One of the most enduring legacies of the past year is the renewed focus on social issues, inequality and injustices, which the Covid-19 health crisis and the resulting economic downturn only served to exacerbate.

While countless organizations made public commitments to diversity and equitable treatment for all employees, the pandemic highlights glaring inequities that organizations are still challenged to acknowledge and address.

Staffing companies have not been entirely at the leading edge when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. In SIA’s “North America Staffing Company Survey 2020,” we asked which current compliance issues staffing companies are concerned about. In the sample of 341 firms, just 27% ranked diversity and inclusion as a concern for their companies, outranking just “other.”

When it comes to the demographics of their internal workers, staffing firms are not exemplars of equality. In terms of gender composition, 30% of staffing firms in the UK have less than 5% female leaders at the board level, according to a Women in Recruitment initiative by the Association of Professional Staffing Companies. Furthermore, at the end of 2020, publicly listed European staffing firms had a gender mix among their executive directors of 74% male and 26% female.

Within the US alone, people of color comprise well under 10% of all staffing industry staff despite representing approximately 40% of the total population, according to a survey by the WBC Staffing Council, a workstream within the Women Business Collaborative. Gender diversity, while slightly better, still stands at less than 20% of staffing agency executives being women.

Striving for workplace equity isn’t just the moral thing to do; it also provides a strategic and financial advantage, according to the “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Trends in Staffing” report released last month by SIA. Additional research done by McKinsey & Co. makes a direct correlation between companies’ diversity composition and their performance.

The buyer snapshot. While DE&I is not strongly on the radar of staffing firms, their clients are a different story. Twenty-six percent of buyers agreed in a separate report that DE&I is a strong priority among their contingent workforce, while some two-thirds expected it to become a higher priority moving forward. SIA’s “Future of Diversity and Inclusion in the Contingent Workforce” report surveyed hundreds of business leaders from the US, Asia Pacific and Western Europe. The report identified three types of organizations with respect to contingent DE&I practices; 28% were identified as laggards, 44% followers and 28% leaders. And where clients go, staffing firms will follow.

Inclusion in staffing. While the industry has room for improvement in terms of diversity of its workforce, those from underrepresented communities currently working at staffing firms do not feel held back by their race. When questioning internal staff the degree to which they agreed with the statement, “Do you feel your race is an advantage, neutral, or a disadvantage within the working world generally and within your specific company,” the overwhelming majority of internal staff believe their race to be either an advantage or of no consequence regarding employment at their staffing employer. This was felt less in the “Black or African American,” “other/prefer not to answer” and “Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander” groups. In most cases, staff felt more fairly treated by the staffing industry than in the working world generally. Among Blacks, for example, 38% felt at a disadvantage in the working world generally compared with just 10% in the staffing industry.

This trend was also seen according to gender, as both men and women overwhelmingly felt that their staffing employers were fair and did a good job with both diversity and inclusion. Women were slightly less enthusiastic, but both men and women agreed that their staffing employers were fairer in terms of gender than the working world generally.

Bright lights. Some staffing firms have taken steps. The Adecco Group, for example, has committed to achieving 50:50 global leader gender parity by 2030; currently, women account for 32% of its leadership roles and 66% of its staff overall.

And at the end of 2020, Kelly announced its Equity@Work program aimed at reducing barriers to work and removing biases in hiring practices. It also updated its own policy around minor drug offenses, specifically marijuana convictions, to allow more people with few or lowlevel criminal offenses greater opportunity to access work within the company.

Steps. Building trust to navigate an organization’s diversity policy is not easy. Here are some steps and considerations when implementing a DE&I strategy:

  • Promote the business case.
  • Engage the heart and mind.
  • Expand and track DE&I metrics.
  • Measure the impact of inclusivity.
  • Address legal concerns including co-employment.
  • Create a contingent diversity, equity and inclusion infrastructure.
  • Foster partnership with suppliers and diverse talent.
  • Be in it for the long haul.

Staffing firms and other intermediaries in the workforce solutions ecosystem are in a unique position to support organizations as they seek to address DE&I issues. With a danger that employers will tend to focus their efforts on employees, ensuring the contingent workforce is not overlooked in this process should be a key strategic priority for any vendor.”

Eliminating bias in recruitment and the provision of key metrics are key features clients will increasingly expect their staffing partners to be better equipped in providing.

Technology. Unconscious bias in hiring stands in the way of progress for underrepresented communities, and technology can have a hand in overcoming that hurdle.

The use of assistive technology in the workplace can play a vital part in the DE&I landscape, and vendors are stepping up to meet companies’ growing appetites to overcome unconscious bias in hiring as well as foster engagement and inclusion. According to the “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Trends in Staffing” report, the overall market size for DE&I technology was $313 million following two years with a compound annual growth rate of 59%. The number of vendors offering these services has also increased 87% since 2019.

Looking Forward

There are many different parts of the diversity spectrum that organizations can focus on which makes this seem like a vast undertaking. Taking positive steps in one area can permeate into others and set you on the path of creating an environment that acknowledges, cultivates, and nurtures a fully inclusive workforce.

At the moment, staffing firms that accentuate DE&I are themselves in the minority, but it is not unrealistic to assume that those that fail to address this important social issue will become the minority in the future.

The “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Trends in Staffing” report is available to corporate members of SIA.