What are your best tips for finding and keeping diverse talent?

1 Define your diversity goals

Before you start looking for diverse talent, you need to have a clear vision of what diversity means for your organization and how it aligns with your mission, values, and strategy. Diversity can encompass many dimensions, such as race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion, culture, education, and experience. You need to identify which aspects of diversity are most relevant and important for your organization and set specific, measurable, and realistic goals for increasing and improving them. For example, you may want to increase the representation of women or ethnic minorities in leadership positions, or create more inclusive policies and practices for LGBTQ+ employees.

2 Expand your talent pool

One of the main challenges of finding diverse talent is overcoming the biases and barriers that limit the access and visibility of underrepresented groups in the labor market. To overcome this challenge, you need to expand your talent pool and reach out to different sources and channels of potential candidates. For example, you can partner with diversity-focused organizations, networks, and platforms that can help you connect with diverse talent, such as professional associations, community groups, online forums, and social media. You can also diversify your recruitment methods and tools, such as using blind resumes, structured interviews, and assessment centers, to reduce the impact of stereotypes and prejudices on your hiring decisions.

3 Create a culture of inclusion

Finding diverse talent is not enough if you cannot keep them engaged and motivated in your organization. To retain and develop diverse talent, you need to create a culture of inclusion that values and respects the differences and contributions of each individual. A culture of inclusion is based on trust, communication, collaboration, and feedback, and it fosters a sense of belonging and empowerment for all employees. To create a culture of inclusion, you need to model and promote inclusive behaviors and attitudes, such as listening, empathizing, supporting, and mentoring. You also need to provide equal opportunities and resources for learning, growth, and recognition for all employees, and address any issues or conflicts that may arise from diversity.

4 Leverage your diverse talent

The ultimate goal of finding and keeping diverse talent is to leverage their potential and performance for the benefit of your organization and its stakeholders. To leverage your diverse talent, you need to harness their skills, knowledge, perspectives, and insights for solving problems, generating ideas, and creating value. To do this, you need to encourage and facilitate collaboration and innovation among your diverse teams, such as by creating cross-functional or interdisciplinary projects, teams, or committees, or by using brainstorming, design thinking, or agile methods. You also need to celebrate and reward the achievements and outcomes of your diverse teams, and share their best practices and learnings with the rest of the organization.

5 Monitor and evaluate your progress

Finding and keeping diverse talent is an ongoing and dynamic process that requires constant monitoring and evaluation. You need to track and measure your progress and performance against your diversity goals and objectives, and identify any gaps or challenges that may hinder or prevent you from achieving them. You can use various indicators and metrics, such as diversity ratios, retention rates, engagement scores, satisfaction surveys, or feedback forms, to assess your results and impact. You also need to collect and analyze data and feedback from your diverse talent and other stakeholders, such as customers, partners, or investors, to understand their needs, expectations, and experiences, and to identify areas for improvement or change.

Finding and keeping diverse talent is not easy, but it is worth it. By following these tips, you can build and sustain a diverse workforce that can boost your organization's performance, reputation, and success.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?