How to Promote Leadership Diversity

It is encouraging how the number of employers who are valuing diversity in their recruitment processes is on the rise. This means that more entry-level job seekers from marginalised groups have got great luck, although not necessarily increased diversity in leadership.

In terms of the workplace, the proportion of women and minority ethnic background groups being recruited into entry level positions is quite representative, but falls off dramatically for management and particularly senior executive levels; one example being that just 4% of senior business leaders are women of color.

In return, diverse leadership teams often foster increased rates of DEI throughout an organisation with higher retention and promotion percentages for women, racial minorities, disabled people and LGBTQ members.

How can you make your company an environment where experienced competent workers from different backgrounds will want to develop their careers? Here are some tips to help you get started.

How do you create a work environment which encourages qualified employees from varied backgrounds? The following ideas may be helpful in this regard.

Understand the Benefits of Diversity in Leadership

Businesses today must understand that when their top management reflects diversity then they have higher chances of reaching out to more customers as shown by various studies. Organisations with diverse leadership perform better than those without by being more efficient as well as innovative hence making more profits.

Due to an increasing number of job applicants enquiring about companies’ DEI initiatives during interviews, having a reputation for prioritising DEI initiatives including greater management diversity can serve as a recruiting advantage at all levels. This trend is most pronounced among Gen Z job seekers, with 86% citing diversity as an important factor when selecting an employer.

Finally, since 30 percent of employers lack a DEI strategy, a comprehensive approach to diversity hiring and promotion at all levels can give your organisation an advantage.

Develop Talent From Within

Many organisations mistakenly believe that if they focus on diverse hiring practices for entry-level positions it will automatically trickle up through their organisation as these employees grow and develop and gain promotions.

Unfortunately, it is not that simple. The lack of diversity in leadership across teams and at the executive level hampers diverse employees from being nurtured and mentored to succeed in their positions. This leads to poor retention especially for top performers and even staff your organisation has invested time, money, and other resources training could leave for competitors where they may end up flourishing.

The best way to stop this cycle is by critically looking at your present recruitment as well as internal promotion practices. Some of the questions you need to ask yourself include:

• Do you tend to ignore internal talent when filling leadership vacancies?
• Are there policies that promote mentorship?
• Is there a chance for employee’s development on professional or career issues?
• Is our company culture supportive?
• Are we providing opportunities for our workers to learn about career development?
• Does your hiring process keep subconscious prejudice alive?

If you answer yes, then it means that you have some work ahead of you. To compete with DEI-savvy companies, you will need more diversity on all levels – from entry-level all the way up to middle-management and executives.

Recruiting at the Entry and Mid-level

To improve diversity in every position of your company including interns to CEOs, a number of the following best practices for recruiting entry level hires can be used:

Try using blind applications as your recruitment process. This entails removing the names of job applicants, their addresses and names (and graduation dates) of their academic institutions.

They should find career services departments and connect with historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) or schools with diverse student and alumni populations.

Have internships directed towards people of color and oppressed groups on whom there are fellowship programs?

Some professions have associations for individuals from minority backgrounds like Society of Black Engineers. Contact them in your field to get information about any hiring opportunities they may have across all levels.

When it comes to interviews have a prepared script that you will ask each candidate, while creating a diverse hiring committee for every role

According to data, you might even take more extreme measures such as completely getting rid of resumes which can help increase fairness in hiring as well as leadership diversity.

Recruiting for Leadership Roles

There are some organiaations that demand all candidates considered for top management posts must be diverse. Still this kind of policy often works against those who created it. Candidates know when an interview is just a tick box exercise carried out by HR in line with organiaational policy rather than being approached on merit.

As you determine whether a person has potential leadership skills consider looking at roles beyond the workplace? Are there any veterans among your candidates with commanding experience? Have any ever been involved in executive positions within voluntary organiaations or professional associations? Have applicants been engaged into community project management, complex event planning or mentorship?

All these experiences contribute to good managerial perspective development hence should cater while considering internal/ external persons as potential leaders.

And equally highly valued should be DEI initiative work compared to other achievements. Women invest two times more hours than men do into DEI initiatives; because this time seldom counts as official work, promotions often bypass it.

To increase leadership diversity, consider investing in strong career re-entry programs since women are likelier than men to leave careers mid-stream as they care for children or ill old relatives; this impedes gender parity efforts in your management hiring process.

Create a Culture of Inclusion

Is diversity one of the core values at your company? If so have you communicated this effectively through your employer brand?

Retention can be increased by sponsoring affinity groups hence increasing diverse employee likelihood to stay long enough to move into higher positions. Affinity and resource groups allow employees to share common goals, offer support systems and come up with new ideas that can improve your bottom line.

Make sure that all things concerning DEI, including recruitment, mentoring and promotion are linked with management pay. Once these strategies of DEI are implemented, highlight them on your website as transparently as possible for job seekers and include them in all recruitment materials such as job postings.