Using Tech to Reduce Workplace Inequality

Whether you’re a startup or an established Fortune 500 company, your workforce is made up of different (and sometimes unequal) experiences and opportunities based on our gender, age and background. However, this possible lack of equality throughout your workplace is a huge obstacle that you have to face in order to get the very best out of your team. For example, a new study from Sodexo found that when the ratio of male and female managers hovered between 40% to 60%, the team was 23% more likely to have seen an increase in gross profit. Encourage equality and diversity within your team to get the most productivity out of everyone and increase your revenue. This not only is beneficial to the company, but the employees themselves as they can use these opportunities to grow and develop their ways of working together, creating ideas and problem solving within their everyday tasks.

Diversity works, but the question remains on what you can do to transform inequality into opportunity and growth. The solution? Use technology to your advantage. Here are some examples of systems and tools that you can use to help build your team up for success:

Improve Your Candidate Pool

In order to improve your talent pool, talent pipeline or anything of the sort, you have to first understand what your current situation looks like. This is where an applicant tracking system can come into play. The data and gathered from these tools helps bring forth any diversity issues in your hiring process, such as gender, race, sexual orientation and more.

If you’re looking to attract and hire the best candidates, your path to diversity needs to start here. In fact, in a study by Glassdoor, 67% of potential job candidates list workforce diversity as an important factor as they evaluate their job offers. So, this isn’t a time to slack – get the right ATS and start evaluating your process and talent pools now.

Looking for the best fit? Here are some things a great ATS should offer:

• Candidate sourcing
• Flexible application builders
• Apply options (including mobile, video interviews and more)
• Talent pool parameters
• Recruiting analytics
• Predictive performance

Video Interviews

A great way to push diversity and equality forward is through video interviewing. Regular interview tactics aren’t cutting it anymore. As an example, recent studies have found that white names get 50% more callbacks than African-American names. So, how does video interviewing solve this issue? And what are some ways that you can use it in your process?

Video interviewing creates a small divide between the hiring manager and the candidate. Often, even the most accepting interviewer can be influenced by unconscious bias. Pre-recorded video interviews ensure every candidate receives the same questions and has the same opportunity to provide an adequate answer. Then, once the questions are complete, the hiring manager or interviewer reviews the video and is able to choose the best candidate. This provides equal possibilities for all candidates and decreases the risk of interview bias, letting candidates shine while also ensuring fairness across the board.

Use Big Data

We’ve already touched on using data to broaden your talent pools and track the candidates you are targeting. However, technology and data doesn’t stop there. Using data can also be beneficial both during and after the hiring process through talent management tools. More specifically, it can be helpful to acquire a talent operating system that aids you in finding, hiring and engaging with the candidates you’ve been searching for. This ensures that your diversity tactics reach deeper than just the job description or onboarding process. Systems such as these help you establish the proper goals and engagement to help your team continue to develop in both diversity and inclusion. In fact, a 2015 study by Deloitte found that there was a statistically significant relationship between diversity practices and employee engagement at work, for all employees.

Be sure to look out for these key features in talent operating systems:

• Role management
• Goal tracking and alignment
• Employee engagement
• Best practices resources

As the roles and practices within HR become more advanced, technology becomes your key to success in creating a successful team while also decreasing workplace inequality.

The Branchers

We build the best damn marketing campaigns on the planet. And we do it for industries and companies you might not identify as easy to market (right away). Working here takes a very special kind of person.