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Podcasting at events and conferences is one of my favourite things to do. I love the joy of seeing people face to face, and you get the opportunity to access a broad range of views and expertise around the topics shaping the industry.
At the beginning of May, Recruiting Future was an official media partner of The HR Technology Conference Europe in Amsterdam, the first time the event had been held outside of the US.
AI was a central theme in the discussions, and I was eager to gather insights on the current use cases of AI tools, as well as the potential future implications.
The first voice you will hear is Rebecca Carr, CPO and acting CEO of SmartRecruiters, talking about AI as a co-pilot and its potential to enhance the very human aspects of recruiting.
Next up after Rebecca is my friend and co-author, the ever-present Mervyn Dinnen, talking about his concerns about the impact of AI on employee experience and creativity
Finally, I spoke to Norwegian entrepreneur Eivind Arnsten about the AI employer lawyer his company is building and the potential for widespread automation throughout HR processes and activities.
Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Matt: Support for this podcast comes from Greenhouse. Greenhouse is your altogether hiring platform. Engage top talent with smart sourcing tools, deliver a more equitable interviewing process, welcome new hires with ease and get the insights you need to make measurable improvements all within a single platform. Hire better altogether with greenhouse.
[Recruiting Future Podcast theme]
Hi, there. Welcome to Episode 615 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Inclusive hiring is a key part of building inclusive organizations and the benefits of getting it right are considerable, both at a human and a business level. Recognizing bias, standardizing hiring manager behavior, and analyzing data are just some of the things that employers need to consider to be more inclusive in their hiring. My guest this week is Sarah Harnett, Senior Director of People Business Partners at Greenhouse Software. In our conversation, Sarah talks us through the steps that Greenhouse has taken to build an inclusive culture through inclusive hiring practices.
Matt: Hi Sarah, and welcome to the podcast.
Sarah: Hey Matt, I’m really looking forward to talking to you today.
Matt: Well, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Sarah: Yeah, sure. I am the senior director of our people business partner team in Greenhouse software. I have a global role leading the people business partner team. I sit on our people leadership team and the EMEA leadership team as well. And also, actually this summer, our head of DE&I, which we call IDEA here at Greenhouse and our people experience team is going out in parental and sabbatical leave. So, I’m going to be leading that team for a period of five months. So, I’m actually based out of Ireland, but the role is very much a global role.
Matt: Fantastic stuff. And for people who might not be familiar, tell us a little bit more about Greenhouse.
Sarah: It is the hiring operating system for People First Companies. So, we spotlight the business critical role of hiring and enabling business success. So our software, it brings a structured hiring approach to any company’s processes. So, it helps people have more fair and equitable hiring practices and more data driven decisions so companies can be continuously getting better at hiring. We’ve helped over 7000 companies turn talent into their competitive advantage. Some of those companies include HubSpot, Hopin and for us, our mission, it’s to make every company great at hiring.
Matt: So, we’re talking about diversity, diverse workforces, DE&I in our conversation. So just to kind of start with, what does it take to build a diverse workforce? One that champions inclusion, starting from talent acquisition going all the way through the employee lifecycle. Just give us a kind of a bit of an overview there.
Sarah: Yeah. First, what I’d say is before you get into action, planning, and building a diverse workforce, I think it’s really important to start with awareness. And in doing so, think about data. Like, look at your current workforce, the makeup of that and look at your team structures, audit your processes, look at it from a hiring perspective. Where are people falling through the cracks? Who owns those processes? And gathering information, I think is the first step. And that will enable you to understand the impact of an employee’s life cycle before you start putting practices in place. So I’d say audit, look at data, and that’ll enable you to be more intentional about creating a DE&I strategy or your workforce diversity goals.
The second thing I would say is a commitment from leadership to play like a really active role displaying DE&I. We call it IDEA here at greenhouse, which is inclusion, diversity, equity and allyship. So, you might hear me refer to IDEA rather than DE&I. We play such a really key emphasis on our leadership and their actions. And then that brings the awareness of the strategy and how it’s translated into workforce, diversity goals. So, I think starting with your data is really important. What does that look like practically? And if I walk you through some of those things, for me, it’s about if you really want to create an inclusive culture, a community where people feel like they really belong, hiring is your starting point. And from that perspective you might start thinking about what changes you can make to your hiring approach.
That might mean sourcing from different places, changing your screening tactics to make sure that your interview processes are standardized. You won’t know what problems you’re fixing if you jump straight into action. So that’s where I go back to the first start. The starting point is looking at your data. And then even going back a step as well is like, “What is your hiring philosophy?” And when we think about that, from my perspective, I’ve worked in the HR space, the people space, for over 15 years, and I’ve been a hiring manager. And so often I’ve looked at candidates, “How do they fit into the company culture, seeking this cultural fit?” And I have, like, looked at candidates in the past and say, “No, they don’t fit the culture here.” And whereas when I look at that from having joined Greenhouse, we take a different lands list.
And from our perspective, and being a talent maker here at Greenhouse, we look at it as, how can someone add to your culture, bring a different perspective, a different point of view, and ultimately challenge us to be better. It’s probably like, this is one of the simplest mindset shifts, yet so effective, and it doesn’t take a huge strategy, doesn’t cost anything, but it’s got to do with like, “What is your hiring philosophy?” And when I speak to HR professionals in this space and we chat about this, it is a bit of a light bulb moment, and it’s something that can be just be so powerful. So for me, I think, like, “What is your hiring philosophy in your organization?” And moving on from the life cycle, when people are in roles, think about diversity through an employee life cycle. So, we have employee resource groups here in Greenhouse, they’re commonly known as ERGs. In Greenhouse, we call them Arbors. Why do we call them arbors? Arbors are trees that purify the environment by producing oxygen.
So, in the same way that Greenhouse’s arbors, we infuse the organization with inclusion, diversity, equity and allyship, creating optimal conditions for everyone to grow. So, we call our ERGs, Arbors here in Greenhouse. And the purpose of these groups is to bring employees together based on shared characteristics or life experiences and ERGs, they’re generally based on providing support, awareness enhancing career development, and contributing to personal development in the work environment. And at Greenhouse, our arbors, they’re a vehicle for empowering groups of people to drive community building, knowledge sharing, talent making, like, within our communities and externally, so they help facilitate, like, uncomfortable conversations about systemic bias. And in Greenhouse, we have seven arbors, we have two forming EMEA chapters, and that really focuses on, you know, while somebody joins a business, what’s the next stage of their life cycle.
And the third thing that I’d say to your question, Matt, is measurement. So, going back to my point earlier on data, is review your data against your workforce diversity goals, to measure the impact. So, to understand the impact of your strategy, gather data from your people, talk to your people, ask for their views, listen to their responses, be open, be human and open to change. And by getting their feedback, it’ll help you map out what are your milestones and a few ways that we do that in greenhouse is our employee voice surveys. So, we used to do them twice a year. We’ve moved them to quarterly. And the feedback upon those results really help us design programs and initiatives on foot of this. It also will encourage us as to what actions we take to gather focus groups, to get deeper and dig into some data from the survey. So, we spend a good bit of time reviewing the data and what actions we want to pull together, other things we do at a company level.
So, we have our company all hands, and we include a section on that called stories from the field, whereby an Arbor leader or a chapter member will share insights, personal stories or learnings with the whole company. And this can be a really powerful experience. And we’ve had senior leaders share stories around experiencing mental health, challenges within their own journey and talking about neurodiversity only recently. And what does that do? Well, it empowers others to feel safe, to share their own experiences and feel supported. So, it really creates a sense of belonging. Another thing we do is around AMA, so it’s ask me anything. And this is where our executive team, so our CEO and Co-founder, John and Daniel, they will literally take like an hour out and answer different questions. And people submit the questions in advance.
And often you’ve seen initiatives may change as a result of the questions or feedback within that. One of the things that really impressed me when I first joined was in an AMA there was questions that were coming through around a new sabbatical program that was launched which had amazing intent, but there were questions coming with people who had longer tenure and on foot of the questions that came through in the AMA. They redesigned the sabbatical programs so that it was more equitable and inclusive. And that, for me, just like really impressed me at the beginning of how much the feedback is taken on board, revised and updated and revamped as a result.
Matt: Oh, absolutely, absolutely and I suppose a big part of this is hiring managers and kind of how they behave. What sort of behaviors could they adopt to remove bias and make candidates from all backgrounds sort of feel welcomed into the recruiting process.
Sarah: Yeah, great question. We provide hiring interview training to walk managers through the structured process, and which in itself will aim to remove bias and guides interviewers to behave in a more inclusive way. Our structured hiring processes also enable us and some practical ways for hiring managers to make candidates from all backgrounds feel welcomed. They can include things like a functionality for candidates to pronounce their name right. We have that functionality in Greenhouse where you can record your name and a hiring manager can listen to that before they go and meet with a candidate. So something, again, can seem pretty small but have a huge impact. We also use a function where candidates select their own interview slot, so it’s inclusive of different people’s time zones and different people’s needs. We share our pronouns at the start of an interview.
We keep the structure measuring just the attributes you’re assessing for and not making a decision on other attributes. So that’s going back to that structured hiring approach to ensure that every candidate has the same experience. So, it avoids comparing candidates. You’re really assessing just the attribute that you’re meeting with a candidate on and a discipline to capture interview feedback instantly and put the scores in. So, you have a really data-driven conversation and that’s something that from a hiring practice is allocating that time to do that straight after your interview so that you’re having really accurate data.
Matt: And I suppose to get into that a little bit, can you tell us a little bit about that structured hiring process?
Sarah: We start off with a role kickoff. So, we would have a role kickoff and a scorecard definition. So, this is where our [00:12:46 [unintelligible] team will work with hiring managers to align on the objective of the role, defining the skills, the traits, the qualifications needed, and agree on the role responsibilities. So, for every role that we launch, we have a role kickoff. Then we get into designing what the interview kit creation looks like. So here you create interview questions based on assessing the candidate on each previously agreed upon attribute. So based on your kickoff, you will design your interview kit and decide who are you going to assess or, sorry, who is going to assess those attributes at what stage of the process. Then we get into sourcing an interview and interviewing. So, this is where the main assessment of the candidate happens, using the agreed upon attributes and the interview questions, staying really consistent across all candidates. And then you have a roundup. So this is the interview team. The whole interview team will come together, review the data, the feedback on all the candidates to reach an evidence-based decision. So, what you’re seeing here is real structure, data-driven conversations to have that really informed roundup at the end of the interview process.
Matt: So, you’ve obviously gone into the structure process in a bit of detail there. Do you have any other advice for employers’ kind of putting together their hiring plans? And I suppose most crucially, how they can embed habits from the start and avoid mistakes so that they’re making sure that the working culture is more inclusive.
Sarah: Yeah. To answer the first part of your question, understand the needs of the organization. So, what is the company strategy? And with that, what are the skills, what are the behaviors that you need to deliver against these business goals? So starting there, I think is really important. Then in partnership with your leaders, your people business partners, understand your current workforce skills, your top talent, your attrition trends, looking at diversity, looking at different language needs, geographical needs, leaning into looking at your succession plans. If you have that in place. And this will already help you align your strategy to what your hiring plans are. Which moves me on to the second part of that question, which is my advice is to design and embed structured processes or leaders can adopt what will influence really good habits.
So, to answer the second part of your question, I’d go back to what I said around the structured hiring process and what I covered in how we do that here in Greenhouse. Hiring manager’s involvement is really important in sourcing and also your ERGs. So how can you use your Arbors, as we refer to them, sharing vacancies or talent making within their communities? And to move on to the next part of your question, which is what to try to avoid to make a culture more inclusive with the best of intentions, policies, and programs and practices that are made by the people team and launched without much involvement from the business, rather than being designed with the end person in mind. That’s something I would say is to absolutely avoid. So, because that can lead to assumptions. So, I would say is avoid doing that and really work with your end user in mind, with your team, so that the policies aren’t a HR thing, so that you have a DE&I strategy, that it’s connected to all other parts and strategies across the company. So, it’s connected.
Programming should be community driven and so that it’s really inclusive. And employers may also invest in social content or internal awareness of key dates to certain communities without really being focused on the awareness of what they’re trying to bring. What is the goal, what is the strategy for DE&I in your organization? So, when we think about culture, we need to think about what are the values, the practices, what we have in place, and how do we behave on a daily basis to make it more inclusive. And that brings me on to the other part of your question, which is what’s often forgotten and bringing it into a company is the company norms and everyone being an ally. So how do we communicate and behave, such as diary management? Like how does that practice become inclusive? So, are your calendars open? So, if somebody will put in like they’re walking their dog or picking up their child, they’ll block this out.
And having that openness to having a calendar open for people to see that is a really inclusive company norm and behavior, other things like it’s okay to have cameras on and off. I was at a seminar recently and they really encouraged that leaders should do that from time to model that behavior. We also look at doing things like captions on quarantine meetings so that it’s really inclusive of different people’s time zones and whether people attend or not. Materials sent out in advance and providing a space for everyone to contribute, ensuring that all views are heard. We do that really consistently within Greenhouse, ensuring that everybody has a space within meetings to share a question or feedback or provide their input. And how do you then celebrate one another? That’s a really important norm to focus on. And also how are leaders measured on their input on quarterly surveys. And that for us, like these are some of the norms that are just like really important to be able to drive that culture of inclusivity. Again, they can be small tactful things, but have a massive impact.
Matt: What are you seeing as some of the most interesting trends in DE&I at the moment? I mean, what should companies be thinking about? What should they be focusing on? How can they get their leadership and employees bought into this mission?
Sarah: Yeah, trends we’re seeing at the moment, the future of work that remains a key trend from how and where and what the experience looks like for employees. And there’s a lot to balance there. The rise of remote work, that’s open doors for global inclusion. It’s open doors for global talent pools. It supports underrepresented groups, people who require accommodations, accessibility and accommodations for remote or hybrid workforce. That’s been a key trend and that’s been coupled with the challenge of building diverse virtual teams and creating that inclusive remote work environment. I think that’s going to remain a really key trend. And how do we do this in this evolving world? There’s things from a European legislation perspective looking around E-presenteeism and looking at the directives around work-life balance, flexible working arrangements, and that’s really supporting as well the focus around addressing burnout. So, I think future of work is going to continue to be a core focus.
Another current trend is around embracing intersectionality. So, in 2023, organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of this and you’ll see that in their DE&I efforts. Intersectionality, that’s about acknowledging the overlapping dimensions of individuals, identities, and experiences, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, disability and more. And by understanding that intersectionality, we recognize that individuals face unique forms of discrimination and privilege that are shaped by the intersections of their identities. So, it allows us to move beyond a one size fits all approach to diversity and inclusion, and instead address the specific challenges faced by individuals and these intersections. So embracing intersectionality, it will enable us to foster a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of diversity, ensuring that efforts towards equity and inclusion are truly effective and inclusive of all individuals, regardless of their intersecting identities.
To answer the second part of your question, companies starting out their journey from and what are some of the first steps? I’d start by saying having a more equitable and inclusive culture, it is the right thing to do from a human perspective, and it also makes financial sense. So how can you tell that story and get people to buy into it? We know that candidates and employees are expecting companies to have a DE&I strategy and a real commitment to us. We saw in 2021 the Workforce Happiness Index that found that 78% of workers want employers to have and value DE&I. And staying on data, I would say understand your current workforce as the next step. So, analyzing the patterns in your data from hiring, your promotion data, your survey data, job mentioned earlier on, attrition trends to determine what insights this is telling us about our current workforce and where you should consider some of your changes. And that’ll help direct your attention towards key focus areas.
So, who are your key promoters? Who is influential and passionate in this space? Bring those people in on discussion, share their insights. Also, like any change management, who may be the detractors but a key stakeholder, and how can you work with them? What is their role? What’s important to them? And that’s bringing it back to the data and the why. How can you correlate your insights to your performance of your business? For example, there are patterns that more diverse teams have stronger business outcomes. And looking at what’s happening inside your organization, this will help shape the why to develop these goals. So, sharing some of the benefits for leadership is really important. So, looking at what’s happening inside your organization will help shape the why to develop these goals. Sharing some of the benefits with your leadership to gain that buy in.
McKinsey did a study recently, and they found that 43% of companies with racially diverse boards noticed higher profits. 85% of CEOs with a DE&I strategy say it has improved their bottom line. So, we know that from this research, the importance of it from a financial perspective and from candidate expectations. So, millennials are 83% more likely to be engaged at a work that values inclusivity. And that’s a study found from Deloitte. So, while candidates are demanding this, it’s also here, we’re showing the financial benefits of it. And as I go back to, it’s also just the right thing to do from a human perspective.
Matt: No, absolutely. Couldn’t agree with you more. Final question, what does the future look like if we were having this conversation in two or three-years’ time, what would we be talking about?
Sarah: I think data is going to play a really increasing role in shape in our DE&I strategies and from people having access to data, leveraging that to measure diversity metrics, identify areas for improvement, make more data-informed decisions and really measuring the effectiveness of that. So, I think we’re going to continue to see that. I think the other big thing we’ll start to see is more focus on AI and the use of AI and the implications that it has from inclusive hiring, retention, engagement, promotion practices and so on. There’s a lot of talk around the education and governance around AI and that’s something we’d see continue.
Recently, Greenhouse actually surveyed over 2700 candidates in the US, UK, Germany, and Ireland and 100 HR professionals around the use of AI in recruiting. And the headline is that the majority of HR professionals, 62%, believe that AI can help them hire the best candidates. So new AI recruiting software, it’s popping up all the time. And the efficient capabilities coming from this technology advancement has already helped a lot of recruitment teams be more and more efficient and effective. In fact, almost a third of HR leaders say that they’re already using generative AI during the hiring process and 48% said they’re also considering using it. So, what came through in that survey is that there is work still to be done in this space to ensure AI is used ethically and the education and training and awareness around it in the workplace. That’s something I think we’re going to see far more focus on in the next few years.
Matt: Sarah, thank you very much for talking to me.
Sarah: Thanks so much Matt, it’s been a pleasure.
Matt: My thanks to Sarah. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also subscribe to our YouTube channel by going to mattalder.tv. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com. On that site, you can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
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