Why Inclusive Hiring Matters

In my last post, I talked about our vision for diversity and inclusion at SAP Concur. Today, I’d like to dive deeper and focus on why inclusive hiring is critical for the future of any strong business. As I mentioned in my previous post, I think that a company with diversity & inclusion at its heart empowers employees with a sense of belonging to their workplace, allowing greater innovation and collaboration, and increasing diversity within the organisation. This starts with bringing the right talent into the business.

At SAP Concur, our goal is to be a company where all our employees can be their authentic selves and achieve their maximum potential. Keeping that in mind, in my recent conversation with our regional leaders in EMEA Rob Harrison, Goetz Reinhardt and Gabriele Indrieri, we explored our approach to inclusive hiring, some changes we’ve already implemented, new ways of exploring Learning & Development, and our ambitions for the year ahead. 

Why do you personally think that inclusive hiring is so critical for SAP Concur in EMEA?

Rob: A more diverse team helps us foster innovation and creativity, which makes for healthy business. Simply put, if your hiring practices are restrictive, you can easily end up hiring people from one university or one part of the country. As a result, you will get a concentrated set of ideas, which can result in reinforced unconscious biases in the long term. Instead, inclusive hiring means you get access to a richer culture and proposition. As an international company, we pride ourselves on understanding our clients’ needs and serving them best. This starts with ensuring our people are representative of the world around them.

Goetz:  Actually, it's statistically proven that diverse teams are more productive and achieve better results. A diverse environment simply allows teams to bring the best out of themselves.

Gabriele: As a globally active company, we are in constant exchange with many customers and partners from all over the world. Diverse teams help us to better understand their requirements and preferences to develop our products accordingly.

Are there any specific targets that you’ve set to achieve in your region, in terms of inclusive hiring?

Goetz: We are currently taking a very close look at how we hire. It’s an area we want to improve in. Different audiences look for different things when they’re considering applying for a job. One person may be more attracted to the benefits, while another may be more interested in the culture. Women tend to be more self-critical when it comes to making a judgement whether they match lengthy job requirements. By simply focusing on what’s crucial for the job instead of providing a comprehensive list of additional nice-to-haves we might be able to already attract more diverse job candidates.

Rob: We’ve also tried to change the process and have interviews with people from different parts of the business that have different roles, backgrounds and experiences. This allows us to triangulate the thoughts around the individual because we're all different people and we might all have a different opinion on the candidate. It also gives the candidate a perfect feel for our culture and access to a whole range of people who might talk about different types of interests and backgrounds.

Gabriele: We’re aware that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and by setting goals, we can make incremental changes that will not only make a more diverse pool of talent want to apply for roles at SAP Concur EMEA – but also ensure that the applicants we hire stay within the organisation for the long term.

We recently hosted an inclusive hiring workshop, which was a resounding success. What was the most surprising learning you took from it?

Rob: One of the good learnings, which was obvious but came out loud from a young woman, was that you must be on Instagram or LinkedIn to make a stronger connection and engage with the communities that use those platforms.

Gabriele: Adding to that, the workshop was a great reminder that even if we already are on these platforms with a personal profile, we should take a self-critical look at our own network. It’s rather likely that our connections are less diverse than we would wish for. To reach out to as many different people as possible we should not only leverage our own account but involve entire teams. The more diverse the team is the more likely we’ll reach out to a more diverse audience.

Goetz: It is also important to avoid gendered words in the job description, which can be misleading because there's no second chance, and good candidates could be put off by ads that don't sound like them.

Have you been able to hire a wider range of profiles recently thanks to your inclusive hiring practices? Do you feel there are any remaining gaps in our hiring practices?

Rob: Employees want to feel as part of something when they join communities and it’s our role to demonstrate to others that this is a place they want to join. It feels far more authentic if somebody you’d relate to says it. Rather than using my picture as a hiring manager, why not picture my younger colleagues or my female colleagues describing why they enjoy working here? I think there's lots more that we can do, but something like that has already had a huge impact on just the volume of responses we get.

What lessons have you learnt from implementing inclusive hiring? If you were to share one piece of advice with candidates looking to join SAP Concur, what would it be?

Rob: My piece of advice for anybody would be to go ahead and seize the opportunity. Don't be your own inhibitor, and do not think you're not capable of doing the role you apply for. Let the hiring person determine that, and you never know - you might be successful. We all started at the bottom; you need to give it a try.

Goetz: 'Be yourself'. Anything is possible if you are authentic. You can grow if you are curious or eager to achieve something – and SAP Concur is a great place to work if this sounds like you.

Gabriele: I second Götz’ and Rob’s advice for candidates. It’s great and I’d like to add what I’d recommend from a company point of view: focus on cultural addition rather than cultural fit! Think long-term: diversity will help your team adapt to changes in the market and approach anything with unique perspectives while everyone will have an ability to grow! We need to look at inclusive hiring as enrichment and empowerment of our process. Diversity is a key driver for innovation and source or renovation for companies. At SAP Concur we’re looking with this approach to the journey, we aspire to be innovative, open, and diverse.