February with The Fuse: Removing Bias from Talent Decisions

A Recap of February's Find | Keep | Grow series

Providing equal opportunities for employment within your organization is a good thing. But what about equitable representation once a candidate joined an organization? When focusing solely on new hire diversity, many companies overlook the workforce and leadership already in place. Will candidates and new hires see a diverse representation of others in their work and real-life communities? Will they find a place of comfort and belonging - where they can do their best work and see that real opportunity exists for others like them??

While DE&I requires time, commitment and investment, it provides measurable ROI in company performance. A more recent McKinsey study shows ethnically diverse organizations are 36% more likely to outperform less diverse companies, and 25% more likely to outperform only gender diverse companies.?

In Fusion Recruiters & FOCUS Training's latest Find/Keep/Grow installment “Removing Bias from Hiring Decisions”, we asked Kisha Keeney, Omar Velaochaga, Angela DeMent, Shary Tran and Kelli Cameron for their thoughts about the value of DE&I and how organizations can develop a framework for DE&I adoption and success.?

Where to start????

The first step can be difficult but is often the most critical- reflection and assessment regarding your organization’s current hiring, culture development, training, and leadership practices.?Creating a SWOT analysis around these practice areas can be a tremendous tool to help map your greatest areas of opportunity. “You must create awareness and a desire to be a more diverse and inclusive organization”, says DeMent. Once that commitment has been established, other steps towards progress might be:

• Establishing DEI as everyone’s responsibility within the organization.
• Conducting a critical review (and potential overhaul) of your organization’s legacy systems and processes.?
• Assessing how your leaders are effectively trained and developed to inspire and manage individuals different from themselves.
• Evaluating what movement and retention look like internally for diverse employees.
• Considering internal processes for tracking and managing that movement.

Ideas to Action?

All our panelists suggested perfection shouldn't be expected overnight. As with any transformation efforts, changes must be taken, digested, and applied in strategic steps.??

“You can’t just show up at a job fair and expect people to come to you, you have to build credibility when it’s not in it just for you”, said Velaochaga. “The newer generations in the workforce want to match their purpose with the purpose of an organization. They want to stand for what you stand for.”?

To that end, and the pursuit of progress over perfection, panelists suggested the following ideas as steps organizations could make to improve their DE&I efforts:???

• Require leaders to participate in DE&I training.??
• Continue to consider and develop the leaders engaged in your organization’s hiring process and decisions.
• Who is doing the interviewing? Does the team feature a diverse group of interviewers that might be representative of the whole company??
• Consider developing Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and ensure they have a voice for change.??
• Reassess your organization’s interview processes to eliminate bias. ?
• Engage in proactive dialogue: Look for opportunities to leverage feedback from surveys, town hall discussions and employees.
• Promote partnership building across business units across the enterprise.?
• Establish relationships with diverse associations and partner groups outside of your company.
• Encourage current employees to be talent ambassadors by positioning and promoting your employee referral programs.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) promotes consideration and representation across your organization for anyone engaging with your company. Whether that interaction is online or offline, as part of onboarding or offboarding, or anywhere in between - establishing and maintaining your company’s commitment to DE&I has shown to be both a differentiator and value-driver in today’s talent market.

Thank you to all our partners and panelists for their thoughts and leadership on this topic and the reminder that the goal of DE&I is not to create a forced, ingrained program to be adhered to, but to transform the way a company carries itself through regular, daily human behavior.?

Fusion Recruiters is proud to partner with FOCUS Training to deliver the Find | Keep | Grow leadership development series.?Stay tuned for the latest regarding our Summer '23 event!

To watch the full February Find | Keep | Grow event, visit Find l Keep l Grow: Removing Bias from Talent Decisions - YouTube.

We have great job opportunities waiting for you!

Take a look at who we are celebrating this month!

Fusion Cares Program: In-person celebrations!

The Fusion Cares program was created because we wanted to provide clients with a way to support causes close to them as a result of their partnership with Fusion. Since starting in 2022, we have been able to support over 20 organizations! To celebrate the difference we made, we love getting together in person with clients for a lunch, coffee, etc.! Check out some of our recent celebrations:

Left photo: Fusion & WCTC support the WCTC Foundation!

Right photo: Fusion & Kohler support Junior Achievement of Wisconsin!

Want to discuss partnering with Fusion or speak with a team member about our open career opportunities? Visit us at?www.fusionrecruiters.com!?