5 Ways to Use Your Recruiting Process to Drive Organizational Change

Organizational change is difficult. Daunted by the prospect of attempting lasting change, many organizations end up mired in the past. Often, there are groups of people who simply reject change because they’ve always done things a certain way. To change things now seems scary to these employees.

However, organizational change is inevitable. Technology’s unstoppable march forward means businesses can’t stay too far behind the curve if they want to remain competitive. So how do employers drive lasting organizational change? The secret lies with your recruiting process: New blood in an organization can produce the new thoughts and fresh perspectives that drive organizational change.

How Your Recruiting Process Can Drive Organizational Change

For many organizations, the recruiting process is a relic of the past. Other departments capture the lion’s share of budget and resources, leaving HR and talent acquisition to get by using little more than some Crisco and fishing line.

The good news, however, is that HR and talent acquisition can use the recruiting process to drive organizational change even if they’re operating with serious limitations.

1. Embrace Big Data

Big data can redefine your recruiting process and reshape your organization. Consider that, thanks to advances in technology, organizations have multiple opportunities to measure hiring success and employee contributions to the bottom lines. Profits and losses are no longer measured only in dollars and cents, but also in employee growth and retention figures. Organizations looking to drive powerful change can start by looking at their recruiting and retention metrics and figuring out what these numbers say about the company culture.

2. Become Digitally Mature

Digitally mature companies are often more successful than their competitors for a couple of reasons: Employees want to work for digitally mature companies, and when employees have the freedom to try new things within these companies, they may end up dramatically reshaping organizational processes — in a good way.

According to a study from MIT’s Sloan Management Review and Deloitte Digital, 70 percent of employees between the ages of 22 and 60 want to work for digitally mature companies. HR and talent acquisition departments can help their organizations present themselves as digitally mature companies by incorporating new technologies into the hiring process, such as video interviews.

Video interviewing platforms offer immersive employer branding experiences for candidates, attracting the cream of the crop. These tools can reduce recruiting spend and cut down on wasted engagement dollars. Moreover, video technology makes it easier for organizations to reap the rewards of hiring remote employees.

3. Encourage Diversity

Diversity workforces are correlated with company success. A more diverse team means more new ideas, more new experiences, and more new perspectives, which all help companies think outside the box and tackle big problems in better ways. Diverse organizations  are 35 percent more likely to outperform industry financial averages than their less diverse competitors.

When the recruiting team prioritizes diversity, they create organizational change that directly impacts the bottom line.

4. Enhance Communication

Communication is a learned skill: The ways in which we communicate with others are based, in part, on how others communicate with us.

If you want to improve communication in your organization, the recruiting process is the ideal place to start. By opening up lines of communicate with candidates, organizations can begin the process of increasing transparency and collaboration at all levels. Collaborative and communicative teams often produce better results because they are more connected to the overarching goals and processes. When recruiting teams set the tone for employees by being open and communicative during the hiring process, they make it more likely that new hires will carry these same communication skills into the organization, triggering a sea change in how things are done.

5. Articulate Your Employer Brand

A strong employer brand can unite employees across the organization through common, identifiable goals. This is why it’s important that, during the recruiting process, team members are able to articulate the employer brand to potential employees. Lasting organizational change requires that the entire team rallies behind a common goal. Being able to articulate the employer brand is an important first step toward widespread adoption of a common goal across the organization.

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When employers think about organizational change, they often look to operations or IT to lead the charge. Rarely do they think of beginning organizational change at the talent acquisition level. However, the fact is that only talent acquisition has the ability to set the tone for new employees, thereby facilitating the kinds of changes the organization wants to see. Only talent acquisition can foster the right organizational values in a way that becomes truly meaningful to both new and existing employees alike.