The Importance of Diversity and Inclusion in Hospitality Talent Acquisition
- By Harri Insider Team | March 9, 2023
The world is a diverse place, and businesses are striving to prioritize diversity in their hiring practices. While it may seem straightforward, achieving true inclusivity involves overcoming several complex challenges. Being inclusive means surmounting several challenges, and no business wants to be left behind as consumers look closely at forward-facing employees as a thermometer of a company’s inclusion practices. Companies must focus on diversity to meet consumer expectations, as forward-facing employees are a visible measure of a company’s commitment to inclusion. Every business deals with this, but the hospitality industry even more so. Failing to prioritize diversity can leave businesses at a disadvantage as consumers increasingly support inclusive and representative companies.
Defining a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce
Having a truly diverse workplace is more than checking a few boxes. To be intentionally inclusive, talent acquisition requirements need to not just include, but seek out people of every gender, sexuality, race, age, religion, political affiliation, disability, ability, and socioeconomic status. It goes beyond hiring and includes monitoring diversity on all levels, despite the difficulties it poses. As teams grow or employees change roles or leave the company, someone needs to track the data so they can continue their forward momentum rather than lose ground and be forced to start over again.
Inclusion is less tangible than diversity, but with proper communication and seeking employee feedback, employers can learn how their employees feel about job satisfaction and their individual sense of belonging. This directly impacts retention rates and is important information to have, information that’s right at your fingertips if you reach out for it.Â
A key point to consider: diversity means that your staff is made up of all different kinds of people, but inclusion is when they all matter equally.
Having a workforce made up of many different types of people must be seen as an ongoing growth strategy, not just a benchmark to achieve. A diverse and inclusive workforce benefits everyone involved because businesses thrive when they are made up of people from all walks of life and their subsequently unique ideas.
The Benefits of a Diverse Workforce
In the hospitality industry, customers can easily see the diversity, or lack thereof, in your staff. A visibly diverse workforce helps build a sense of community and trust, as customers feel your business represents not only them but the broader world. This alignment of morals encourages brand loyalty and regular patronage. Companies that fail to prioritize diversity risk negative feedback and loss of support.
Hiring individuals from varied backgrounds enhances problem-solving and fosters creativity. A diverse team brings a wider range of perspectives and innovative ideas, improving both employee performance and customer service. Additionally, diversity offers a competitive advantage, as employees who feel valued for their unique contributions are more confident and proactive, leading to better solutions and stronger leadership within the company.
- Visible diversity builds customer trust and loyalty.
- Varied backgrounds enhance problem-solving and creativity.
- Competitive advantage through valued and confident employees.
Incorporating Diversity and Inclusion into Your Talent Acquisition Strategy
Revising your talent acquisition processes isn’t hiring diverse candidates just to meet some numbers or look good. It’s acknowledging that there can be bias or accidental discrimination in your company’s approach that needs to be identified and avoided, so you can fill your positions with the perfect candidate that may have otherwise been left out of the interview process in error. But how do you improve your talent acquisition strategy? Diversifying your workforce is a combination of several approaches.
Enlarge Your Candidate Pool
To diversify your talent pool, you need to equally diversify where you reach out to candidates. Seeking them in new places brings in new possibilities, so consider different avenues of candidate sourcing. College job boards in different cities are a great place to start while encouraging employee referrals (incentivized, if necessary) will broaden your pool and simultaneously help with inclusion. The more diverse your team already is, the better your referral results will be, with very little extra effort on your part.
Leverage Technology for Inclusive Hiring
Allow for online interviews instead of in-person meetings, utilizing technology to attract more people in the early stages. Reach out to candidates from prior job searches, and if they’re not interested or unavailable, ask them to share your job description with someone they feel would be a good match. This keeps your brand top of mind while building brand devotion because you thought of reaching out to them; this practice can be helpful in the future when they are considering a new job. All of this can be made easier by working with Harri to build your talent pipeline!
Identify Bias or Flaws in Your Current Hiring Practices
This can require that you and your Human Resources team take a hard look at what you’re currently doing to hire. How diverse is your hospitality-based business? Are you requiring skills that only certain people can obtain? Are you excluding those with disabilities or those that appear to be older when you review their job history on their resume? Are your job openings only being seen by people in certain socioeconomic areas?
Listen to Current Employee Feedback
 Your current team can be your best source of intel. Are they happy? Do they feel they’re being given opportunities for promotion or that they’re held back? Is there any feeling of preferential treatment or favoritism with management? These are things that require further investigation to resolve and to prevent recurrence. Everyone needs to feel they have a safe, trustworthy listening ear in the event of problems, in order to foster inclusion. Consider these extra tips on how to ensure you’re ensuring diversity and inclusion when filling leadership positions.
Utilize Talent Acquisition Software
 Using a service like Harri can save you a lot of time, while helping you enlarge that talent pool we talked about earlier. Take a peek at this talent attraction page for some of the ways the platform can work for you. Multi-channel job broadcasting is just one of the many ways that talent acquisition software can help. It will get your job openings listed in more places with just one step, making sure more people have a chance to indicate their interest. The software can also organize your hiring process by tracking candidates throughout the process, from the first collection of applications to the best part of all – telling someone they got the job.
Create Streamlined and Standardized Interview Processes
If you’re not yet using talent acquisition software, you may want to look at a free demo with Harri. It will do a lot of the work for you, presenting you with strong candidates with far less outlay of your time. If you wish to continue the process on your own, start with streamlining the process. Make your requirements fair. Not all job candidates will have weeks to go through a lengthy interview process, as many people are in a financial position that requires them to accept a job offer that comes in the soonest, even if it’s not the best offer. Cement your interview process, so every candidate in every position goes through the same process of intake phone call, online interview, and perhaps a final interview followed up with an offer letter. Making everyone go through the same steps can remove any discriminatory practices.
Diversifying Your Workforce with Conversational AI
Conversational AI has come a long way and is a very valuable tool in the hiring process, helping employers to reduce and eliminate human biases. Biases are often unconscious and are usually unintentional, but it’s important to realize that we all have them. Using AI removes the possibility while revolutionizing hiring strategies. Putting talent acquisition into the hands of a software platform yields excellent results and is something that can be reused for all your future hiring needs.
Enhance the Application Experience with AI
AI isn’t just for you – it also is a big help for your applicants. Carri Chat & Apply is a tool within the Harri talent acquisition software platform. It enables candidates to text, scan or message you on multiple channels to initiate the application experience. Job hunting should always be this interactive!
