The 10 Must-Read Articles for Talent Professionals This Week

According to new research, companies' efforts to justify their diversity initiatives by citing the impact on their businesses’ bottom line may be backfiring.

In a study conducted by Oriane Georgeac, professor at the Yale School of Management, and Aneeta Rattan, professor at the London Business School, participants from underrepresented groups were asked to read diversity messages from a fabricated employer’s website. Some of the messages gave a business case justification for diversity, others gave a moral or fairness justification, and others still gave no justification at all.

“Compared to the other two groups,” reports Forbes in a summary of the research, “those that read the business case for diversity reported that they were less likely to feel belonging to the company, more concerned they would be stereotyped, and more worried that the company would view them as interchangeable with other members of their group. As a result, the underrepresented groups were less likely to say they wanted to join the company which used the business case.”

Instead, Aneeta and Oriane found that no justification at all resonated most with the study’s participants. “You don’t justify why you have a corporate value around trust or integrity,” Aneeta says, “so why do you feel the need to justify diversity? Why do you think people will question why you value underrepresented groups?”

To learn more about the research, be sure to check out the top spot in our list below of must-read articles for talent professionals. And further down the list, you can learn why jobs shouldn’t be advertised as remote unless a company really means it; how a potential recession could collide with businesses’ attempts to create a better workplace; and what could be motivating so-called “recruitment scammers.”

Here are the must-read articles from this week:

1. The Business Case for Diversity May Be Backfiring, A New Study Shows (Forbes)

2. The 3-Day Return to Office Is, So Far, a Dud (Curbed)

3. The Mystery of ‘Remote’ Job Listings That Aren’t Actually Remote (Slate)

4. A Fight Between a Recruiter and Job Candidate Over Salary Shows a Growing Divide in the War for Talent (Fortune)

5. When Layoffs and a Recession Collide with the Future of Work Agenda (Charter)

6. How to Optimize Job Posts Like Ads to Grow Your Pool of Applicants (LinkedIn Talent Blog)

7. Job Ads Noting Fair Chance Hiring Rise in Tight Labor Market (Hiring Lab)

8. My Conversation with a Recruitment Scammer (Traffit)

9. The Pandemic Gave Office-Bound Dads the Chance to Be More Present in Kids’ Lives. They’re Not Ready to Give That Up (The Globe and Mail)

10. You’re Still on Mute (The New York Times)

This week’s must-listen podcast:

Communicating Uncertainty: How to Connect with Your Audience, Even When the Answers Aren’t Clear (Think Fast, Talk Smart)

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