As the way we do business continues to evolve due to changes in technology and business practices, it’s imperative that companies find the absolute best employees when they have job openings.

Within that goal to hire the absolute best, companies should continue to make diversity a top priority. At a time when what’s accepted as “normal” in society is constantly changing, a company’s actions must speak louder than its words. A company can’t just simply say that it values diversity, it must step up and actually show that as being true.

For any companies who are wondering, diversity (where hiring is concerned) means hiring a person based on merit without giving in to biases including race, age, religion, gender or sexual orientation among other characteristics. If a company truly values diversity in its hiring processes, here are six ways to successfully incorporate diversity into filling a job vacancy:

• Audit the current hiring process: If a company is looking to change things up, one of the first things it should do is to assess its current hiring process. If there are any issues in the hiring process, they must be addressed so that the process is smooth and seamless. A company should ask itself what are the strengths of its diversity hiring and what the challenges are in its diversity hiring.
  One helpful thing companies can do is to look to search consultants and HR executive search agencies for help. HR executive search agencies will help guide a company’s hiring process with no prior biases and can help figure out where the weaknesses in hiring may lie. HR executive search agencies are well-versed on what the latest trends are in many industries, so they’ll be able to tell a particular company what it might want to look for in prospective candidates.
• Improve one diversity metric: Nowadays, people are changing jobs more than ever. In June 2015, at least 2.7 million workers voluntarily left their jobs, which was a 25% increase from just two years prior. A good way to improve the hiring process and keep employees is for companies to improve just one diversity metric and stick with it. Maybe that metric is increasing the number of minority employees or the number of women employees.
  It’s more than ok to embrace diversity and strive to improve it, but understand that your company isn’t going to overall its entire company or hiring process in a short amount of time.
• Make your job openings more desirable: If your company finds itself constantly going through hiring cycles or getting the same kinds of candidates, it may be time to re-examine things. Companies can re-word job postings to unintentionally avoid turning off particular demographics. Your company can also highlight how diverse it already is or how diverse it would like to become. Your company should also encourage referrals from minority employees and try to offer flexibility in the workplace.
• Ramp up diversity efforts in candidate screening: If you’re looking to get a more diverse pool of candidates to choose from for a job vacancy, HR executive search agencies can be a big help. These agencies and consultants can use assessment tests to help increase workplace diversity and suggest blind hiring processes, where personal information is collected and remains anonymous so as to eliminate bias.
• Increase diversity efforts for shortlisting: If a company is looking to create a shortlist of candidates to pick from for a job vacancy, it should have at least two minority candidates among its finalists because it increases their odds of being hired, creating an effect known as “two in the pool.” Companies can also speed up a hiring process by using intelligence shortlisting, which looks for certain criteria among a pool of candidates and whittles it down to what a company is looking for, without bias or discrimination.

There’s little doubt that diversity is important in today’s workplace. By seeking the help and advice of executive HR recruiters and search agencies, a company can become more diverse by examining its hiring processes and making needed changes. When it comes to hiring, diversity will only help a company get better.