Strength through Diversity

What is the actual value, the bottom-line ROI, of diversity to companies? And 10,000 foot-view diversity here, not just focused on diversity recruiting and hiring. We all know that diversity recruiting opens your talent pipeline to otherwise untapped pools but what ROI does being a diverse organization have?

You can start by assigning dollar figures to the very short-term values that diversity delivers. For example, meeting legal requirements. Companies that do business with the government in Canada have to comply with the Employment Equity Act and failure to do that can result in monetary penalties ranging from fines to outright loss of the business.

So what else is there? Another value that some companies see in diversity hiring policies is the "marketing" one. Let's face it if your organization "looks" like the audience it is selling its goods and/or services to you've made the sales process that much easier. And "looks" is a flexible term as well, it's simply a question of if company is the same culture as the target but does your company reflect the community in which it operates? But putting the interesting marketing questions aside there is another value in diversity for companies here.

So there are some legal reasons, and some marketing/sales reasons. But is that all the value diversity delivers?

No. Diversity means strength.

1. The true test of strength for groups is *not* how they flourish when times are good but can they survive when times are bad.
2. The most common attribute of the hardiest groups is their diversity.

Diversity positions groups, in this case business organizations, with a wider variety of options, ideas and experiences to draw on for survival when times are tough.

This is the "hidden" value of diversity, because it is by nature difficult to measure but that doesn't make any less of a value. In fact companies who are *really* diversity employment leaders know about value of strength that diversity gives them. It's one of the reasons they do it. Because these companies also know that in the age of the global village while you have opportunities for success in multiple markets at any given time you also have opportunities for struggles in multiple markets at the very same time.

Experience and flexibility. These are the values that diversity employment practices bring to employers and while legal reasons, marketing and the talent crisis are all valid reasons to hire diversity it's important not to lose sight of the "big picture" value diversity brings.

Canadian business leaders say hiring skilled workers will lead to success

Our good friend Patrick Gossage wrote a piece for Tandem News (one of our in-house publications) that speaks to Canadian executives views on using diversity hiring and recruiting to push Canadian business out of recession.

A quote in the article from Ed Clark, CEO of TD Canada Trust

"By embracing people with a wide range of unique experiences, backgrounds and abilities, we open the door to innovation and cultivate positive change. We make our business stronger"

Check out the full story online at Tandem : Canadian business leaders say hiring skilled workers will lead to success

Pre-beta site up

Our pre-beta, wireframed site is up. You can see it at http://www.talentoyster.com/ we have now moved onto our production servers and updated our DNS so DNS propagation may still be happening. (Which is a whole bunch of geek speak for you might see our old site still but in another day or two you'll see the newest one).

We will be deploying updates to this site once every two-three days as work progresses on our internal development versions.

The current site is basically just a draft framework with language plugability.

Addressing the Talent Crisis in a Canadian way

Talent Crisis: It's a term you'll often hear in the world o' recruiting, especially in the Canadian talent market, where recruiters have been facing talent shortages in many industries for 5+ years now. But what does it mean? And is it just hype?

It's not just hype: As baby-boomers retire out of the workforce in record numbers across North America and the EU, the lower birthrates of the past 25 years mean there are more people leaving the workforce than entering it. In Canada, the consequences of this reduced workforce is exacerbated by restrictive immigration policies and other factors.

What does this mean? Five years ago, Statistics Canada predicted that by 2011 there would be 350,000 more jobs than workers; thanks to the recession, StatsCan and the Conference Board of Canada now predict the shortfall to happen sometime between 2011-2015. But talk to any Canadian recruiter today and they'll tell you: In many industries, professions and roles, the talent crisis is already in full swing and will only get worse.

According to Paul Dodd (President of Head2Head, a Canadian recruiting services firm) in The talent crisis is coming – are you ready?, "companies are already starting to see the effects of the coming talent crisis [...] employers who continue to ignore changes in the talent marketplace will find that, within five years or less, they will run into serious problems attracting, hiring and retaining top talent."

So how can TalentOyster help?

By connecting employers to new, untapped talent pools.

In Canada, there are just under 6,000,000 people who are in at least one of three of the groups designated as 'diverse' by the Employment Equity Act. But mainstream media doesn't connect with these groups in the amounts or effectiveness that they do with others and since most sourcing is driven by mainstream media the problem with accessing this potential great pool of talent becomes clear. You can't source from groups you're not touching after all.

TalentOyster is a unique job board because it's community driven. The media that does touch these groups, the hundreds of in-language print publications from coast-to-coast, the online and other media properties used by these communites, is the heart of what TalentOyster's parent company does and is. We speak to these communities, with messages they understand and appreciate every day. All of this means that TalentOyster has recruiting-industry exclusive access to an untapped pool of talent, almost 6,000,000 strong.

And that's a pretty good way to start addressing the Talent Crisis.

And we think a pretty Canadian way of addressing it too.

The TalentOyster Blog

So here we have the TalentOyster blog. I guess a good as place as any to start would be to identify what TalentOyster actually is. So without further ado here is an extract from a draft copy of the "about us" page content for our site.

"TalentOyster is something different. TalentOyster is a revolutionary job board driven by community. TalentOyster is a job board that speaks to a diverse population in their own language. TalentOyster transcends the traditional job board experience by engaging members in interactive ways. TalentOyster reflects the belief that we are all enriched through our diversity. TalentOyster is Canadian."

And that about sums it up. So what's this blog about? Well for starters a place for us to post updates on development and our launch schedule and also an alternative source for service updates etc. Going forward though we'll be speaking here to the issues that we are speaking to which in a nutshell means speaking on diversity issues and most specifically diversity recruiting issues.

Last but not least, this blog, like everything else we do, is driven by community interaction. Know a topic that you feel we should be discussing here? Have some feedback on a post, point or issue you read here? Leave us a comment, send us an email or visit our site and let us know what you think.