Sherika Ekpo, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Anaplan.
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By now, you’ve likely heard “the Great Reimagination” as it relates to how businesses are reexamining workplace systems on the backbone of the Great Resignation. While the Great Resignation continues to bring on a number of challenges for businesses, the upside is that companies are jumping on board to further reimagine, rework, and recreate their talent strategies and employee experiences with diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging (DEI&B) top of mind.
DEI&B is no longer a response to the “movement of the moment.” Candidates are increasingly choosing companies—and staying at them—based on their demonstrated commitment to diversity, inclusion and transparency. It’s become a central pillar of a modern talent strategy that not only drives growth but takes companies to the next level. As HR leaders, it’s critical we focus on DEI&B during this reimagination period because it’s a foundational element of doing business. Investors, partners, customers, and the workforce expect companies to walk the walk and prioritize it.
Our role as people leaders is to change the way our leadership thinks about DEI&B from a check-the-box activity to a vital strategy for creating connection in the workplace that drives productivity, innovation and performance. As your organization embarks on its own Great Reimagination, here are five ways HR leaders can shake up talent programs and processes to attract and retain top talent.
1. Increase Inclusive Language
Incorporating inclusive language into all talent acquisition practices will increase the diversity of your applicants and remove bias from the hiring process. Your goal is to eliminate as much bias as possible from the process so that you land with the most qualified candidate who will add to your company culture. One way to prioritize this is by removing bias from your job descriptions. At my organization, Anaplan, we’ve implemented an augmented writing and recruitment marketing software, Textio, to help increase our candidate pool and the diversity of applicants. While it has been documented that bias can exist in AI programs, turning to tools to help with the process—and pairing them with human supervision—could prove helpful in increasing inclusive language.
2. Conduct Interview Training
Part of keeping employees happy and a company prosperous is knowing how to assess talent from the start. Interview training is a must for companies to equip hiring managers with the ability to look beyond just the skills needed for an open requisition to also ensure the candidate aligns with the organization’s values.
While most hiring managers understand how to interview based on job criteria, modernized interview training can help managers evaluate a candidate based on “how” they work. Think about your company's core values—these values guide “how” we work. Train hiring managers to evaluate candidates based on these values in addition to understanding their technical talent and unique gifts. For instance, at my company, we live by six core values: tenacious, open, authentic, inclusive, creative and collaborative.
3. Assess Your Employees’ And Candidates’ Unique Gifts
By gaining a deep understanding of the gifts, abilities and true expertise of your current team as well as candidates, companies can better match talent with their skill sets and passions in a way that also aligns with the business. By doing so, candidates’ positions, work product and professional development are better optimized for long-term success at the company.
Also, as part of modernizing the candidate interview process, include questions that delve into who they are as a person. Here are a few questions to consider as part of an interview:
• What is your superpower?
• What is your ideal work environment?
• What are your strengths?
This can help you gain a greater sense of the gifts your current and prospective talent possesses.
4. Invest In Reskilling Talent For Retention And Hiring
In a recent Qualtrics report, employees cited the No. 1 reason they leave a company is because they want more growth opportunities. Career development is a top reason for seeking outside employment. Reskilling is a way to build your talent’s capacity and bridge skill gaps. It not only invests in an employee’s professional experience but drives business agility across your organization. Reskilling is also a great reentry tool to leverage when recruiting parents, veterans or formerly incarcerated talent back into the workforce.
Identify areas of opportunity in your organization for reskilling talent. Especially in the context of the pandemic and the “she-cession” that we’ve seen in this country and beyond, it’s critical to support women employees by helping them create a solid foundation for continued growth. For example, we recently launched the first cohort of our Women Achieve at Anaplan program to help employees who identify as women to achieve greater success in their current roles, strengthen their leadership abilities and expand their networks.
5. Implement Agile Development Plans
Employee development is not a new concept, but it’s time to take a fresh look at how your organization can reimagine it to uncover new—and perhaps better-suited—development opportunities for existing talent. Similar to an agile project planning method, companies can implement “agile development plans.” This type of plan allows employees to identify one new skill that they want to develop over a one- to three-week period, replacing long-term, cumbersome development plans. Employees can hyper-focus on one skill at a time, and over time, each skill contributes to that employee becoming an “expert” in what they do.
As an HR leader, ask your people managers to have everyone on their team create an agile development plan before determining how training funds are distributed. Having a plan submitted by all employees helps create more equitable development opportunities for each member within a team instead of only more vocal employees benefiting from training investments.
Without a doubt, DEI&B is vital to reimagining talent strategies and becoming an employer of choice. These five recommendations are just a handful of ways we as HR leaders can take advantage of the Great Reimagination, and design and implement new, modern talent strategies. I’m excited and optimistic to see what employers do and learn as part of defining this new workforce with DEI&B at the core.
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