The technological advancements made every day across the world serve to do just that, advance us. These technological revolutions breathe new life into old processes and create an opportunity to change the way we’ve previously approached important initiatives like diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
In the backdrop of June being Pride Month, we are analyzing exactly how technology can impact diversity and inclusion. One of the biggest draws to implementing new tech or refreshing your current tech stack is its ability to impact your company’s internal goals. Under the umbrella of these goals often lies diversity and inclusion.
Considering diverse and inclusive workplaces are reported to have higher revenue growth and support a higher level of motivation among employees, it’s no wonder that diversity is becoming more and more of a priority.
#DYK 96% of CEOs consider diversity, equity, and inclusion a “personal strategic priority?”
While the two terms — diversity and equity — are often interconnected, they are not interchangeable. Much like anything revolving around diversifying your workforce and empowering those in marginalized communities, tech and diversity have a delicate and relatively new relationship. But it’s important to note that they are more powerful together.
Prevent Unconscious Bias
The first thing that comes to mind when discussing diversity and technology working hand in hand would be the prevention of unconscious bias. This is a popular talking point because that’s one of the biggest motivators to start leveraging tech and AI — removing human error.
TTL Honors Pride Month with a DE&I Tech Spotlight Click To TweetHumans are famous for our errors; just ask the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Even more famously, people allow their unconscious bias to bleed into their personal life and professional decisions. Unfortunately, this isn’t something you can get rid of without significant unlearning and bias training. But, it also means that people aren’t making these decisions maliciously.
Simply put: everyone has implicit biases. But, technology and artificial intelligence bridge the gap between unconscious bias and turn the process into something that doesn’t revolve around personal opinion — instead — it revolves around hard facts and data.
Diversify Your Talent Pools
Even after a technological overhaul, there will likely still be work that needs to be done to build diversity into your talent pools. Artificial intelligence advances have shown the ability to identify and correct exclusive language found in job postings.
Bonus Material: Download our playbook Using Technology To Improve Diversity In The Hiring Process!
These exclusionary terms are easy to overlook but often can cost potential talent before they even read the entire job description. Some of these linguistic choices — typically gendered, either masculine or feminine phrases —can unintentionally prevent amazing and often diverse talent from joining your talent pool.
Technology and artificial intelligence have made leaps and bounds when detecting and fixing language that could be exclusionary. Tech has also been proven to widen your talent pool and catch where candidates from diverse groups fall out of the pipeline.
Access Metrics and Data
Diversity and inclusion initiatives can have the best intentions in the world, but without hard data backing up your endeavors, it’s nearly impossible to provide proof points. Diversity, equity, and inclusion measures should bring equal opportunities and prevent unconscious bias from spilling into the process.
The impact of #Technology on #Diversity and #Inclusion is hard to argue, and in our most recent blog, we dive deeply into some of the most powerful benefits of using tech. Check it out: Click To TweetTechnology can provide an in-depth understanding of what is going right in your campaigns and what is going wrong. This statistical analysis helps optimize your approach to diversity initiatives and gives feedback on what you need to improve.
Now, you don’t have to flatly say: “We do X, Y, and Z to prioritize DE&I in our organization.” You can say: “Here’s what we’ve done, here is exactly how these measures performed, and here is concrete evidence of what we learned about the process.”
Unsurprisingly, analytics reveal meaningful data that we might not otherwise detect. This plays into the whole “human error” concept. Technology and AI can find mathematical patterns and otherwise unseen analyses.
Technology and AI will continue to evolve, no question about it. However, how they evolve depends largely on how we utilize them.
After examining three ways technology can impact diversity and inclusion, we’ve shed some light on what is going right in our strides to diversify our processes. When authentically incorporating diversity into your business, tech is here to stay and assist. All you have to do is get started.
Talent Tech Labs can help by acting as a trusted partner as you evaluate your current processes and identify the gaps in diversity you need to address. Once these gaps have been identified, our industry-leading experts can help guide you to the tools and solutions that can help you revolutionize your talent strategy and create a successful process for years to come.
For more information about how TTL can advise you on which tools and technologies will work best for you, reach out to us today.
