Following some recent research by the BBC Trust, which claimed the BBC News “fails to reflect the diversity of life in the UK today”* as they tended to recruiter new employees “in their own image”, I wanted to understand what the recruitment industry is doing, or should be doing, to support the diversification of talent across their customers and the overarching business world.
Without doubt, the changing configuration of the global workforce is becoming more apparent all the time in the current economy, with a far greater spectrum of diversity in the job seeker population than has ever been experienced before. Cultural, ethnic, social and age range is widening and organisations need to embrace that in order to tap into greater pool of potential talent. But it is not just the size of the talent pool that is important here - the commercial playing field recruiters are in requires an internal workforce that understands and that can interact with a diverse customer and candidate base to increase loyalty and engagement at all levels.
The starting point for any recruitment organisation, and the point that should make up the pivotal focus on any diversity policy, is to evolve their talent attraction strategies from one which looks beyond a job board or graduate career fair to one that actively interacts and engages within the communities where these diverse talent (virtually or otherwise) reside. To do that, time and effort needs to be invested from the outset in understanding the wide-ranging motivations of each of these different community types to ensure any active attraction strategies align to those stimuli.
Senior employees at the BBC have embarked on a series of learning and development around unconscious bias to increase the number of employees from ethnic minorities working across the business. As an industry that both represents and influences the global workforce, and in particular during a candidate short economic cycle, should recruiters be more proficient and potentially targeted in tapping into these diverse talent pools? And if so, how?
Published by James Osborne May 22nd 2014
James Osborne
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