RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION

Organizational Analysis of Recruitment and Retention

James A. Floyd

University of Phoenix

BUS 700: Introduction to Business Administration in Doctoral Studies

Dr. Leslie Huffman

August 22, 2022

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Current Diversity Recruiting Efforts

Diversity management (or DM) has attracted considerable recognition of academics,

practitioners and organizational analysts over recent decades. The diverse demographic makeup

of the workforce, the expanding social sensitivity to ethical standards, and the overall

repercussions of globalization are persuading increasing numbers of organizations to cope-with

diversity management (DM) (Ravazzani, 2016).

We must keep in mind that diversity incorporates components that go beyond gender,

age, ethnicity, family status, and any other visible identity reference. Indirect dimensions such as

education, ideas and experience also need to be examined. (Benschop, 2001). For instance,

Ardakani et al. (2016) posit that diversity is composed of four layers:

1. Personality.

2 Internal dimensions: Race, age, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability and ethnicity.

3. External dimensions: Geographic location, recreational habits, personal habits, income,

religion, educational background, work experience, marital status, parental status and

appearance.

4.. Organizational dimensions: Management status, work content/field, union affiliation,

seniority, functional level/classification, division/department/unit/ group, and work location.

Success for current Diversity Efforts

It’s important to note that most organization don’t admit that achieving success in the area of

diversity requires hard work and certain conditions to be in place. According to Lisa Leslie

(2020) the hard work to achieve diversity success entails:

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 Developing norms of cooperation and collectivistic norms, where people are focused

on the good of the group instead of their own individual needs.

 Hiring transformational leaders who inspire people to achieve their best.

 Engaging in effortful cognition as a team: being thoughtful and open to new

experiences.

 Engaging in perspective taking, and trying to see things from other people’s point of

view.

As a human Resource Manager, I’ve created what I consider meaningful diversity and inclusion

metrics that help me to measure our organizations success/failure ratios in this area. They cover

the areas of recruitment and retention and allow me to not only have a numeric metric, but also a

well-rounded approach regarding the selection process. Examples of our organizational

recruiting and retention metrics are as follows:

Retention

Description: Comparing average tenure for employees from monitored groups to average tenure

across the workforce or average tenure of members of the dominant group.

Strength: Useful for identifying groups that may be less satisfied with their workplace and less

committed to the organization as well as groups that are more likely to have their employment

terminated.

Weakness: Although useful for highlighting which groups of employees leave the organization

sooner than others, measures of retention, per se, do not provide information regarding the

reasons why some groups of people leave before others.

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Improvements: Segmenting attrition data into voluntary and involuntary is useful for identifying

whether monitored groups are more likely to self-select or be pushed out of an organisation.

Reasons for voluntary attrition should be tapped and recorded through exit interviews and

supplemented with information gathered from engagement surveys and focus groups.

Involuntary attrition that is overrepresented in a monitored group is indicative of conscious or

unconscious bias and should be investigated (Benschop, 2001).

Recruitment

Description: Comparing the number of applicants for open positions from monitored

groups against the potential pool of applicants from monitored groups or labor market

representation.

Strength: Useful for identifying barriers to entry for different groups, pipeline issues, and narrow

or biased recruitment efforts.

Weakness: Does not provide information on why some groups of individuals compared with

others are more likely to apply for open positions.

Improvements: Reasons for weakness in applicant diversity should be gathered from employee

focus groups, review of job advertisements (bias detection software may be useful), surveys that

assess quality of employer brand, and analysis of recruitment strategies for bias (e.g. tap-on-the-

shoulder, employee referral programs, graduate internships limited to only some universities)

(Benschop, 2001).

Ethical considerations related to diversity recruitment

It’s important to realize that the word diversity is not some passing popular “buzzword”.

It’s actually the law of the land. Recruiting for a diversified workforce is a true challenge for

most companies. The question becomes: How do you attract a more diverse candidate pool and
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cultivate a diverse workforce without showing preferential treatment towards a group, or

potentially alienating another? It is a fine ethical line that plagues many HR departments today.

Hiring teams must have a clearly communicate expectations when creating job posts. In

addition to including necessary skills and qualifications, the posting should never imply the

exclusion of a group of people. It would also be beneficial if the postings included a statement

that enforced and described the company’s commitment to diversity. This should give an

overview of the current diversity state of the company or department. This is something that

should be consistently done in order to not give the appearance of impropriety during the

selection process. In addition, HR teams should seek to diversify their methods for these postings

in order to attract a diverse candidate pool. This will entail connecting with passive talents and

creating a pipeline with local organizations, community events, and universities. This requires

commitment and diligence but over time will help an organization achieve ethical and diverse

results (Benschop, 2001).

Leadership strategies for recruiting diversity of talent into the organization.

So, the question that must be dealt with is: How do we make diversity work throughout

the entire organization? In my 9 years working in Human Resources, I've learned that

organizations need to encompass an appreciation of differences while encouraging an inclusive

and welcoming work environment. Discovering mutual understandings despite our differences is

a great opportunity to build camaraderie and team rapport. It is important that organizations

operate differently under this new model. They should train, hire, manage and promote

differently. A great place to begin is by posting job descriptions that attract diverse individuals.

This will attract opinionated candidates who are willing to challenge the status quo to apply for
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employment opportunities. When training and promoting new hires, programs should highlight the

company’s core values and how the employee should uphold those values.

The Business Cost of Diversity Recruiting

There are numerous variabilities in diversity budgets (depending on organization’s size,

location and industry). There is no one size “fits all” when or a “typical” diversity budget. For

example, tech companies, which are male dominated, have a bigger challenge when it comes to

recruiting and are often combating toxic environments. But we can make some general estimates.

“A recent study released by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) reported

diversity-department budgets at Fortune 1000 companies average around $1.5 million per year.

The range for diversity department budgets was $30,000 to $5.1 million. When diversity was

housed in Human Resources, the average annual diversity budget was $239,000”. Below is an

example of a mid-sized company’s diversity budget:

Support of Employee Resource Groups: 10–30k

Training (unconscious bias, anti-racism, inclusive leadership): 30–150k

Recruiting and Branding: 10–30k

Other DEI Programing (including external consulting): 10–30k

Partnerships or sponsorships: 5–50k

Diversity Efforts Benefiting Stakeholders

It is a widespread belief that a more diverse employee base not only ensures greater

social and market awareness, but also identifies business opportunities and refines those
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opportunities at a faster pace. There are multiple avenues in which diversity can connect to its

internal and external stakeholders:

Diversity fosters better awareness of customer’s needs

The wider the range of voices in a company, the more effectively that an organization can

respond to the many different people that it serves (Ardakani et, al, 2016)

Employees feel heard

Automatically inclusivity fosters a more collaborative and creative environment in which

team members feel that their opinions matter. As a result, diversity unleashes and organization’s

potential to step outside of well-worn paths, which in turn drives the new intellectual property,

fresh approaches to business problems, and greater competitiveness (Ardakani et al, 2016).
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References

Ardakani, M. S., Abzari, M., Shaemi, A., & Fathi, S. (2016). Diversity Management and

human resources productivity: Mediating effects of perceived organizational attractiveness,

organizational justice and social identity in Isfahan’s steel industry. Iranian Journal of

Management Studies, 9(2), 407-432.

Benschop, Y. (2001). Pride, prejudice and performance: Relations between HRM,

diversity and performance. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 12(7), 1166-

1181. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585190110068377

Ravazzani, S. (2016). Understanding approaches to managing diversity in the workplace:

an empirical investigation in Italy. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal,

35(2), 154-168. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-08-2014-0062

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