Transparency, Diversity and your Employment Brand

Last week Paul Dodd from Head2Head (a TalentOyster partner) made a thoughtful blog post about trends in employment branding and one of them in particular stood out to me and got me thinking. It was when Paul talked about the need for transparency in a successful employment brand and here is what he had to say on the subject.

"Employment brands are all about trust and credibility, so it's important to be authentic, honest, and transparent. It's okay if you aren't perfect - but pretending you're perfect, or something that you're not, is a good way to turn off potential employees. "

It's good advice but it never is as true as it is when it comes to how you embrace diversity. Good candidates, the ones you want to hire, can tell the difference between a truthful employment brand and one that in the case of diversity is simply about tokenism.

I talked before about how sometimes you need quotas in order to increase the diversity in an organization but if you want your organization to move past tokenism and have an actually diverse workforce quotas aren't enough. Being transparent with your employment brand on where you are now as well as the future you'd like to see can help with this.

Good candidates aren't going to be fooled by a message that says it's about diversity when the organization obviously isn't. By being honest about where you are now you make the candidates believe in the sincerity of your diversity strategy and more likely to join your organization.

After all, in the end good candidates are what it's all about. The diversity advantage we all talk about only comes about when you're actually able to attract all candidates including the best ones.

That means being transparent about your workforce strategy just as you are about any other aspect of your employment brand.