Whilst at the CIPD Recruitment Conference at Olympia yesterday, I attended a seminar entitled “Recruiting a diverse workforce”, chaired by Tom Hadley from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation.

It was a really interesting seminar, especially listening to Donna Miller, HR director of European Operations for Enterprise Rent-A-Car, who shared with us her experiences in overcoming the challenges of appealing to a broad range of candidates.

She advised HR to design a process that stands up to the law, the recruitment team and the applicants, and she stated that diversity needs to start at the top, so you must secure buy in from the business because it is a business need, not an HR need.

She also said that companies with strong diversity initiatives will win, and two key factors were vital to securing a successful diversity platform – commitment and engagement.

At the end of the seminar, one delegate asked how HR can attract women into non-traditional female roles, such as engineering, IT and so on. One solution offered was to take your brand to your population and to have a presence in your local community.

Anyway, as I looked around the room at the delegates gathered at the seminar, one thing struck me – almost every single person sat there was female. So it got me thinking, how diverse is HR as a profession? Are there enough men in HR? And if not, how do we make the profession more diverse as a whole? I would love to hear all your comments and opinions on this, so please feel free to respond.

Kind regards,

Lucie Benson
Editor