According to a 2018 LinkedIn survey, 47% of employees cared about whether their company fostered an environment where they could be themselves. That feeling continues to gather pace and momentum. But, how do we better integrate employees from all walks of life? Should we favour technical skills or soft skills? What if it was possible to interweave the two? In some ways, does diversity and inclusion come down to us saying: “We don’t want to see your CV, we want you to show us your personality instead?” Here are our tips for making your practices more inclusive.
1. Yes to affinity, but in moderation!
A move towards diversity and inclusion means going against our cognitive biases. While we tend to be interested in people who are like us, diversity requires fighting against this inclination. While getting along well at work motivates and stimulates our days, this feeling of camaraderie can overshadow more rational factors. So, yes to affinity but only for professional purposes.
Putting the CV to one side in recruitment decision making, ask yourself objective questions:
– Is this candidate aligned with the company’s values and culture?
– What type of management do they expect? Is it the same practiced in your company?
– What additional skills will enrich the rest of the work team?
– Which of the candidate’s soft skills are strengths for the position in which you are recruiting?
Here are a few: adaptation, sense of collective responsibility and community, initiative, perseverance, openness or even being able to demonstrate diplomacy.
Are you familiar with interpersonal affinity? Based on psychological profiles and the nature of each individual’s expectations, this method allows us in HR to identify which employees will be able to work side by side on a daily basis harmoniously and productively.
2. Degender jobs
For example, look at gender inequalities at work. Many professions and roles are stereotyped by gender: ‘HR is more for women, while technical and digital professions are more for men.’ Yet there are leading male human resources managers and pioneering female IT technologists.
Underpinning these sexist clichés are stereotyped notions related to soft skills. Empathy, attention to others and listening being often attributed more to women, while assertiveness, persuasion and perseverance are more attributed to men. Aren’t these ideas dated? Results from the AssessFirst SHAPE personality test (used by over 10,000 recruiters in 30 countries) showed us that, to the contrary: personality and traits are almost always gender neutral.
What if beyond our gender, social origins or backgrounds, we focused on each individual’s personality, as the most effective indicator and determining factor of professional success?
3. No CV necessary to find the right profiles
The ideal candidate does not have a CV! Does that surprise you? What could be better than a personality test to better identify candidates’ soft skills? It’s 2021, we have better ways to highlight a candidate’s strengths and motivations than simply having them write it out on a decorated piece of A4 paper. Every HR recruitment process aims to gauge candidates’ potential, particularly by asking the right questions. With recruitment tests, no CV necessary, you appear as you are.
Let’s talk about predictive recruiting. This system speeds up the HR process by evaluating candidates through personality tests developed using criteria directly linked to the position to be filled. Profiles are compared to existing employee profiles chosen by the company. This method makes it possible to select profiles that are 20% more efficient than those chosen through conventional recruitment methods and reduces staff churn by 50% in certain positions. You may say, “artificial intelligence has already been proven to be sexist” (hello Amazon). Our response is that it is the developers themselves who are responsible for those algorithms’ “preferences” – the technology is not flawed, only the human design behind it. In short, artificial intelligence in the context of recruitment supports you in identifying and selecting talent for any position without bypassing your HR process, because it leaves you with the final word on what to do with this powerful information.
4. Practice and promote inclusion on a daily basis
A company’s employer brand often reflects its internal reality. In a 2019 Glassdoor study of Diversity and Inclusion, 55% of employed UK adults said that they had either witnessed or experienced discrimination relating to age, race, gender, or LGBTQ identity in the workplace.
75% of UK employees reported that their company employed a diverse workforce but over half of all respondents said that their company should be doing more.
Our challenge in HR in regards to diversity and inclusion is recruiting and integrating people from different social backgrounds. HR processes must support commitments to diversity and inclusion, for example by promoting the physical and psychological well-being of every employee. Encouraging the reporting of discrimination cases (even anonymously if necessary) can contribute to greater vigilance between employees.
When it comes to diversity and inclusion in the workplace, you’re talking to EVERYBODY – not just certain groups. Aim for fairness rather than giving preference to one set of employees, because the more that employees feel involved, the more they will follow suit.
