Diversity in Hiring: How to create inclusive opportunities

Diversity is a must while growing the team. At Mercadona Tech, we do our best, but certainly, there’s always room for improvement. We gather a few recurring trends in the current market, the benefits of hiring globally, and our recommendations on how to approach diversity in a workplace.

The tech jobs market is working harder and harder towards diversity, intending to create an egalitarian and inclusive workplace. Making people feel respected, accepted, and empowered to be themselves entirely at work while providing everyone the same opportunities, must be the primary goal of DE&I.

It takes a village to design a diverse, equitable, and inclusive garden. — Anonymous

Diversity can include race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. It can also address disability, and other identities and experiences.

Many organisations that don’t consider diversity as one of their main priorities and don’t accurately reflect the variety of our world frequently will face adverse effects. Diversity must be considered in hiring decisions, leadership opportunities, innovation, and marketing tactics. “Diversity is a fact, but inclusion is a choice we make every day. As leaders, we have to put out the message that we embrace and not just tolerate diversity.” –Nellie Borrero (Managing Director, Senior Strategic Advisor — Global Inclusion & Diversity at Accenture)

Global Talent Acquisition Trends

In the global recruitment market, certain tendencies mark the future workforce’s direction. Nowadays, candidates look for organizations where culture and values fit their personal preferences. What’s interesting, more and more people value flexibility when choosing a new employer. Many companies have adapted to this trend and mentioning flexibility in job posts has increased by 83% since 2019.

After the pandemic, employee well-being becomes crucial in a talent competition. Future of Work will rely on work-life balance policies and companies being ready to offer the most convenient setup for its People.

Another fundamental tendency in Talent Strategy worldwide will be optimization and automatization growth in all human-related processes.

How can employers focus more attention on diversity in the workplace?

• Recruitment: organizations are changing practices that promote diversity and inclusion when they interview and recruit new employees. Many are looking at ways to remove bias, including anonymous CV screening (removing names, ages, and dates), ensuring a diverse screening panel, and using more inclusive language in job descriptions and adverts.
• Creating an inclusive culture: this means implementing a culture that will help retain staff. Examples include creating a BAME network or appointing diversity champions. Mentoring and coaching can also positively impact reverse mentoring, where younger staff members from different backgrounds mentor more senior employees.
• Consider apprenticeships: these are being used as a credible way to offer equal opportunities to all and a level playing field, irrespective of background and gender. The business benefits of hiring an apprentice are huge; 86% of employers say their apprentices have helped them develop skills relevant to their organization.
• Accessibility: making the workplace open and accessible to those with disabilities, hidden or otherwise. For example, having the suitable systems in place to support those with hearing or speech difficulties or helping employers to understand the additional support available for employing someone with a disability.

Data: diversity in the workplace in Spain

Spain is one of the best places in the world for foreigners to live and work. In fact, a whopping 15% of the nation’s working force is made up of foreigners, according to government statistics. The EU’s strongest labor laws are found in Spain, which also provides a wide range of worker rights. These rules forbid discrimination based on a person’s sex, marital status, race, color, national origin, ethnicity, disability, religion, or philosophical beliefs, as well as age and country of birth. Additionally, victimization, harassment, and any form of discrimination, whether direct or indirect is forbidden.

As the advantages of a diverse workforce become more apparent, Spanish businesses are embracing diversity. In 2021, 140.477 Spanish visas were granted for highly qualified workers. This marks a rise of 37% compared to 2020.

What are the benefits of hiring globally?

• Builds employer international brand: This shows the company’s global mindset, making an organization a more attractive workplace. Nowadays, people look for professional development and want to grow personally. Being exposed to multiculturalism accelerates learning and provides multitudes of insights and opinions.
• Increases recruitment market insight: learning about tendencies, changes, and peculiarities in a particular market allows you to get to know your candidate persona better and have a tailored approach while sourcing candidates. It also facilitates the process, saves time, and will enable you to be more efficient while hiring.
• Reveal a broad talent pool which is extremely helpful when you need to cover many challenging roles and your local market is highly competitive. Access to worldwide talent opens many opportunities for both companies and individuals.
• Enhance workplace diversity with vast benefits to the organization: increased creativity, problem-solving, and innovation. Diverse talent causes a decrease in employee turnover by having employees fulfilled on the personal and professional levels. Another reason to create a multicultural workforce is a better company reputation amongst candidates building the desired place to work.

How Mercadona Tech started to hire global talent?

We have started to see many benefits of hiring talent from diverse backgrounds. Mercadona Tech, as one of the benefits, offers language classes for our employees. We thought it would be an excellent opportunity for employees and the organisation to grow a diverse team and open recruitment activities out of Spain. We need to highlight that we don’t have teams out of the country. What we do is offer visa sponsorship with a job offer we launch. Our People team is specialised and experienced in global relocation support so that we can ensure the full assistance of a new team member joining us.

Our team counts eighteen nationalities. Every day we enrich our conversations with insights from Czech, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Indian, Argentinian, Venezuelan, Uruguayan, British, Russian, Pakistani, Senegalese, Brazilian, Dutch, Ukrainian, Egyptian, and Cuban colleagues. What is more, our team diversity is not only external. We share an office with colleagues from many parts of Spain.

“Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.” — Verna Myers

What about Circular?

At Circular, we count on +10 nationalities from different countries around the globe (Egypt, Honduras, Argentina, Canada, Venezuela, UK etc…) and we’re proud to hold a visa sponsorship program to ensure that people from outside of the European Union can work with us. Additionally, as we are a remote-first company we are able to access a more diverse workforce.

Our talent pool of tech candidates is spread all over the world. We count on +6000 candidates distributed across Africa, Asia, and America. We aim to keep growing these numbers, providing all our users the possibility to access a more diverse tech scenario while encouraging employers to hire international talent and create policies and procedures that foster diversity and inclusion.

Together is Better

Both Circular and Mercadona Tech partner together to create diverse and inclusive teams. We pay special attention to candidate experience and work with our employees so they can feel valued and challenged. We believe that thanks to implementing diverse hiring we cause a win-win for the employees, organization, and society.

This article was co-written with Circular.io. Thank you for sharing.