Advice for how to go beyond a ‘general commitment’ to diversity and inclusion
January 8, 2021 by Greg Meckbach
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Your organization may be committed to having a diverse and inclusive workplace, but you may need to go further than that, the Toronto-based Human Resources Professionals Association suggests in a recent report.
“A general commitment to diversity and inclusion is not enough,” Laura McGee, CEO of Diversio, stated in a release announcing the report. “Clients, customers, employees, shareholders – everyone expects organizations to make meaningful progress.”
HRPA and Diversio released a joint report, Diversity and Inclusion, this past December.
One way for your company to rise above the bare minimum is to implement a policy mandating interviews with every job applicant who submits a resume, and whose background is currently under-represented on the team to which they are applying, HRPA and Diversio suggested in the report.
Manulife Financial has collected data around gender and the Black, Indigenous and people of colour communities in Canada, said Michelle Taylor-Jones, Manulife’s vice president of global DEI, during a panel this past November at KPMG Canada’s annual insurance conference.
“Diversity, equity and inclusion has to be throughout the entire lifeline of the business, from services to products to businesses … to every single part of the organization, really, to build a strategy that’s scalable and able to last for a very long time,” Taylor-Jones said at the time.
In their report released this past December, HRPA and Diversio included a guide to hiring best practices.
One is to have a policy mandating a minimum requirement of 40% women and 30% racial minority candidates at the first stage of every interview process.
“This is especially crucial when interviewing for senior leadership roles,” HRPA and Diversio said. One organization – which HRPA did not name – was able to increase representation of women at the director level in its technology department from 14% to 40% in 12 months after launching this policy.
Another hiring best practice is to ensure, whenever possible, that each interview panel have a least one man, one woman, and at least one person of colour, according to the report.
“Interviewers should have relevant expertise or be in a role relevant to the one being interviewed for by the candidate. Try to limit the number of interviewers at any one interview to three maximum (to avoid confusing or intimidating the candidates).”
HRPA regulates HR professionals. Diversio is a technology vendor that uses artificial intelligence to help companies improve their performance in diversity and inclusion.
Feature image via iStock.com/kate_sept2004
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Textbook lesson on how insanity has crept into the western world, where lies are out in the open and nobody says a thing. There a word for hiring based on skin color. It’s called racism. If you want to avoid it, hire based on merit only. If the top 10 candidates are all black, hire them. If the top 10 candidates are all white, hire them. You’ll thank me later.
Quick look at Diversio shows that the owner is lily white, of her eleven advisors three are visible minorities (27%) funny she doesn’t practice what she preaches.