Diversity Nudges

Despite their commitments to diversifying their workforces, many companies continue to struggle with attracting, hiring, and retaining employees from underrepresented groups.

Achieving workplace diversity is not easy, but leaders can target, address, and nudge specific data points and thoughtfully incentivize behaviors that support it. These interventions are often small, easy to implement, and inexpensive, but when they are applied to choices, processes, and organizational levers in the attraction, recruitment, onboarding of people and along the employee path cycle, they can help make a workplace more diverse and inclusive.

Nudges That Attract Diverse Talent

The conversion rates (CRs) at one e-commerce giant were below target within certain segments of shoppers, including lower-income people of color and middle-income LGBTQIA+ people. Meanwhile, the company’s primary competitor had successfully hired more women, Black and Latine people, Pacific Islanders, and LGBTQIA+ persons in marketing, behavioral analysis, and other roles, and their diverse perspectives were translating into higher CRs.

The company launched a major campaign to attract diverse talent. It engaged a search firm that cast a national net and ran print and digital ads that highlighted the company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. Then leadership sat back and waited for those diverse candidates to appear. Views of the online job posting peaked around three and a half weeks after the advertising blitz but flatlined by the seventh week. Fewer than 11% of site visitors applied for a position. Only three applicants were interviewed; two received offers, one of which was declined. In other words, if you build it — with impressive resources and at great expense — they still might not come.

As this company discovered, it is not enough to simply gain the attention of the potential candidates you seek to attract. Converting appropriate talent to applicants and candidates requires additional outreach and cultivation. Individuals from underrepresented demographics — including people of color, those who identify as LGBTQIA+, and people with disabilities — often have fewer contacts at competitive employers and know fewer people who can help them navigate the application process. Organizations that want to increase diversity can attract more candidates from underrepresented groups by using nudges — modifications in the language and content presented in the talent acquisition process — in ways that help generate a diverse candidate pool, maintain the pool throughout the process, encourage top candidates to accept job offers, and help keep them onboard.

Nudges can help build trust and reduce information asymmetries early on. In one such intervention, a company displayed the numbers of women and underrepresented individuals among its leadership, as well as its diversity and inclusion goals and a timeline, beside an online job posting. A video at the bottom right of the screen featured the CEO speaking about his commitment to inclusion and diversity. This intervention increased the percentage of women and underrepresented groups that applied by 22% in the short term and 18% over the long term. Candidates from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds rose by 17% overall. And, importantly, the conversion rate from applying for a job to accepting a position rose by 8 percentage points.

Nudges that enhance familiarity with a potential employer can help maintain the applicant pool throughout the process. For example, even if the job seeker does not personally know someone at the company, facilitating a connection can make the company more attractive. One online experiment randomly allocated 1,276 applicants to one of four conditions after they had submitted applications and before they had heard from the company:

• Applicants were given the opportunity to ask questions of women employed at the company while their application was in process.
• Applicants were given the opportunity to ask questions of men employed at the company while their application was in process.
• Applicants were given the opportunity to ask questions of a group that comprised one male employee and one female employee.
• Applicants were not given the opportunity to ask questions of any employees.

When women could ask questions of women employed at the company, those candidates performed better during their interviews than under any other condition. Their scores as assessed by interviewers increased by 34%. These same candidates were also more satisfied with the application process and the company’s image. And those who did not receive a job offer were more likely to reapply within the next 24 months.

Along similar lines, in an online experiment at a tech firm, I randomly allocated 1,478 applicants to one of several conditions after they had submitted their applications and before they had heard from the company. Some applicants were assigned a fellow job seeker as a buddy with whom they could practice the required tasks if they were selected for an interview; some were not. Of those applicants assigned buddies, some women were paired with women, some women were paired with men, and some men were paired with men.

Job seekers who were partnered with a buddy after applying experienced a 40% higher interview selection rate; the impact was particularly notable among underrepresented groups and for junior positions. Women who were paired with men received interview scores that were 9% higher than in other conditions. Candidates participating in the buddy system were more satisfied with the process, even if they were not selected for an interview or if they were interviewed but not offered a position. This increase in satisfaction was 28% for women and 29% for men.

Having a friend or acquaintance in the industry can reduce the trepidation felt by people who are seeking employment in areas that have traditionally excluded them. These candidates are seeking information: “What is it like? What should I wear? How should I prepare? What should I say or not say? What if …?” Knowing takes away much of the fear, and potential employers can fill that information gap by recognizing this condition and intervening to redesign the dynamic. Balancing the exchange with information that candidates are seeking mends the divide and engenders trust. Information provided by a potential employer lets candidates decide whether the company is a good fit, whether they can see themselves working there, and whether they will be embraced by the organization.

Consider the transport and logistics industry, for instance, which is overwhelmingly male-dominated. Closing such a wide gender gap requires creativity. One company that sought to hire more women took photographs of each woman employed at the company. It then graphically illustrated the gender gap by placing the women’s pictures adjacent to a blank space that represented the additional women required to close the gender parity gap. The date by which the organization wanted to hire enough women to fill in the empty space was also included in the illustration.

Not only did the company display the image and text on its website, but it also talked to all of the relevant search and recruitment firms and launched a major campaign aimed at getting women to apply. Over six months, the efforts produced a 30% increase in female applicants, including more women from underrepresented groups.

The design of job applications can also affect the number of candidates who apply. Small things like requesting information related to gender and race on applications have proved significant in previous experiments and interventions, but the placement of these requests can either repulse or attract candidates.1

A company study that involved 320 applicants sought to determine the impact of collecting gender information at the beginning of the application, at the end, and not at all. Where gender identity was requested at the end, 7% more women completed the application than in the other two conditions.

Nudges for Recruiting Diverse Talent

Dropping demographic indicators from CVs can allow unbiased assessment of the candidate. At one global company, applicants were directed to enter their CVs in an online portal, which made the look, feel, and format identical for everyone. All of the reviewers saw the same thing, and all indicators of race and gender were removed. The stripped data included names, affiliations, volunteer activities associated with a religious or cultural group, hobbies, language skills, or connections to special advocacy or community organizations.

The removal of such data reduced the likelihood of bias and made job experience the primary focus of the hiring teams. Candidates were also asked to describe their workplace results and contributions. This neutral format focused the assessment process and increased the pool of underrepresented groups, in both Europe and the United States, by roughly 40% within 18 months.2

Applying similar principles during a consulting engagement with a tech company, we used AI voice alteration to mask gender. Candidates used a tool called Gap Jumper to solve skill-based challenges without disclosing their gender, as well as a voice modulation device to anonymize gender and ethnic or racial background. The resulting increase in job offers was almost 16% for women and 18% for members of underrepresented racial groups.

After a fair and neutral process has been designed, it is still necessary to make a hiring decision. When practicing the art of hiring, a useful strategy is to change the question from “Whom should we include?” to “Whom should we exclude?” In this case, rather than struggling with criteria that indicate who should be chosen, decision makers determine who should be excluded and, from that, are able to identify a smaller group of the strongest candidates. Although this approach might seem counterintuitive in the context of seeking to be more inclusive, it forces decision makers to focus closely on core qualifications and exclude candidates who do not meet them.

Nudges for Onboarding Diverse Talent

At a global financial services company with multiple offices in the New York City area, several partners were celebrating the hiring of eight new staff members. The group was diverse in gender, race, and age — a mix of millennials, Gen Xers, and a baby boomer.

The millennials seemed to have no trouble finding their footing, and the Gen Xers were familiar with the organization and had many colleagues who were already part of their network. But the onboarding process didn’t welcome and assimilate Carlton, a Black man in his late 50s hired at the executive level, like it had the seven others. Although he was impressively talented and skilled, Carlton had diminished access to information, and it impacted several of his assigned projects. In less than 18 months, shortly after his first performance review, he left the company for a competitor. His departure measurably damaged the company. In the short term, the cost of replacing him would range between $1.5 million and $1.75 million. In the long term, his assessment of the company as a place of employment would negatively resonate throughout his network.

The data has found a link between individuals leaving an organization after 12 to 24 months and their onboarding experience — a correlation that stands out more than any other factor in the life of the employee at the company.3 In short, get onboarding right or pay the price.

An effective onboarding process ensures that new hires are brought fully and inclusively into the organization. Small modifications enable new hires to better navigate this process and access the information and services that can help them integrate comfortably and become productive.

Like new immigrants, new employees seek information about the norms, policies, politics, and behaviors that will help them function successfully in the new setting. New hires require clarity regarding roles and expectations. They want background information about the company. They want to know how to thrive, what it takes to excel and get promoted, and what it takes to master their jobs. They also want to know what constitutes a high standard and where they should aim.

One large professional services firm nudged its onboarding process by sending a series of short videos featuring the CEO, some board members, and some members of the executive team to candidates as soon as they received job offers. These three-minute videos were aligned with company strategy and were sent each day for 15 days. They were paired with messaging about the company’s commitment to diversity, what it felt like to be part of the company, what to expect if you were to make a mistake as part of a team, and how people were expected to handle such an occurrence. The videos also discussed what it meant to have equal opportunities to succeed.

In another variation, the new hires were assigned to a work project for a large client right away. The data showed that the 15 videos plus the assignment to a large project upfront resulted in improved performance among women and individuals from underrepresented groups because the interventions increased job clarity.4

In the banking industry, an effective onboarding nudge featured stakeholder meetings at two weeks, three months, six months, nine months, and 12 months. In the meetings, the hires heard from people who had been at the organization for at least five years, who discussed problems the new employees had encountered during onboarding, how they had overcome those challenges, and their perceptions of the company as they moved through the 12-month process.

A variation of that approach used intervals of six months, 12 months, 18 months, and 24 months, during which stakeholder meetings took place every six weeks. The result was a higher retention rate for women and underrepresented groups 48 months after hiring.

One of the important elements of onboarding is the opportunity to create and structure one’s network.5 The network brings with it access to information and opportunities for mentorship. It sets a social-emotional tone and influences how at ease a new hire will feel in the job.

One intervention at a financial institution hinged on sharing with new hires a list of 10 people that they were encouraged but not required to contact within 12 months. Each list included a mix of employees, some of whom were at the executive level. Some of the newcomers received an explanation of why they should reach out to the people on their lists, while others did not. And some participants in the experiment received email reminders to contact the people on the list at three months, six months, and nine months.

Individuals were selected for inclusion on a given new hire’s list based on information that had been captured during the recruitment process. If an employee had expressed interest in a particular business unit, the list included a partner from that area. The list might also include leaders or HR contacts from cities or regions where the new hire’s close family members lived. If the employee needed to relocate to take care of a parent or other family member, that essential information had already been provided.

Individuals from underrepresented groups who received a contact list, an explanation of why they should make contact, and email reminders performed better in their jobs. There was an acceleration in their network spread, which was measured along their lifetime at the company. Even 72 months later, people who had received all three elements of the intervention were still expanding their network faster than those who had not received all three elements of the intervention.6

A large company with many offices discovered that the onboarding process at its smaller workplaces seemed more effective. People felt more integrated, and their networks were established faster than in the large offices. In contrast, at the larger sites, new lateral hires were not mixing across generations and were not building their networks.

In response, the company applied a nudge that involved the cafeteria. Employees were assigned plate colors based on the number of years they had been at the company. New people were assigned a blue plate, employees who were six months into a role got a yellow plate, and other employees had green plates. Once a week, when people dined together, people with the same color plates could not sit together. Color mixing created interaction among employees who would otherwise be invisible to one another.

The strategy made onboarding easy because people were creating new networks. The intervention led to a 34% shift in the degree of directness characterizing an individual’s connections within the network. It also produced an 18% increase in “betweenness centrality,” a metric quantifying an individual’s role in passing information within the network.

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Throughout my research, consulting, writing, and experimentation, 10 points along the career trajectory stand out as places where specific kinds of nudges and interventions can support the goal of building and sustaining a diverse workforce. In addition to attracting, recruiting, and onboarding candidates, diversity nudges can be applied to skill-building, avoiding office drudgery, flexibility and well-being, pay equality, origination and credit, feedback and promotion, and networking and sponsorship.

To benefit an organization and become part of a company’s strategic advantage, women, people of color, and individuals from other underrepresented groups must be intentionally welcomed, integrated fully into the organization, and sustained. This process should be data-driven, harnessing the potential of big data and AI to achieve sustainable inclusion. They must be purposely supplied with the same or equalizing information, connections, skills, projects, and support that are provided to others within the organization. Inequalities must be recognized, and intervening actions must be devised to nudge these conditions in a manner that creates equality and inclusivity. The companies that win at diversity are the ones that design processes that are advantageous to and level the playing field for everyone.