How to Build a Diverse Workforce and Attract Top Talents

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Diverse and inclusive companies produce innovative results yet the tech industry still struggles with diversity and inclusion, frequently failing to attract diverse talent due to inclusivity issues in the workplace. For organizations that are looking on shaping up their diversity and inclusion programs and policies, here are a strong diversity and inclusion strategies you can apply in your office space Philippines to help your organization attract top talent and drive innovative results.

Establish a sense of belonging for everyone

A sense of belonging is a powerful force. It makes an individual bring their best self forward when it is established. Why? Individuals thrive to do more when they feel that they fit in, valued, and share a common purpose and connection with their colleagues. Moreover, a sense of belonging creates community, encourage better collaboration, drives employee retention, and boosts productivity. In short, it produces great business results. But even though a sense of belonging is considered as a psychological need, these changes take time.

Before employees can have a sense of belonging, they must first have a sense of purpose. Work just for the sake of work can make employees feel disconnected and depressed. But when they know that what they are doing matters and it makes a difference, they are more likely to feel connected and committed to their organization and their co-workers.

It is important to share best practices and be open to your employees as they are trying to be open to new things. It is a good thing to be working on diversity while also working on inclusion. It’s all interconnected.

Empathetic leadership is key

Empathy is an essential quality that a leader in every organization should possess. You have to make sure that you assign a leader that is equipped to make the story his/her own, and feel it within themselves and be able to explain why they care, why it matters to them and to their direct reports.  It is important to have empathetic leaders aside from it’s effective to measure empathy levels of each job applicant ensuring that you are hiring great talents who possess the same critical trait, they can also coach them who doesn’t possess the same trait and help them develop their empathy levels, and help to foster a more inclusive workplace.

A top-down approach isn’t enough

The top-down approach also is known as autocratic leadership, is a management process driven by a business’ upper level of executives. Senior project managers create wide decisions that trickle down to lower departments. Decisions to be made are weighed on variables like frequency and severity, and then made based on the higher or lower levels of such variables. Upper management is the one that gathers and acts upon the knowledge that the employees carry out.

There are many industries in the workforce that practices this business approach because they find this especially appealing. In particular, designers, developers, and engineers are drawn to this approach because reverse product engineering often leads to the best final outcome.

But despite everything, some businesses find top-down approach as not good practice for building a diverse workforce because it drives compliance, not commitment.

However, if you find top-down approach not enough for building the workforce in your business it is up for you to try another approach and activate the different parts of your business’ system—top down, bottom up, and middle out—approach you can use in different ways.

Quotas don’t automate inclusion

Procuring objectives may boost diversity numbers, but this won’t simply automatically create an inclusive culture. Oftentimes, leaders focus on diversity and inclusion efforts with no accordance on the employee pipeline, but the employee experience continues far beyond an offer letter. Best practices to attract, retain, and nurture talent, is to take an honest look at the end-to-end employee experience, with an eye set to create conditions that promote inclusion on a daily basis and designing ways in measuring the impact.

From sourcing and recruiting to hiring, onboarding, to the daily aspects of work, ups and downs, performance reviews, succession planning, team-building, mentoring —everything. It is important for you to understand that this emphasis changes everything.

The organization who intends to attract top talents and build a strong workforce must adapt their processes to scale diverse and inclusive behaviors. An organization must look everything through the lens and create conditions where they can exploit every person’s abilities and make them contribute in their unique and meaningful way. Further, their talent will be nurtured and aside from that, they would want to stay knowing that their works are being valued and so are themselves. This would also mean that you understand and appreciate them.

Inclusion is ongoing—not one-off training

Inclusion requires individuals to identify key moments in which to build new habits or micro-behaviors such as daily actions that can be practiced and measured. It is just not enough to teach them to be inclusive. And when these habits are put into action in an environment that supports honest conversation and healthy tension, real change becomes possible.

In order to make things happen is to identify change within the organization outside of the executive level. Then, equip them with skills and information to help them change for the best and make them a great contributor to their respective departments, teams or working groups. This is much more effective than one-off training sessions which don’t move your employees’ interest in incorporating their ideas.

Maximize joy and connection, minimize fear

People are wired to respond with fear and distrust when their beliefs are challenged. In your office space Philippines, minimize fear, it may be a powerful motivator but it also discourages people and narrow their perspective on dealing challenges which leads to the opposite desired outcome for creating a more inclusive workplace.

Find ways to frame challenges through a lens of possibility and elevate your employees to make them conquer and overcome challenges by sharing them your experiences and create a greater potential for positive change.

Maximize joy and connection and focus on creating moments that will continue the momentum. It is okay to point out where there’s room for improvement, but it is much better for you to pay more attention to the moments of their success and celebrate them.

Forget ‘fit’ and focus on helping individuals thrive

In an organization, it is true that acquiring individual who fits in and is already on a good shape can be an advantage because they can help you with the company processes right away because they might have enough knowledge already. But, to acquire an individual who is less skilled and to help them thrive to unleash their full potential is also worthwhile. To create a culture where you are the one who unlocks the potential of your own employee is something that cannot be denied as most influential thing that a true leader could ever do. With that, one day, those employees who you have help unleash their true potential will make use of that unleashed potential to help and boost your company’s progress as you earned their commendations and it won’t stop there, your company will be recommended which could be the lead to attract top talents and build a not just a company but a stronghold for you and your personnel.

Consider your brand

As in any transformation effort, brand and culture are intimately related. The products and services you show into the world reflect your values–and your biases.

In your journey toward building a more diverse and inclusive organization, it’s important to consider the relationship between what’s happening inside and outside your company. What does your brand say about who you are as a culture? In what ways are your employees base not congruent with your customer base? What experiences are being left behind or misunderstood?

“We see the work with diversity and inclusion as a form of transformation that is required here.” according to Sabrina Clark. That it is not just an initiative or a program: it is something that requires investment from the executives to the lowest person in the door, while also requiring real behavior change. It’s about how the whole company operates and the individual ways of working, communicating, contributing and even just being in the world. Everything about the company reflects your brand so you must consider it.