In the relentless pursuit of top talent, few things capture the imagination of modern candidates and employees more than a diverse, inclusive workplace.
Especially among the latest generation of recruits, a culture of belonging and tolerance plays a huge part in where they choose to work. According to research by Glassdoor, approximately two-thirds of job candidates seek out employers with distinctly diverse workforces.
This intent has given rise to an increasingly adopted term: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB). For today’s company executives and employer brand managers, this is an acronym you must become fully familiar with to maximise your recruitment and retention efforts.
In this helpful guide, we outline what DEIB means, highlight its importance to the attractiveness of your employer brand, and share our top DEIB trends for 2024 to make diversity and inclusion centrepieces of your talent attraction strategies.
Defining DEIB: What is Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging?
DEIB stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, four concepts at the heart of a fair, equitable and all-embracing organisation. To properly define DEIB, it’s best to examine each component separately:
Diversity
Diversity is all about ensuring everyone is represented in your workplace. Age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, economic background – a truly diverse workforce contains a healthy mix of these and other factors.
Diversity is incredibly valuable to encourage different viewpoints and gain unique perspectives within a company. It’s also beneficial for expanding your talent pool, building team camaraderie and developing a better understanding across your diverse customer base.
Equity
Equity means affording the same opportunities for career progression to all employees, regardless of their backgrounds. If an employee has the requisite skills, works hard and develops over time, there should be no barrier to success.
Equity also means that each team member should have access to the right resources to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Fundamentally, a focus on equity ensures a fair, impartial work environment.
Inclusion
Inclusion ensures that every employee or candidate feels welcome, accepted and valued by the people around them and their company as a whole. Do co-workers uplift each other? Is feedback provided constructively? Do people feel involved in their work environment?
Examples of inclusivity in the workplace include gender-neutral restrooms, flexible and remote work inclusion, and celebrations for cultural holidays and traditions. These and further inclusivity-driven measures often inspire higher productivity, stronger performance and greater employee retention.
Belonging
Belonging centres around the individual employee experience. If a workplace is truly inclusive, fair and diverse, an employee should feel as though they belong. They should feel valued, that they contribute to the company, and are respected by their colleagues.
When your employees feel welcomed, they come to work excited, engaged and enthusiastic, with a better opinion of your company and a desire to reach their full potential.
DEI vs DEIB: What’s the difference?
DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) is a well-established term in the global employment landscape, and is the base that DEIB has evolved from. So are they essentially the same, or does the ‘B’ make a big difference?
It’s a little more than that. DEIB is the acknowledgement that belonging is the end goal of effective diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Belonging is the feeling an employee should have if a company is truly inclusive.
Extending conventional DEI practices into the modern DEIB framework places the individual employee experience firmly in focus. It ensures that every initiative is underscored to make the workplace safer, kinder and more comfortable for everyone, so that each employee feels at home in the organisation.
The importance of DEIB in attracting, recruiting and retaining today’s top candidates
We’ve touched on this already, but the importance of DEIB for today’s generation of employees cannot be overstated.
Truly committing to DEIB strategies and dedicating the time to establishing an inclusive workplace culture has ripple effects that unlock numerous benefits for your organisation. Here are just some of the ways it makes a huge difference:
Engages Millennial and Gen Z candidates
As noted earlier, DEIB is a major incentive for the latest generations of job candidates. 73% of Gen Z employees and 68% of Millennial employees say they prioritise DEI programs when choosing a company to work for.
Communicating and demonstrating your dedication to this cause – be it through specific DEIB training programs or as part of your wider company culture – will put you in a stronger position to hire than your less progressive competitors.
Increases brand reputation
Your brand’s reputation says a lot to prospective candidates. When polled, approximately 70% of recruits said they would reject job offers from companies with negative reputations, even if they were unemployed. To ensure your company’s reputation is on the trajectory for success, it’s important that DEIB plays a big role in your day-to-day operations.
If reviews on your Glassdoor profiles are littered with accusations of biases, favouritism, unfair pay or discrimination, the best candidates will look elsewhere.
Raises employee retention
According to Equalture, workplace and recruitment diversity can significantly reduce employee turnover and improve retention by over 68%.
When your staff feel included, accepted and comfortable in their environment, they’re far less likely to seek other opportunities. Focusing on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging cultivates these feelings, so you can hold onto your top-performing talent for longer.
Boosts productivity and employee engagement
Creating an environment that naturally fosters a sense of belonging helps people work their best. When people feel happy, motivated and welcomed in their jobs, productivity rises and performance improves, leading to better business outcomes.
For instance, inclusive teams are estimated to be 35% more productive than those lacking this essential element. Furthermore, Millennials are 83% more likely to be engaged at work at inclusive companies.
Inspires creativity and innovation
With a diverse, multifaceted workforce, you have a melting pot of ideas and experiences that you can harness to drive your brand forward.
Without this variety of perspectives, you get homogenous ideas and a stale work environment. Company growth stagnates and your staff feel stuck in place. With this in mind, it’s not surprising to learn that inclusive companies are nearly twice as likely to be innovators in their space.
Enhances decision-making
Greater communication and sharing of unique ideas leads to better decision-making. By exploring a problem from multiple angles with different viewpoints, you can reach a more considered, strategic solution.
As they say, two heads are better than one. And the stats back this up – diverse teams are 87% better at making decisions than non-diverse teams.
Improves financial performance
What about the bottom line? Focusing on DEIB has unlocked significant financial benefits for organisations across the globe. Inclusive companies generate over twice the cash flow per employee, while diverse, inclusive leadership generates 19% higher revenue.
Beyond this, three distinct McKinsey studies determined that ethnically diverse companies deliver up to 36% more profitability, while greater gender diversity led to a 25% increase in financial performance.
6 DEIB trends to enhance the power of your employer brand
As DEIB becomes increasingly important to the career ambitions of modern employees, it is also a pivotal element in a robust, high-performing employer brand strategy.
Based on the latest trends and techniques we hear from employer brand and HR professionals worldwide, here are 6 ways to make DEIB a core focus in your organisation and talent attraction methods.
1. Adopt AI to sense-check your DEIB communications
Today’s candidates are hyper-vigilant when it comes to the language you employ in your various employer brand communications, from job descriptions to recruitment adverts. With the evolution of AI algorithms, you can use these to review the copy of any content, to ensure nothing you publish unintentionally discriminates against potential candidates.
AI can also enable your hiring managers to review resumes impartially, analysing the relevant details without any consideration of gender, ethnic origin or similar factors. You may also use it to assess any salary discrepancies, so your company can make progress toward a more equitable work environment.
2. Establish diversity & inclusivity champions and ERGs
While the right policies are important, a diverse, inclusive environment must be nurtured over time. Hiring DEIB specialists, or promoting people from within your teams to act as diversity champions, helps ensure these issues are addressed from the ground-up.
Your representatives must have passion for the causes they represent, and be equipped with the relevant training materials, resources and freedom to fulfil their role. Setting up Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) can further support these individuals by creating voluntary, employee-led groups based on shared characteristics and experiences.
This organisational structure can help ensure your workforce’s unique wants and concerns are addressed directly, by people who understand them on a deeper level. It helps confirm DEIB policies are upheld and all employees are educated about these fundamental issues.
Plus, giving these groups the power to create content supporting your diversity and inclusivity initiatives can enhance your DEIB efforts internally and externally, especially through your staff’s social media profiles. Always keep in mind that candidates are more prone to trust a company’s employees over the company itself.
3. Integrate intersectionality into your DEIB strategies
A term coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, intersectionality is a growing concept that notes how differences in people’s backgrounds, whether it’s their age, gender, race or abilities, shape their experiences in the world.
Creating policies and programs around intersectionality will help your various employees better understand the challenges and discrimination their co-workers face, leading to a more empathetic work environment. This could take the form of monthly meetings or presentations from team members expressing their experiences.
Steps like this reinforce that your DEIB efforts are more than a token gesture. It shows you care about your people’s backgrounds, want to open dialogues and break down systemic barriers to create fair opportunities for everyone.
4. Create a culture of greater transparency
Transparency has become increasingly vital in building trust between employers and employees, particularly in the issues of diversity, equity and inclusivity:
Building a culture of transparency over pay, hiring practices, career development and more can help your staff feel significantly more acknowledged and respected. It demonstrates that you value a fair, equitable environment and have no hidden barriers hindering their progress.
To foster a more transparent work environment, you should aim to:
- Introduce pay transparency commitment guidelines
- Disclose your diversity metrics publicly
- Illustrate clear pathways for promotions and career advancement
- Publish details about the diversity of your suppliers and contractors
- Share your company’s DEIB goals and targets across your organisation
5. Set up inclusive recruitment processes
Are your hiring practices aligned with your DEIB commitments? Every layer of a candidate’s recruitment journey should be structured around this if you want to meet your diversity and inclusivity targets, ensure that no candidate feels alienated, and further boost the likelihood of long-term retention.
To evolve your recruitment strategies with DEIB at their core, consider the following:
- Implement a “blind” resume review to eliminate any biases over a candidate’s name
- Audit your job benefits to check they align with your preferred candidates’ wants
- Offer dedicated DEIB training to your hiring managers and recruiters
- Use inclusive language in your job adverts, correspondence and onboarding materials
- Post on niche job boards that focus on promoting diverse candidates
6. Upscale your DEIB communications with brand management technology
As today’s recruitment teams are expected to deliver more with less, engaging and attracting diverse talent becomes that much harder. 57% of talent leaders say hiring a more diverse workforce is a top priority, but 43% feel sourcing candidates is a serious challenge.
You want to advertise everywhere, with tailored content that reflects the diversity and inclusivity of your organisation, so you can truly connect with a wider talent pool, but time and design expertise are finite.
High-quality employer branding tools can unlock the full potential of your DEIB recruitment, enabling you to create, structure and unleash your brand like never before. By investing in the right software, you can:
- Establish a digital brand hub for your employer brand guidelines, DEIB framework and more, so that your entire team is educated on your values and mission
- Scale your content production with smart design templates, enabling anyone in your organisation to create high-quality content consistent with your brand identity
- Rapidly tailor assets with the right language, imagery and styling to attract a diverse pool of candidates
- Store any DEIB-focused images, assets, videos and more in a dedicated Digital Asset Management system, making it easy for your recruitment teams to locate and share these in your campaigns
With a strong, reliable brand management platform in your corner, you gain the power to present a consistent, far-reaching employer brand, one that illustrates your commitment to diversity, equity, inclusivity and belonging to the fullest.
Building your up-to-date employer brand around DEIB
DEIB is here to stay. With the latest generations placing a premium on an employer’s diversity, inclusivity and fairness, you must put these four letters at the heart of your employer brand to keep your recruitment efforts on the right trajectory.
We hope that these recommendations and top trends enable you to activate DEIB in your branding and build a truly inclusive work environment.
But remember – authenticity is everything. This can’t just be a token gesture during Pride Month – prioritise DEIB within your existing workforce and ask your current employees how you can improve.
Once you have these matters settled at home, you can make real strides to engage perceptive, progressive talent across the globe.