Diversity in the workplace, especially in business, has always been an area where there has been significant bias. Whether that be ethical or general-based bias, it has always existed and still plays a significant role today.
Over 48% of businesses are not on track to meet their diversity goal which is raising questions about the methods of hiring that are being used within a business. Diversity brings many benefits to a business such as increased profitability, financial performance, and value creation. When faced with the statistics it can be hard to understand why diversity is not being widely accepted in the business environment.
Many errors in hiring people from diverse backgrounds can be linked to the recruiting process. Many recruiters only look at a resume for a person for seven seconds. This means that they make inherent judgment calls based on their own moral and ethical perceptions which can be biased.
However, humans aren’t the only ones at fault. Many companies use an AI recruiting platform for the hiring process. Even AI can have bias, due to the methods it uses to understand resumes. Boolean phrases and lack of programming skill can allow for AI software to choose a candidate that knows how to write a resume for a robot, not the person who is most qualified.
In order to increase diversity, we have to change the way we train and view the work environment. By incorporating diversity into a business’s goals and leadership strategies we can make quantitative steps towards creating a welcoming diverse work environment.
We must also actively work to limit AI bias by identifying bias in our datasets. By doing so we can reduce the amount of human bias we program into our partial AI systems. Increasing diversity is the future for a successful business, so we must start today.
