Advantages of fair hiring practices for diversity

Benefits of a diverse workforce

Every organization wants to hire the best candidates, but the recruitment process is highly complex, and things like bias and unfair selection criteria can creep in if you aren’t careful.

Fair hiring practices exist to remove unconscious bias and discrimination from the hiring process and foster a more diverse workforce.

However, adopting fair hiring practices will help you remain in compliance with federal law, which is a benefit.

A fair hiring process also ensures compliance with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). They’re in charge of enforcing federal employment laws like the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) of 1978 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

These laws make it illegal for employers to discriminate against applicants based on race, color, religion, sex (which encompasses gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age, disability, or genetic information.

If your organization isn’t compliant with these laws, it could be in hot water with the EEOC, which is never good for a business’s reputation (or bottom line).

As a bonus, plenty of evidence suggests that diverse workforces are more profitable and productive than workplaces without diversity.

According to Apollo Technical, 85% of organizations with a diverse workforce report maximum profit. Another Harvard Business study found that teams with gender-diverse executives were 21% more profitable than non-diverse teams.

Fair hiring decisions will also make your organization more attractive to top talent, as Glassdoor found that 3 out of 4 job seekers prefer companies with diverse workforces.

In this article, I’ll explain everything organizations need to know about fair hiring practices, so don’t go anywhere else.

Understanding fair hiring practices

Ideally, hiring new employees should be based entirely on merit.

In other words, the candidate who receives the position should be the most qualified person for the role.

However, we don’t live in an ideal world. Therefore, there are dozens of ways that bias can creep into the talent acquisition process. This bias can be conscious. Furthermore, it can be unconscious.

These biases can make the application and interview process unfair, limiting diversity and excluding truly qualified candidates based on discriminatory factors.

Fair hiring practices aim to eliminate the possibility of conscious or unconscious bias interfering with the recruitment process. In doing so, organizations will provide equal employment opportunity (EEO) to all candidates, regardless of their protected characteristics.

An example would be using blind hiring practices for the application process. That means eliminating any application questions that don’t relate to a candidate’s experience and skills. These applications would not have boxes for gender, race, and ethnicity.

You can also take things a step further and interview candidates without physically seeing them (you can use partitions and audio equipment to achieve this).

Techniques like this significantly reduce bias and foster diversity, which is what fair hiring practices are all about.

Exploring conscious and unconscious bias

On the unconscious level, biases can form due to:

1. The halo effect. This bias comes from our brains falsely assuming that people skilled at one thing will also be equally adept at others. This negatively impacts decision-making because the person is making false assumptions. An example would be a candidate who’s extremely kind and patient during the interview, which greatly impresses one of the interviewers.
   
   
2. As a result, their kindness forms an invisible ‘halo’ around the interviewer’s perception of them. They think, “They’re so nice that I’m sure they’ll do an outstanding job in whatever role we place them in.”
   
   
3. This is a false assumption because the interviewer does not know the candidate’s core competencies. While they may be nice, that’s not evidence that they possess the skills necessary to perform the tasks associated with a role. This is only one way the halo effect can take shape, so it’s essential to remain cognizant.
   
   
4. Affinity bias. We’re naturally drawn to others who remind us of ourselves. It’s how all kinds of relationships form, but it gets in the way of the hiring process. Affinity bias occurs whenever an interviewer prefers a candidate because it reminds them of themselves. If left unchecked, this can lead to unfair hiring practices and a severe lack of diversity.
   
   
5. Confirmation bias. This type of bias occurs whenever an interviewer makes up their mind about a candidate within a few minutes. They either decide they like or don’t like the candidate based on immediately apparent factors, such as attire or demeanor.
   
   
6. For example, say an interviewer immediately favors a salesperson candidate due to how they carry themselves. Since they’ve convinced themselves they’re perfect, they can ignore major red flags that signal otherwise, such as lacking the right skills.

Many more types of unconscious bias exist, but those are among the most common.

On the conscious level, interviewers may discriminate or show bias based on a candidate’s ethnicity, gender, or other protected characteristic, which are illegal and unproductive.

Implementing fair hiring practices, such as blind hiring, using inclusive language on job applications, and employing diverse hiring managers, will help you avoid these biases.

How will fair hiring practices benefit your business?

Fair hiring practices have many advantages and are worth adopting in all organizations.

Moreover, discriminatory hiring practices can cause even worse disadvantages, so you should always strive to make your hiring process as fair as possible.

Here’s a look at the main benefits of a transparent, fair hiring process.

A larger talent pool

For example, suppose you only want to hire people of a certain age or gender. In that case, you automatically exclude a large portion of the human population, making filling open positions and finding top talent extremely difficult.

Conversely, your talent pool will expand dramatically if you try to include DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) in your hiring process.

You will no longer have to stick to a specific type of candidate to hire, freeing you up to hire the truly most qualified applicant for any given position.

Higher levels of engagement with lower hiring costs

One of the worst things about bias and discrimination is that they significantly reduce the size of your available talent pool.

Another significant benefit of a diverse workforce is that it boasts higher levels of engagement than a less diverse workforce.

A host of benefits go along with having a highly engaged workforce, such as boosted morale, higher motivation levels, more productivity, and less absenteeism.

Engaged employees are also far less likely to leave, resulting in lower turnover and reduced hiring costs.

Compliance with hiring laws

As mentioned, the EEOC enforces federal employment laws that protect candidates from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, and genetic information.

Local laws also impact the hiring process, so knowing which laws directly affect your organization is essential.

You should implement fair hiring practices. These practices are the best way to protect your business. Specifically, they protect your business from costly lawsuits. Moreover, they protect your business from other penalties. These penalties are for breaking employment laws.

Also, a formal complaint from the EEOC has the potential to seriously harm your organization’s reputation, which is why fair hiring practices are a must.

Fair-chance hiring has many benefits

Fair hiring practices can also include fair-chance hiring, which means hiring applicants with criminal records.

For example, ban-the-box policies encourage employers not to ask if candidates have criminal histories (which also means getting rid of background checks).

While ex-offenders aren’t protected from hiring discrimination under federal law, there are benefits associated with fair-chance hiring. For instance, research shows that fair-chance talent outperforms traditional talent in engagement by 30%.

Top fair hiring practices to implement at your organization

Now that you know why fair hiring practices are worth it, let’s look at some of the most popular and effective techniques for making your selection process more fair and free of bias.

The techniques that we’ll explore include:

1. Using inclusive language in job descriptions and interview questions
   
   
2. Implementing skill assessments to hire based on merit
   
   
3. Adopting diverse hiring teams
   
   
4. Using blind hiring practices

Let’s learn more about each one.

Using inclusive language

Believe it or not, your language in job descriptions greatly fosters a diverse workforce.

That’s because it’s shockingly common for job descriptions to contain gender-specific language without even realizing it.

An example would be looking to hire a ‘salesman’ instead of a ‘salesperson,’ which is gender neutral.

Other common examples include:

1. Wait staff instead of waiter or waitress
   
   
2. Parental leave instead of maternity leave (since both parents can take leave due to a child being born)

Besides gender, some job descriptions may unintentionally exhibit ageism through words like ‘young’ and ‘energetic.’

Speaking of adjectives, lots of descriptors like ‘aggressive’ and ‘strong’ tend to have male connotations, which may cause female applicants to feel isolated or unwanted.

Conversely, the adjectives ‘support’ and ‘assist’ can be biased toward females, so it’s essential to include gender-neutral language in job applications, especially for pronouns (using they and them instead of he and she).

Since this type of language is sometimes difficult to pinpoint, tools like The Gender Decoder are helpful.

Implementing skill assessments

As stated in the intro, the hiring process would entirely revolve around merit and nothing else in a perfect world.

To encourage merit-based hiring, you can utilize skill assessments to ensure candidates truly possess the necessary skills to perform the tasks associated with the roles they apply for.

While you can form your skill assessments using various methods, plenty of online tools make the process extremely easy.

One example is Vervoe, a platform enabling employers to create custom, AI-powered skill assessments for job candidates.

Adopting diverse hiring teams

One of the best ways to combat all forms of unconscious bias is to utilize diverse hiring teams.

This is effective because a diverse hiring team will have an easier time identifying instances of bias. Also, a diversified hiring team can make judgments and observations that a less diversified squad would.

If all your hiring managers look and act the same, strive to add diversity to the mix to keep things fresh.

Using blind hiring practices

Lastly, it’s impossible to exhibit unconscious bias if specific applicant characteristics are kept secret.

If your team isn’t aware of a candidate’s gender, ethnicity, religion, age, sex, disability, or genetic information, exhibiting bias becomes impossible.

At the same time, your team is far more likely to make a fair decision based on a candidate’s skills and experience alone.

Final thoughts: fair hiring practices

Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve covered so far:

1. Fair hiring practices help employers comply with employment laws while fostering diverse workplaces.
   
   
2. Diverse work teams are more productive and engaged than teams that lack diversity.
   
   
3. Many forms of unconscious bias can creep into the hiring process, which is why fair hiring practices exist.
   
   
4. Some of the most effective fair hiring practices are using inclusive language, employing diverse hiring managers, using blind hiring practices, and implementing skill assessments.

Your hiring process should be as fair as possible. If it is, you will avoid harmful lawsuits. Additionally, you will reap the rewards of diversity.

More resources:
Pink-collar workers: Their value and importance in the workforce
Understanding new-collar jobs: A path to success without a degree
Talent shortage solutions: A forward-thinking strategy for business growth

Want more insights like these? Visit Matthew Scherer’s author page to explore his other articles and expertise in business management.