How diversity & inclusion in Switzerland can be improved by technology

Digital tools for inclusion at work were discussed at the Advance Gender Equality in Business workshop in Zurich on 21. November 2019.

Putting aside the moral obligations we have; diverse organisations are more profitable. 12 trillion USD could be added to the global GDP by 2025 by closing the gender gap (Source: McKinsey & Company 2017). Despite Switzerland being one of the world’s top economies – in terms of GDP per capita, it ranks third – there is much more to be done, with the latest Swiss Labour Force Survey identified the gender pay gap of up to 23% (Source: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home.gnpdetail.2019-0489.html) .

According to Tom Lakin, Senior Innovation Manager at Robert Walters Group diversity becomes more and more important to businesses because today’s organisations need to represent the communities that they work in. The diversity and inclusion technology landscape is booming and Robert Walters has proven that technology can make a difference: Robert Walters’ job advert analysis tool, RW Adify, which flags gender bias in job adverts, has increased under-represented female applications in 100% of studies. 

However, many other examples exist where technology has increased bias. Amazon developed an Artificial Intelligent sourcing tool to predict which candidates would be a good fit.  They had to cancel the project though as the AI had learned bias and disadvantaged women. Facebook’s also faces criticism for hyper-targeted job advertising which has allegedly learned bias, serving lower skilled jobs to non-white job seekers.

These examples don’t mean that AI is bad for diversity, it simply means that clients should conduct stringent due diligence and work with partners such as Robert Walters who assess and understand bias minimisation.

4 recruitment areas impacted by technology

• Employer brand: Video job adverts are a simple but highly effective way of challenging assumptions candidates may have about an organisation.  Videos allow us to humanise the job, but we also recommend featuring under-represented individuals in videos, whether that it is female developers challenging the notion that it is an all-male environment or male personal assistants who have long been under-represented.
• Assessment: Online tests are frequently used to test candidates’ skills, but the new breed of assessment tech can drive meritocratic hiring, meaning hiring the candidate with the best skills and potential for the job, not just the best CV.
• Sourcing:  At Robert Walters, we aim to ensure that our talent sourcing strategy and approach is inclusive to all individuals and this means understanding the audience of the media we use to engage talent.  Certain job boards have a disproportionate number of male visitors, for example whilst others are more balanced
• Inclusion: Harassment, both in the workplace and outside, is a major issue. In 2018 alone, Google fired 48 managers and executives for sexual harassment. Emerging technology, such as Spot, an anti-harassment chatbot from the UK is helping to combat this.

How to successfully implement technology in recruitment

Recruitment should be at the heart of any diversity initiative as external hiring is the only way that companies can change the diversity of their employee base. “Be curious and willing to change and try new initiatives.”, Tom Lakin adds.

“There isn’t one single ‘silver bullet’ that solves diversity. Rather, it’s working with your diversity specialist or recruitment consultancy to re-engineer your hiring approach, whether that is rewriting your job adverts to remove gender bias, using different media channels or embedding fair and meritocratic assessment technology to challenge bias.” 

Also, he highlights, that senior stakeholder buy-in is crucial. “We have found that if we have the support of the c-suite, we have been able to help our clients deliver meaningful change. We recently worked with the EXCO of a major bank in Geneva to refocus their female hiring and the results were phenomenal – we were only able to do this because of the buy in at executive level.”

Robert Walters can help businesses by re-engineering our own recruitment processes to attract as diverse talent as possible. However, employers must also own their own inclusion strategy, ensuring new employees feel included and can bring their whole selves to work once they join.

For further information please contact our Swiss recruitment experts now:

Christian Atkinson
Director Robert Walters Switzerland
T: +41 (0) 44 809 35 13
E: Christian.atkinson@robertwalters.com