It may seem like an obvious concept in today’s advanced and multicultural society, but diversity in the workplace wasn’t always as prominent a notion as it is now. To this day, there are still a great deal of big name companies that haven’t adapted the concept of creating more inclusion in the workplace. This is a shame because there’s so much to be gained and ascertained from hiring a diverse range of people to work for you. With the help of renowned recruiting agencies, you can fill your employment gaps and simultaneously reap the rewards of hiring the most qualified candidates for each position without any preconceived biases standing in the way.

PepsiCo.’s Diverse Workforce

To learn about the benefits of cultivating a strong and diverse workforce in your company, look no further than the big brands that have already implemented this type of recruitment. One of the first examples that comes to mind is PepsiCo. Over the years, they’ve proven that they’re strong advocates for hiring people of all backgrounds including religion, sexual orientation, and ethnicities.

The saying “there’s strength in numbers” is highly applicable in this situation. Their strategy for hiring new and appropriate recruits for their company is simple: scout out college and university campuses that are heavily saturated with the most diverse groups of potential applicants and find creative ways of appealing to their skill sets and interests. Statistics show that 35% of PepsiCo’s workforce were visible minorities and 19% were women in 2014 and those numbers have only increased since then. As a way of consolidating the two factors, the CEO of the company, Indra Nooyi, is an Indian-American who also happens to be female.

The Benefits of Creating a Diverse Workforce

Here are a few ways in which diversifying your workforce can benefit your company as a whole:

Boost Productivity and Creativity

While most people tend to gravitate more towards likeminded individuals, this type of environment isn’t conducive to cultivating creativity and generating genuinely innovative ideas. In order to generate new and innovative ideas, you need to bring together people with different perspectives and levels of experience together while also establishing a cohesive and united working environment. The key to doing this is encouraging your employees to strike a balance between differences of opinions and agreeing on new and exciting prospects that could push your company forward.

Improved Employee Onboarding and Retention

Having a staff that’s comprised of a variety of different types of people adds a great deal of value to your brand. It demonstrates to prospective job seekers that you’re working hard to create a working environment that’s not only inclusive to people of all backgrounds, but that you value the unique set of skills that they all have to offer. Inevitably, this method will help to attract the most qualified people for whatever job positions you’re looking to fill.

Positive Employer Branding

A wide range of diversity in the workplace also creates a strong sense of pride in your employees. They can feel good about themselves knowing that their skills, expertise, and hard work in their fields are the attributes that helped them land their dream jobs, not to mention the fact that they’re working for a company that values them as human beings and not as commodities. Employee morale will increase as a result.

Ways to Expand Your Company’s Diversity

Here are some effective ways your company can expand its ideologies and cater to greater potential consumers or audiences.

Diversify Your Hiring Process

The best way to diversify your hiring process is by completely revamping the system. Rather than focusing on a person’s name and their identity, there are ways of eliminating all of those preconceptions and simply learning about what types of skills and experience they have to bring to the table. You can do this by conducting blind interviews and making the hiring process completely anonymous so that candidates have to complete multiple online interviewing processes before you can meet them face-to-face and learn their names.

Rethink Your Job Postings

Job postings are one of the main aspects of the hiring and employment recruitment process that tend to be underestimated. As an employer, you might think that the ball is always in your court, but the fact is that prospective employees are scrutinizing and interviewing you as much as you’re looking into them. Considering this is the case, you need to implement specific practices into your job posting methods to try to attract the right types of candidates for your company and ensure you don’t get bypassed in favour of your competitors. For instance, if your goal is to attract more female candidates, then you can try using more gender-coded buzzwords in your job postings that have been proven to appeal to women.

Identify the Right Talent Pool for Your Company

Conducting elaborated market research is required to help you identify the right talent pool for your company. The best way to do this is by actively expanding your priorities, search criteria, and locations. Most companies these days have the ability to hire people to work remotely from other countries, provinces, and cities if commuting to work is too difficult. This broad range of networking opportunities opens up the doors for you to hire people who are experts in their field on a global scale.

Create Incentive Programs for Employee Referrals

If you already have good employees who have incredible work ethics and have demonstrated their dedication to your company time and time again, then you might be more inclined to cherish their opinions regarding new hires. Creating an incentive program to encourage your current employees to refer people they know to the company is a good way of improving morale within your company and guaranteeing that you’re not wasting your time by interviewing candidates who wouldn’t be a good fit for your company culture.

Resolve Recruit Inc. is a Mississauga-based recruitment firm that connects a wide range of skilled workers and employers across numerous industries including financing, warehousing, accounting, and many more. Since 1999, our company initiative has been to help highly skilled job seekers find ideal temporary or permanent employment with companies that share and cultivate their personal and professional values. To learn more about our comprehensive employment and employee finding services, contact us today!