Is AI the solution to enhancing your DEI goals?

It’s no secret that the unprecedented events of the past two years resulted in transformative changes for every organisation, regardless of its size and location. In addition to introducing a new wave of remote and hybrid work culture, 2020 and 2021 highlighted some of today's most troubling inequalities. As we head into the third month of 2022, various enterprises begin to prioritise diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in 2022.  As per the statistics approximately 79% of companies intend to boost their DEI budgets in 2022.  

In another survey by Deloitte, around 95% of CEOs rated DEI as their top priority. Since many companies are prioritising DEI more than ever in 2022, the questions arise: What makes DEI so critical in an organisations’ employee hiring and retention processes?  

To understand better let’s start with the DEI concept.  

DEI: Is it necessary to prioritise it?     

An effective organisation should include a wide range of highly diversified employees, each of whom has their unique skills, backgrounds, knowledge, and professionalism. The concept of DEI spans many topicsincluding racial or ethnic background, gender, disability, age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, and it has gained increasing importance for forward-looking companies with strong ethical values.

A focus of DEI -diversity, equity, inclusion is identifying and eliminating barriers to inclusion. DEI programs are crucial for building a culture of engagement, positive experience and satisfaction among employees. It is more likely that employees working in organisations with solid diversity climates will be more satisfied at work, enjoy higher levels of trust, and be more engaged and will boost the business ROI. As per the recent McKinsey Statistics DEI can increase organisational profitability by up to 33%. This figure indicates that an efficient DEI approach is a crucial factor that directly affects your employees and your entire business. 

Even though the DEI concept has been widely understood, organisations have difficulties achieving their DEI objectives as they encounter various challenges such as conscious and unconscious workplaces biases that are prevalent almost everywhere in an organisation , excluding critical viewpoints, impeding collaboration and restraining progress toward business goals. 

That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) can make a difference. 

The Role of AI in Advancing DEI 

By leveraging advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP), organisations can now resolve these challenges and make HR processes more effective and efficient. As per the report byForbes, AI-powered technologies provide organisations with data on gender and ethnicity with high accuracy.  

Here is an overview of how AI is helping the HR team achieve DEI goals: 

• Artificial intelligence tools do not consider race, age, and gender demographics. 
• AI-enabled platforms help companies to identify issues and build models that reduce the problems of unconscious bias and produce better results with deep insights into hiring processes. 
• Adding analytics and visualisation to the hiring processes is an excellent way for the HR team to understand how data is being fed into AI-driven software from applicant tracking systems (ATS) and their selection processes' role in fostering diversity in the workplace. 
• Incorporating AI into HR functions can help managers hire more fairly because it ingests data in bulk and predicts whether candidates will succeed in a particular role. 
• Unlike humans, AI algorithms are not limited by time, so they don't have to reduce their pool of available candidates to make faster hiring decisions.  
• By analysing job descriptions, AI technology can allow organisations to modify the language in the descriptions to reach out to a more diverse candidate. 
• Recruiters can use artificial intelligence to automate the time-consuming onboarding process for all candidates. Contrarily, the human brain can only process a fraction of information at any given time. 
• According toa LinkedIn survey conducted in 2018, 93% of employees said they would not leave their company if they got opportunities to expand their careers. Companies can provide their employees with learning and development opportunities by leveraging conversational AI. 
• The AI technology also helps track employees' skills and capabilities and predict career advancement based on their peers, so the HR team can know if employees are reaching their potential.  

Conclusion  

Undoubtedly, DEI is critical for every organisation to achieve its goals and ensure employees' well-being. Glassdoor estimates that around 67% of candidates consider DEI a critical factor when evaluating job offers. Modern technologies can help you develop your unique DEI strategy and set the stage for success and growth.   

It doesn't matter whether you're trying to increase diversity by gender, ethnicity, age, neurodiversity, socioeconomic background or any other dimension; AI is an effective tool. Investing in AI-powered platforms can streamline DEI initiatives and enhance the candidate experience, internal mobility, and business outcomes.