Celebrating Black History beyond Black History Month in the tech sector

At CWJobs, we always strive to help recruiters and hiring managers reach a diverse talent pool, foster a culture of inclusivity, and inspire a wider candidate audience to join the tech industry. To celebrate Black History Month, we want to share our insights into how companies can do more to promote diversity, inclusion and community in the tech industry, and create a positive outlook for the future.

According to McKinsey’s recent Delivering Through Diversity report, companies with the most ethnically and culturally diverse boards worldwide are 43% more likely to experience higher profits. Similarly, research from Harvard Business Review reveals that diverse teams are better at problem-solving due to their diversity of thought.

However, despite a call for more diversity, equality and inclusion practices in the tech industry, a recent Tech Monitor report reveals that half of UK tech workers have not seen diversity and inclusion improvement in their organisation since May 2020. What’s more, according to Hays’ Diversity and Inclusion Report 2021, 43% of professionals with differing ethnic backgrounds believe they don’t have an equal opportunity to succeed in their organisation.

These worrying statistics show that diversity and inclusion targets aren’t being held to the same standards as other business targets like profit. They highlight the need for companies to put diversity and inclusion at the top of their agenda in order to drive real change.

Let’s take a closer look at what companies can do beyond Black History Month to promote more diverse and inclusive tech teams:

Develop a diversity and inclusion policy

According to software company Ideal, 70% of companies believe they are doing a great job attracting and retaining diverse talent, but only 11% understand what diversity and inclusion mean in the workplace.

An effective diversity and inclusion policy should ensure that a company embraces the differences between people and holds everyone accountable for implementing best practices. A good starting point for developing a D&I policy is to gather anonymous feedback from employees through staff surveys. This can provide an overview of a company’s current performance and help create an action plan to implement inclusive practices moving forward.

Mentoring programmes, for example can ensure that a company acts upon its diversity goals. By connecting those from underrepresented backgrounds with mentors within the organisation, companies can futureproof their talent pipeline. Tech company Cisco, for example, has an Inclusion and Collaboration Community that provides sponsorship opportunities for people from diverse backgrounds to advance their skills in the company.

Embrace skills-based recruitment

Skills-based hiring focuses on a candidate’s skills rather than their qualifications and experience. It can also help remove unconscious bias from the recruitment process.

Traditional hiring processes that involve shortlisting CVs in the first instance often overlook a candidate’s talent by focusing too heavily on their background. Adopting skills-based assessments can help hiring managers reduce time-to-hire, fill roles quicker and improve diversity.

CWJobs’ Instant Candidate Recommendations provides hiring managers with suggestions of highly relevant candidates, based on their skills and match to the role. The technology is designed by our global team of data scientists and is developed using real recruiter data. The tool has a very high conversation rate with 94% of monthly invites sent resulting in visits to job advertisements.

Hire for cultural add

For companies to realise the many benefits of hiring diverse teams, inclusion needs to be integrated into their culture. Ethnic minority groups need to have a platform within a company to discuss how their aspirations, and the challenges they face, can be addressed on a company-wide level.

Hiring for cultural add is the first step towards ensuring equal opportunities and gaining a more accurate overview of a candidate’s suitability. Hiring based on emotional IQ and performance data can help hiring managers gain a deeper insight what motivates a candidate.

One technology that can help hiring managers achieve their diversity and inclusion goals is Good&Co. This workplace culture platform uses advanced psychometrics and big data to help recruiters make better, data-driven hiring decisions.

Appoint a Diversity Manager

Appointing a diversity manager can help reduce biased decision-making in recruitment. A diversity manager helps monitor the hiring process by reviewing recruitment decisions and monitoring data that can highlight biased hiring patterns.

One tech company that benefits from having a D&I Director is Gitlab. By setting diversity goals, providing bias training and offering bonuses for referring candidates from underrepresented backgrounds, the company proactively drives diversity within its teams.

At CWJobs, our Applicant Manager platform integrates with Good&Co, to ensure recruiters make informed hiring decisions.​ Employers can also use our Company Profile features and Premium Ads to communicate effectively with candidates and demonstrate their commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Support organisations that promote diversity in tech

Supporting causes that encourage diversity and inclusion raises awareness of the issue in the tech sector. It can help companies implement best practices within their organisation and become champions of racial equality in the sector.

Tech Talent Charter, for example, is a non-profit organisation that addresses inequality in the UK tech sector. It aims to deliver greater diversity in the tech workforce and publishes an Annual Benchmarking Report that provides useful diversity and inclusion data.

TechUK is UK’s leading technology membership organisation and aims to develop new relationships and advocate for the good of tech workers, companies and the industry as a whole. Its Delivering Diversity initiative monitors how members are committing to ethnic diversity in the tech workforce and how they’re pushing for progress.

UKBlackTech is an organisation that aims to make the UK the most ethnically diverse tech ecosystem in the world. It advocates for equality, transparency and representation at the decision-making level in the sector.

CWJobs’ Equality Boost

Equality Boost is a tool that can increase applications from underrepresented groups through targeted display advertising. Harnessing a unique blend of data science, Equality Boost pinpoints when, where and how to reach the talent companies need by demographic, location and interest information.

It can help companies identify their unique challenges and set clear objectives to meet their tech hiring needs. The tool monitors campaign performance with real-time data and insights, and measures its success to improve campaigns over time.

The Equality Boost Badge is be displayed on job listings on the CWJobs platform to demonstrate that a company is invested in searching for diverse candidates.