Why your HR practices might not be as inclusive as you think with Sonia Kang
I really think about this in terms of how I make decisions about meal planning. If you make your decisions about meal planning for a week at a time, you can see, when you zoom out, what the week looks like. So you can have a lot more diversity there because you see, “Oh, I can’t have the same thing on a Monday that I’m going to have on Wednesday,” and you build more diversity into the system. But when you’re making those decisions one at a time, they become disjointed from each other. So one day you’re like, “Oh, we’ll just have pizza,” and then two days later, you’re like, “Well, let’s just have pizza again.
Listen to this episode
Intro
In this episode of the podcast, Brooke speaks to Sonia Kang, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, Chief Scientist at the Behavioural Economics in Action Research Center at Rotman School of Management, and Canada Research Chair in Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Their conversation addresses some of the major diversity and inclusion pain points that job candidates, employees, and employers encounter throughout the HR cycle, from recruitment to onboarding and training. Sonia shares fascinating insights from her research, and offers practical advice for organizations seeking to improve the processes they use to attract talent, and ensure their employees feel as though they belong and are valued in their workplace.
Some of the topics discussed include:
- Recruitment barriers, from gender stereotypes to biased application systems.
- Zooming out to the wider picture when searching for the right candidates, and how hiring in sets can help identify the best people for your existing teams.
- Making employees feel like they belong through onboarding co-creation.
- The use of defaults to encourage promotion competition.
- Practical steps organizations can immediately take to address gaps in their inclusion and diversity strategies.
