So you want to attract diverse candidates to your company. Great, you’ve made a step in the right direction towards enhancing your employer brand. However, you’re not getting the right diverse candidates to apply. What should you do?

Take a look at the message you’re sending to diverse job-seekers:

1. Look at your website. Does it send out a message of diversity? Does it show a diverse group of employees? If it doesn’t, minority job-seekers will feel it – and look elsewhere.
2. Fine-tune your message. It’s one thing for a company to have a theoretical commitment to diversity. But if recruiters are sending out a mixed message, it can alienate people. Even if it involves a new training process, make sure that recruiting is happening in a culturally sensitive manner.
3. Don’t get cute. Candidates will relate more enthusiastically to the concepts of job fulfillment and career growth than to blatant ethnic appeals. A message targeted to one particular ethnic group, if it seems condescending or pandering, it will backfire.

There are many things the come to mind when thinking about diversity: race, sex, religion, sexuality and age are some of the first we tend to think of.

However, there is another valuable group of people that are often overlooked when employers think about diversity in the workplace–the disabled.

There is a recent article from www.diversityinc.com that discusses disabilities in the workforce. John Kemp, executive director of the US Business Leadership Network (USBLN) discusses the stigma that surrounds disability, and how employees often hide their problem from coworkers.

John Kemp knows a thing or two about the disabled in the work place–he started his life with his disability, and has two prosthetic arms and legs. Now, he says, is the time for progress.

“In October, the percentage of people with disabilities in the labor force was about 21 percent,” Kemp said. “That percentage hasn’t changed since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990”

It’s clear that the definition of diversity has changed over the years, and will continue to change and keep evolving.

So what is your company doing to address the topic of disabilities in the workforce?

You can access the article here: http://diversityinc.com/article/8127/The-Valued-Employees-Youre-Missing-People-With-Disabilities/

Re-published: “Diversity”, by Annika Lagerholm, Universum Quarterly 2006, Issue 1

Embrace diversity: It’s necessary to meet an increasingly diverse customer-base and be able to recruit and retain skilful employees. If you fail to introduce diversity into your workforce, it’ll cost you missed business goals and even potential lawsuits.

For many years, diversity was regarded an unimportant issue. Yet, due to demographic changes that have lead to shortages of skilled workers, employers need to recruit from a broad and complex talent pool. The success of diversity initiatives generally depends on three key factors:

3 success factors for diversity initiatives

1. Develop formal structures and processes in the organization, such as recruitment, compensation, promotion and career development

2. Change personal attitudes and behavior, such as corporate culture, leadership styles and attitudes amongst employees and managers

3. Include everyone in the organization