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Podcast: Recruiting and Retaining Diverse Talent

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Senior Fellow Jennifer Kuklenski was featured on Workforce Waves podcast, where she spoke about diversifying the workplace. Workforce Waves podcast series by Northwest Wisconsin Workforce Investment Board explores employment challenges and tries to help the workforce in Wisconsin and the Midwest.

In the episode “Recruiting and Retaining Diverse Talent”, Jennifer discusses the psychological effects of exclusion from workforce on certain groups and ways to successfully diversify workplaces.  Jennifer describes that although more productive hires are recruited through referrals than any other practice, referral hiring also contributes to organisational inequalities and exclusion. Since people refer hires from their social networks, which are largely homogeneous in terms of racial and religious groups, diversity is compromised in the recruiting process. Jennifer suggests that organisational diversity in Northwest Wisconsin should be raised by the inclusion of more people of indigenous backgrounds, who are currently under-represented in workforce, especially at the management level.

Listen to the full episode here.