate that people of all ethnicities, genders and backgrounds can excel in your organisation.
Take this Amazon video as an example:
They do an amazing job at highlighting the different people working at their company and really showcase the company culture and reasons behind joining.
2. Show your commitment
Make sure your commitment translates into your job advertisement. Are you unconsciously using gender biased lanaguage in your job advertisment? Research by the The University of Waterloo and Duke University determined a series of words that socially, culturally and historically contain stereotypes towards a particular gender. Although you may not intentially position a job advert to be gender biased, you could unconsciously be doing so.
Masculine words
Active
Adventurous
Aggress*
Ambitio*
Analy*
Assert*
Athlet*
Autonom*
Boast*
Challeng*
Compet*
Confident
Courag*
Decide
Decisive
Decision*
Determin*
Dominant
Domina*
Force*
Greedy
Headstrong
Hierarch*
Hostil*
Implusive
Independen*
Individual*
Intellect*
Lead*
Logic
Masculine
Objective
Opinion
Outspoken
Persist
Principle*
Reckless
Stubborn
Superior
Self-confiden*
Self-sufficien*
Self-relian*
Feminine words
Affectionate
Child*
Cheer*
Commit*
Communal*
Compassion*
Connect*
Considerate
Cooperat*
Depend*
Emotiona*
Empath*
Feminine
Flatterable
Gentle
Honest
Interpersonal
Interdependen*
Interpersona*
Kind
Kinship
Loyal*
Modesty
Nag
Nurtur*
Pleasant*
Polite
Quiet*
Respon*
Sensitiv*
Submissive
Support*
Sympath*
Tender*
Together*
Trust*
Understand*
Warm*
Whin*
Yield*
Note. The asterisk denotes the acceptance of all letters, hyphens, or numbers following its appearance.
You also need to consider if your benefits are geared up towards ethnically diverse candidates too. Think about what other religions celebrate like Eid, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Diwali - make diverse candidates feel valued and acknowledge cultural and religious occasions.
3. Celebrate differences in the workplace
There are lots of celebrations that you can get involved in to show your support for diversity and inclusion. From International Women’s Day to Black History Month, Pride, The Queer Student Awards and Multicultural Apprenticeship Awards.
Use a job board for underrepresented groups
Disabilityjob.co.uk is the leading job board to help companies attract candidates with disabilities to their job vacancies.
Bmejobs.co.uk helps people from Black & Minority Ethnicities to find inclusive employers.
LGBTjobs.co.uk supports LGBT+ candidates to find inclusive employers.
Ex Forces Jobs Network provides jobs for UK Ex-Military and their Families
There are also industry specific job boards that specialise in diversity such as Women in Tech, Women's Engineering Society and Women into Construction to name a few.
Case Study: How can Careermap Media Group help
Careermap Media Group received a brief from a client* asking for support to increase the number of diverse candidates that applied for their roles. We worked with the client to understand their organisational needs and campaign requirements. The client wanted to target ethnically diverse candidates and females for this particular campaign. Careermap Media Group then put together a campaign strategy that aligned with the clients goals. In just over 3 months, we helped boost the clients diverse talentpool from 8% to 58%.
So how did we do it?
The Job Spec
Firstly, we looked at the clients job spec to see if they were using any male gender biased words. We then sent the client some female dominated words to update the spec to for their approval.
Targeted email campaigns
Careermap Media Group then put together targeted email campaigns ensuring the campaign assets were aligned with the clients goal, featuring a wide range of ethnicities and females in the imagery. The email was gender decoded like the job spec to ensure the messaging was right for targeting females. We then segmented our database and targeted only females and ethnic diverse candidates within the locations the client was looking to recruit.
National Live Events
As the client was recruiting for apprenticeships and graduates, we ran a live event during National Apprenticeship Week and National Graduate Week to help the client to cut through the noise and really show students and graduates what working life is like. This offered the client the perfect platform to highlight their companies culture and diversity. We managed the marketing of the events and got these impressive results for the client:
National Apprenticeship Week
National Graduate Week
*Please note that for the purpose of this article the client asked not be named.
We hope you found this advice useful and can implement some of our recommendations into your own recruitment strategy. However, if you need any support or would like us to manage your recruitment campaign please contact a member of our friendly team.
