Closing the gap on diversity within organizations

Workforce diversity is one of the most important considerations for modern organizations. Having diversity in terms of gender, age, thought, experience, culture and skills is important in ensuring a variation in perspective and approach. When this is in place, there's often more in the way of innovation and success overall.

How a balanced workplace culture breeds success

Numerous studies carried out in recent years show that companies that place a focus on diversity as part of their talent acquisition strategy are better positioned to find success. This is primarily due to outputs inherent in having a mix of different people and skills.

According to a Forbes study, for example, companies that have an inclusive and diverse workforce are higher performers in terms of internal innovation, allowing their operations to grow quicker.

In addition to this, Harvard Business School has previously reported that firms where diversity is an important issue and that promote multiculturalism in the workplace are among the best at fostering creativity.

Mckinsey> also reports that companies that are gender diverse are 15 percent more likely to perform well, while those that are ethnically diverse are 35 percent more likely to perform well, showing the importance of a diverse strategy in talent acquisition.

How an RPO can help foster a diverse workplace culture

Be it gender, age or race, for years, companies have been making efforts to ensure they are more inclusive in their permanent hiring. It is a strategy that an effective recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) model can help to promote and leverage, giving businesses a much better chance of success in hiring in a diverse manner.

RPO providers have industry experience and expertise in sourcing and onboarding the right people for the job, regardless of age, gender or other identifier, meaning they are better positioned to ensure they connect with the right people to foster diverse hiring.

Creating a diverse workforce starts with leveraging an effective hiring strategy through RPO solutions. At Allegis Global Solutions (AGS), we use a number of different permanent hiring techniques to ensure that your talent acquisition is bringing in the right people to complement and improve your company's culture.

We employ a variety of strategies to make this a reality, including:

• Diversity recruitment:We learn about your business, goals and plans, as well as working out your current representation map to formulate a strategy that enhances your diversity in hiring. We also use metrics to track progress of this throughout.
• Campus recruitment:Diversity in the talent pipeline is important for the future, so we make use of university clubs, professors and other organizations to identify skilled young people from diverse backgrounds who can begin their career with you.
• Veteran recruitment:>Veterans can bring a lot to a workplace, including leadership, self-discipline and grace under pressure, and they are a vital addition to any diversity plan. We have experience in the nuances of this type of recruitment.
• Gender diverse recruitment:Workplaces have been becoming more gender diverse for years, but there's still a long way to go in driving equality. We value the importance of having a mix of people in influential roles, and understand that sourcing is about skills and qualifications rather than gender.
• Age diverse recruitment:As more people from new generations come into the workplace, it's important to leverage the wide range of skills that different age groups bring to the workplace. We can help highlight skills important to your business and recommend how and where to leverage these.
• Disabled recruitment: Making use of recruitment days to source and identify skills among people with disabilities, we ensure that this group is not being discounted from consideration, and their important leadership and skills are not being lost from business.

Using the right tactics to source skilled and diverse candidates is vital to ensuring your business' culture is perfectly set up for growth and innovation for years to come, and at AGS, we understand the importance of getting this right.