How to support diversity with Artificial Intelligence

Among the trends of 2022 are certainly diversity and inclusion, and a company today that does not move in the direction of embracing differences and guaranteeing everyone the same opportunities, through inclusive actions and policies, seems almost anachronistic. Not only that, not considering diversity in the workplace can be counterproductive in the long run.  But how can Artificial Intelligence help in this regard? Let us look at it in this article.

SUMMARY

• Increasing diversity and reducing bias in recruiting
• The contribution of AI in recruiting
• Can artificial intelligence be neutral and objective?
• Diversity workplace: creating an inclusive environment in the company with AI

Artificial Intelligence helps, from a recruiting point of view, by avoiding discrimination, generational and gender gaps and consequently increasing diversity and removing all cognitive biases that may exist during a search and selection process.

These are all fundamental aspects because they allow not only for a recruiting process to be successful, but also for talented people to be truly valued and for this to be done more quickly and effectively, thereby increasing the likelihood of growing in the market, finding new business opportunities and entering new markets. In addition, hiring people with different backgrounds, as well as different cultural backgrounds, perhaps matured in cross-border contexts, brings new perspectives to the company, new points of view and consequently more innovation as well as different ways of dealing with problems. Let us see how Artificial Intelligence can help in this regard.

Increasing diversity and reducing bias in recruiting

First of all, thanks to AI, it is possible to reduce the occurrence of bias in recruiting and obviously this makes it possible to make significant steps in the direction of diversity & inclusion. Blind recruiting also helps a lot in this respect.

What is this? It is a process that HR professionals carry out to eliminate personal information about candidates that could possibly influence a hiring decision or, even before that, the success of an interview. Blind recruiting in fact works to eliminate cognitive bias, i.e. the distortions that every person, even unintentionally, has.
Knowing that, for example, a candidate has lived in a certain country, or that he/she comes from a certain family, or that he/she is no longer so ‘young’, can influence his/her selection.

With blind recruiting, the risk is not taken because some sensitive information is hidden and you help to create a work environment that is truly inclusive.

The contribution of AI in recruiting

In all of this, a huge contribution comes from Artificial Intelligence, which not only makes it possible to anonymise CVs by focusing on skills, but also to automate the screening of CVs and also assess job matching, i.e. the match between what the candidate has to offer and what the company is looking for. Let us look at all aspects in detail.

Assessing skills with anonymous CVs

An anonymous or rather anonymised CV, as we have mentioned, is a CV that conceals personal information that can influence selection in a negative way without enhancing diversity. And this for all the reasons we have mentioned so far related to the prejudices, conscious and unconscious, that each person may have.

By obscuring certain data, on the other hand, HR can focus on the skills and professional experience that the candidate has had up to that moment, trying to understand if this is what the company is looking for and decide which aspects to address in an initial phone call or cognitive interview.

All this is possible thanks to Artificial Intelligence: with Inda, for example, it is possible, using the Anonymous Resume/CV system, to anonymise any digital document, be it a CV, a covering letter but also a portfolio. And this regardless of the format: in fact, starting from the original version of the document, with Inda it is possible to create an anonymous copy in real time, essentially the same, but without the sensitive information.

Automating CV screening

Artificial Intelligence can then improve application times and transfer large amounts of data. Thanks to Inda’s Information Extraction and Résumé Parsing techniques, it is possible to speed up the extraction of information and automate the filling in of application forms by storing data in the database. All this facilitates both the recruiter and the candidate.

On the recruiter’s side, there is certainly a considerable saving of time, allowing applications to be handled more quickly and not to miss out on people potentially suited to the profile being sought. In addition, data mining makes it possible to enrich and update the database by really gathering all the most important information and highlighting the most ‘diverse’ candidates.

It also has its benefits for candidates: automation at the application stage improves the candidate experience and reduces the drop-out rate during the delicate application phase.

As we know, it only takes one detail not working or making this process particularly complex for a person to abandon the site or platform to apply. And this goes in the complete opposite direction to inclusion: only those who are perhaps ‘geeky’ or patient manage to complete a complicated application while the majority of people leave.

Furthermore, Artificial Intelligence can help in the inclusion of candidates with disabilities: technology can be simplified to facilitate their access as well as writing job advertisements and designing an experience that meets their needs.

Analysing job matching for more accurate selections

Artificial Intelligence also has another important task: facilitating the matching between the skills required and those actually provided by a candidate. In a word, matching, and this can take place both before an advertisement is posted and afterwards.

Among Inda’s functionalities, there is in fact the possibility of doing a sort of preliminary matching: before publishing the advertisement, it is checked whether there is a match between what is sought and what you actually already have, i.e. between the profiles that are already in the database. Which, mind you, can be either people who were previously recruited, but did not make it to the recruitment, or people who already work in the company. Perhaps there are people who are interested in a particular position or who, over the years, have acquired new skills: why not consider them? From the perspective of inclusion and welcoming diversity, this is certainly an important step.

Then there is the actual job matching phase: in this case, after the advertisement has been published, the actual match between the candidates and the position sought is verified.
How does this happen? In the case of Inda, semantic matching is carried out on job title, level of experience, studies conducted, skills and so on. And thanks to the Evidence system, it is possible to check how compatible the candidate is for that position or not.

All this saves time to hire but also goes towards candidate satisfaction: the person being recruited really has the chance to play all his cards because his profile actually matches what is sought.

Can artificial intelligence be neutral and objective?

To think that Artificial Intelligence in recruiting can solve all prejudices to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace is certainly an optimistic vision, but some aspects have to be considered.

AI only goes so far so it can guarantee, for what is required of it and for what is its ‘space’, a selection that can be as objective as possible.

But let’s remember that recruiting, as it should be, is entrusted to the people in charge of human resources, so it is up to them to know how to customise the tools they use and make the most of them. Let’s take an example: if I manage through blind recruiting to make a selection that is objective while hiding sensitive data, the performance of the selection will then depend on how I behave during the interview and how I carry out the selection.

Another aspect to consider: Artificial Intelligence for recruiting is only one part of the whole process of having – and keeping – diversity in the company.  

Therefore, it is important to make sure that diversity is nurtured and supported, and that it is taken into account. Furthermore, according to a report published by Russell Reynolds, only 35% of Chief Digital Officers take diversity data into account, and therefore if an organisation does not keep track of it, it is difficult for it to check later on whether it is moving in that direction and activating policies.
This is why it is important that AI is put in a much broader context and not only linked to recruitment  altogether.

Diversity workplace: creating an inclusive environment in the company with AI

Everything we have just said goes in the direction of definitely creating a more inclusive work environment by attracting people with disabilities, for example, but also people from different geographical origins, different cultural backgrounds and so on.
This can lead to reshaping the way of thinking of both employers and employees themselves, creating a changing mindset, ready to innovate. And also influencing a corporate culture that aims at diversity and inclusion in a stable way, thus creating long-term change.

Aiming at diversity and inclusion in fact does not mean ‘striving’ to implement policies in this sense, but making these aspects become structural so that they really permeate the work environment. And in this Artificial Intelligence can make an enormous contribution, as we have seen, provided that it is not thought of as the only way, but perhaps one of the starting points.