By Grace Murphy:
Striving to promote genuine diversity and inclusion within your business is a noble goal, and it’s one that is widely recognized by the public as a necessary endeavor for all businesses if they want to develop their respect and status. This diversity can benefit your business significantly by making your business a more attractive prospect to a wider pool of talent. Ensuring that you are running a business that others feel comfortable joining is essential if you want to stand out from the rest of your competitors, and to help you achieve this, we’ve put together a few tips on championing diversity within your small or medium-sized business.
Hire a Quality HR Team
Your first and most important decision is to hire a talented HR team to help you manage your recruitment process effectively. This team should be dedicated to your goals of inclusivity and diversity and can likely provide you with valuable advice and guidance on this matter. While the recruitment phase is very important, helping you bring people of all different backgrounds into your company, they’ll also be required to help teach your team about being inclusive and considerate to others.
Talk to Your Employees
It’s important to get a real understanding of your employees’ needs, which will often be in relation to diversity. Speaking to your employees is essential if you want to find what they need and what things are bothering them. While your HR team will be able to act on your behalf, relaying concerns and helping you figure out solutions to these problems, you should make your determination to fix them as clear as possible. You can do this by meeting with your staff individually or on a group basis. This will let your team know you are dedicated to ensuring that your company is inclusive and focused on bolstering the diversity of your business.
Offer Training to Everyone
One of the key elements of diversity and inclusion is offering equal opportunities to your team. Everyone should have the opportunity to further their skills, for example, and therefore you should aim to provide easy access to further training, including specialized training for more marginalized groups. For example, you could offer training to women in your team, such as a women’s leadership program, which will, in turn, help you to increase the number of women that would be good candidates for promotion into a management role within your business. Women are still underrepresented in leadership positions, and striving to reduce that divide is a very positive stance. Don’t forget that you should also endeavor to make pay equal across the board.
Market and Promote Your Goals
It’s important for you to get the message of your goals across to the public, as this will help increase your potential candidates, especially those from various backgrounds. There are many ways to improve your diversity recruitment strategy, and using marketing can be one of the best ways in which you can do this. Without promoting and marketing these goals, very few people are going to be aware of your company’s ethics and desire to champion diversity. Work with your HR team as well as your marketing department to develop a positive public message regarding this topic.
