It’s no secret that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is no longer a ‘nice to have,’ but a crucial component of any successful organization. Especially in regards to recruitment and retention, DEI can’t be ignored—67% of job seekers consider DEI to be a critical factor when considering employment opportunities, while 50% of employees feel their companies can be doing more to drive DEI.
But driving DEI doesn’t just require existing employees to get on board with initiatives or take part in supporting DEI efforts; in fact, recruiting and hiring has so much more to do with it than we might think at first blush.
This is where talent relationship management comes into play, and can help your hiring team effectively drive DEI from sourcing and engaging to hiring and beyond.
Simply put, talent relationship management (or ‘TRM’) refers to the consistent process of attracting and retaining the high-quality employees your company hires—including developing their skills, engaging them in their work, and finding ways to leverage existing talent to drive internal mobility.
The primary goal of talent relationship management is to build a dedicated, motivated, and diverse workforce of employees that will stay with your organization for the long haul. To achieve that, more recruiters are beginning to leverage TRM solutions or software.
Choosing the right TRM solution to help you drive DEI may feel overwhelming, so let’s break down how you can make that decision based on features and capabilities you’ll need to look for in a TRM. Whether you’re looking to replace your existing TRM solution or start from scratch, these tips will help guide and inform your decision-making.
But first, why does TRM matter for DEI?
TRM means better talent relationship management, similar to how CRM means better customer relationship management, which is essential to for organizations looking to attract, recruit, and retain diverse talent.
And the competition for that top talent has never been fiercer. In a candidate-driven market (which 90% of recruiters say we’re in), the relationships that you build with diverse talent will play a crucial role in your ability to recruit and keep that talent while building a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable company culture.
The world is changing quickly and one of the biggest shifts is the need for a diverse candidate-centric hiring approach. Organizations who can differentiate themselves and position their commitment to DEI across their entire talent acquisition process will come out on top.
Let’s consider a few of the top reasons why more recruiters are harnessing talent relationship management to drive DEI:
- Harness diverse talent from sourcing to hiring and beyond—hiring, developing, and promoting diverse talent strengthens your organization and allows you to better tackle changes to your business and industry long term.
- Drive innovation as you grow—whether it’s new technology or changing business needs, a diverse team brings different perspectives and experiences that empower your company to pivot and grow, while solving real challenges and innovating for your market.
- Build more engaged teams—studies have found that organizations with more diverse, engaged teams outperform their companies without diverse employees by nearly 58%.
- Reduce turnover—when you consider that 63% of companies find retaining talent is harder than sourcing talent, it’s critical that companies manage their diverse talent and provide opportunities to grow.
- Create a strong employer brand—attracting diverse candidates involves building an employer brand that employees trust and get behind, which is why talent management is so crucial; it can help you consistently improve your employer brand when positioning your company in the talent market as a DEI-focused organization.
What features should you look for in a TRM to drive DEI?
When it comes to choosing a TRM solution, it’s important to note that not all are created equal. Before you dive into choosing a TRM solution for general use, check out our handy article on the top 10 benefits of leveraging talent relationship management software.
To help your hiring team drive DEI, especially through more diverse recruiting practices, you’ll want to look for features a TRM solution that enable you to:
- Improve how you source diverse talent: a TRM solution goes beyond the typical capabilities of ATS to help you source the best candidates from your database and add net-new talent to your pipeline as you work with diverse job boards and networks (like Elpha)
- Take advantage of advanced nurture capabilities: your team can also leverage a TRM platform to nurture every candidate in an individualized manner, especially when conducting interviews with diverse stakeholders. For example, with LeverTRM, each TA pro charged with communicating with candidates can also analyze their nurture data to enhance outreach effectiveness (i.e., lead-to-conversion) over time.
- Organize your entire interview process: a TRM solution allows you to structure your interview workflow and processes to include a range of diverse stakeholders, based on your distinct team setup/needs so you can move talent through the recruiting cycle more quickly and efficiently.
- Centralize all of your DEI data: everything from candidate feedback to new-hire data is maintained to help with future recruitment. For instance, data about the diversity of candidates in your pipeline can help you consistently improve how and where you source diverse talent.
- Gather in-depth analytics and insights: a TRM solution can also help you assess individual recruiter and team performance as it pertains to a variety of tasks (sourcing, nurturing, interviewing) and metrics (pipeline growth, CX, DEI-hiring data).
- Rediscover previous candidates: candidates you ‘archive’ in your TRM can be revisited later if/when future positions open up that better fit their skill sets and/or qualifications.
How a TRM solution can improve DEI post-recruitment
For many organizations, talent management begins and ends with recruitment—once a candidate is successfully hired and onboarded, the buck stops there. However, true talent relationship management extends beyond this phase to nurture diverse employees and allow businesses to maximize their potential.
That’s because there’s a strong connection between talent management and organizational performance. Studies have found, for example, that companies with the ability to attract and retain diverse talent—coupled with an effective talent management strategy—can outperform their competitors.
Despite many of the efforts organizations initiate to drive DEI past the recruitment stage, other studies reveal that representation of people of color (both men and women) decreases as career levels rise. Talent relationship management focuses on the entire journey of an employee with your company, from candidate to new hire and well beyond. In this sense, a TRM solution empowers your hiring team to hire for today so you have the best talent your company needs for the long haul.
And that’s critical when recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce. Consider that:
- 67% of employees consider workplace diversity an important factor when considering employment offers with a new company
- Studies have found that anonymized recruiting can help increase the likelihood of hiring more diverse teams, up to 46% when hiring women
- Companies with racially diverse teams tend to outperform others lacking in diversity—up to 35%
- 58% of employees wouldn’t apply to a company where there’s a pay gap
A talent relationship management solution can help your team not only recruit but also retain diverse talent by enabling you to use data and insights to achieve the following more effectively:
Talent allocation
Think of talent allocation as internal mobility, where your organization moves existing talent based on key business objectives or priorities along with an employee’s own career goals. Companies that can quickly and strategically reallocate diverse talent based on needs, goals, and desires that shift or change are in a better position to excel at talent management. Add to that the benefit of keeping diverse talent in-house and providing opportunities to move up within their company, and talent allocation gives both employers and employees incentive to grow.
Candidate and employee experience
HR teams have to be involved in more than just the recruitment and onboarding stages; they’re also a key stakeholder in your employees’ experience.
When HR is involved in talent allocation, upskilling, and linking existing talent back to business objectives, there’s a greater chance that the organization as a whole will succeed in effectively managing diverse talent (both new and existing). Knowing how important both candidate and employee experiences are for attracting and retaining diverse candidates, it makes sense that HR be involved in the entire process.
Diversity recruiting
Between sourcing, engaging, nurturing, and hiring top talent, you’ve got a lot on your plate. Add to that the need to drive diversity recruitment across your organization, and any talent acquisition team would feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to understand why many organizations struggle to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the face of so many hiring and retention objectives.
With a TRM solution, you gain access to a wealth of analytics, data, and insights that help you improve upon all of your recruitment processes, including:
- Candidate outreach and communications
- Conducting interviews and follow-up discussions
- Collecting feedback from diverse candidates
- Compiling data from DEI and EEO dashboards
- Optimizing DEI surveys
- Building a DEI tech stack based on your diversity recruitment goals
Is it time your team adopted a TRM solution?
It’s true recruiters and TA pros are using more platforms and channels than ever before. A TRM solution is a must-have solution as it can help you develop personalized messaging for candidates throughout the entire, end-to-end, full-cycle recruiting process.
Download our eBook to learn how Lever customers build data-driven recruitment models — and improve their critical recruiting and hiring metrics — with our TRM software.
