Having a diverse team of employees is very helpful for a company’s success. Individuals from different backgrounds offer unique ideas and approaches, fostering a culture of innovation and creativity. The following visual exploration highlights the various ways diversity enhances business results, including how companies in the top 25% for leadership diversity tend to achieve higher profitability and financial performance.
What gets in the way of building a diverse team of employees? Bias in the recruitment process. Several human biases seep through hiring efforts and even impact recruiting software. No one is immune to implicit bias. People are likely to make snap judgments during the hiring process that could harm attempts to build a more diverse workforce. Because recruiting software and artificial intelligence is often programmed using keywords from the human recruiters’ searches, the technology can absorb the recruiter’s bias. In fact, Amazon did away with its recruiting AI in 2018 after it taught itself to value male applicants. Their recruiting AI was crafted on ten years of resumes and hiring decisions where it adapted the same bias held by the human recruiters.
However, recruiting AI can be extremely helpful to the hiring process if it is programmed with unbiased data. The data must be collected from a wide variety of sources that include diverse information and results. Factors like age, gender, and names should be removed to prevent the software from learning ageism, sexism, or racism. Instead, have the software consider a bigger range of the candidate’s information, like their interests, skills, and hobbies. It is also beneficial to have the AI consider from the candidate’s perspective if they would fit within the company.
Diversity makes companies more successful. With an unbiased recruiting AI, qualified candidates can be selected regardless of factors like age, gender, and race, leading to a more diverse and skilled workforce.
Infographic Source: ThisWay Global