How to Recruit High-Performing Teams in the Future of Work

A pandemic and a push for inclusivity like we’ve never seen—all in the last few months? It’s no wonder talent leaders are making changes.

When it comes to tackling something like diversifying your talent, it’s all about progress—not perfection. It takes time to identify gaps in the business and align sourcing to meet specific needs, while many talent teams are already operating with lower headcounts due to the pandemic.

What matters is that you start with a clear understanding of every type of diversity to consider for a high-performing team.

As you read this article, you’ll interpret the takeaways differently than an individual working in another industry, role, location, or stage of their career. That distinct interpretation gives you new insights to share with your team; yet, if you compare notes, you find even more perspectives to consider.

That’s the power of diverse thinking.

Diverse teams are the catalyst to all business-critical initiatives

• 35% increased likelihood of outperforming competitors is a result of racial and ethnical diversity among companies.
• 57% higher collaboration is seen in highly diverse organizations.
• 83% of executives see their diverse workforce improving their client base diversity.

Progress Over Perfection

SHRM found that perceiving one’s workforce as sufficiently diverse is the top barrier to increase diversity in North American. The good news is this century’s influx or unforeseen change taught us all to see that there’s always an opportunity to improve. For many, a practical first step is where all strong workforces begin – talent acquisition.

Hiring diverse talent requires an understanding of what diversity means. It’s much more than meets the eye, and highly-diverse teams include variation among both inherited and acquired characteristics.

8 Considerations to build high-performing teams by diversifying talent:

• Diversity of life experience
• Diversity of sexual orientation
• Diversity of gender
• Diversity of race
• Diversity of age
• Diversity of ability
• Diversity of location
• Diversity of education

“My perspective on what a good performing team and workplace looks like is quite different than that of others in hiring positions – I am keenly and acutely aware that building diverse teams not only creates a better workplace but also delivers better quality solutions for out clients.” – Tifphani White-King, Executive Leadership Team for American Hearth Association’s Go Red for Woman initiative (via Forbes)

Achieve it: How technology elevates human priorities for modern employers

Right now, strong talent acquisition is not about lowering the bar for certain applicants or meeting a diversity quota. It’s about shining a light on underutilized talent. That means getting comfortable calling out workforce gaps and building full transparency into every hiring process, technology, and teams.

Have you tapped into the potential your tech can offer? Whether you’re evaluating a new applicant tracking system or want to use what you have to its full potential, here’s a quick view into the impact:

Recruitment Marketing Software

• Reports sources that result in the most diverse hires.
• Provides the customization needed to welcome talent groups with a sense of belonging.
• Creates personalized career portals to highlight diversity initiatives and programs.
• Uses human-led AI to match candidates to jobs based on skills, to remediate bias.

Meaningful Outreach and Engagement

• Breaks down talent barriers with virtual career fairs that simply require internet connection.
• Introduces progressive resume building through automated chatbots.
• Captures a candidate’s preferred browser language for key communications.
• Offers text to apply functionality to reach talent from anywhere.

Applicant Tracking Software

• Builds inclusive culture-driven screening questions into the interview process.
• Allows admins to mask EEO and PII data at any stage of the process.
• Offers fair and equitable salary suggestions based on insights and data.
• Provides robust reporting functionality to pulse check diversity effort.

We’re redefining the future of work together, and every day there will be a new way to improve the diversity and inclusion of our workforces. Hiring is one piece to support a business-wide strategy.

Source: iCIMS