| | AUGUST 2021MANAGEHRMAGAZINE.COM8In MyOpinionBy Cecilia Stanton Adams, Chief diversity and inclusion officer, and Tracy Bruckschen, senior director of talent acquisition, Allianz LifeIncreasing diversity is likely a goal many organizations have either considered or committed to in the past few years. Despite good intentions, the reality is that many organizations are struggling to meet these goals. While there is certainly no shortage of diverse talent in the market, talent acquisition and HR teams need to take a hard look at their recruitment processes with an eye toward improvement. This takes a lot a preparation, education and refinement during what is a continuous journey toward increasing the diversity of an organization.And while we're still very much on this journey ourselves at Allianz Life, here are the steps we have taken thus far, and some learnings and considerations for organizations who are on the same journey.Getting a baselineNo matter what size your organization is, understanding where you're starting from is critical. If you're able, work with a third party to take a hard look at where you're starting your overall diversity journey. Having that external lens can help identify gaps, understand priorities and carve out next steps. It also helps provide accountability as you map your path forward. Candidly, this baseline is probably going to be a reality check for many companies. Some of these issues might be hard for your organization to talk about, much less address head on, and it can be overwhelming understanding where to begin. But it's necessary to have that transparency of information as well as data to determine how to improve. It can also help you identify metrics that you'll want to track. Consider percentages of people of color (POC) external hires and current employees, as well as their tenures and departures. In the hiring process, also think about requiring diverse candidate slates and working toward different hiring outcomes. Once you can better understand the baseline, it's time to be intentional about making changes. For us, this meant hiring a chief diversity and inclusion officer. It's a role that's helped bring all diversity initiatives under one umbrella and prioritize what's most important to the organization, which includes co-creating a company strategy on diversity recruiting.Building your strategyAfter you know where you're starting from, you can create your overarching strategy and begin educating employees on the importance of these efforts. The D+I journey includes everyone from the executive leadership team to the talent acquisition team to hiring leaders to individual contributors. This is an important step not only during the hiring process, but for onboarding and beyond, to help build and sustain an inclusive company culture. One step we've taken is to offer Cultural Awareness Training to all employees, both new and existing. This is currently virtual and is led by internal employees who have been trained to facilitate conversations about culture, what it means and how it impacts the way we process information, communicate and build trust. We thought it was important that employees were talking about these topics and leading the conversation. While PUTTING IN THE WORK: THE CHALLENGES AND SUCCESSES OF INCREASING DIVERSITY RECRUITMENTCecilia Stanton Adams
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