Pricing for each specific tool varies a lot depending on the size of your company and your specific DEI goals. That said, you can get a sense for how much to budget based on your industry and desired outcomes — and this report from DiversityBestPractices.com has some great intel:

• Diversity-department budgets at Fortune 1000 companies averages $1.5m per year
• Range for diversity-department budgets was $30,000 to $5.1 million
• When diversity was housed in HR, the average annual diversity budget was $239,000
• Diversity and inclusion education, training, and e-learning are generally the largest upfront costs, with outreach and/or recruiting a close second.
  

Of course, these numbers are for large companies (which makes us think they may not be high enough!). For smaller organizations, you can get a lot of value from a smaller investment to update job descriptions, invest in blind hiring, unconscious bias training, building our employee resource groups, etc.

Diversity and inclusion tools allow you to bring more exposure to your job openings — and your DEI efforts — so you can attract, engage, and convert more candidates. Depending on the tool you use, you can expect the following features:

• Job Listings/Job Boards: Niche job boards that are designed for a given demographic will allow you to build your employer brand with traditionally represented people. More Black, LatinX, female, etc candidates in your hiring funnel means a more diverse workforce assuming the right hiring process.
• Dedicated Company Page: This is essentially your company “feature” — an employer branding page where you paint a holistic picture of what you do and why someone would want to work there. Give an overview, highlight culture and DEI stats, list company benefits, share employee stories/reviews/testimonials, etc.
• Recruiting Events & Career Fairs: Participate in a variety of events to get your company/job openings more visibility.
• Company Rankings & Reviews: Current and former employees can leave reviews and actually rate their experience.
• Custom Sponsored Content: Develop custom content specifically designed to attract diverse talent. This is usually an extension of your company profile page where you do a deeper dive on a certain subject, like your diversity initiatives, for example.
• Augmented Writing: Optimize job description text to remove any phrases or words that might deter a certain minority group/community from applying.
• Blind Hiring: Look at resumes and applications that only show skills and experience — i.e. information like gender will be hidden so you can conduct a hiring process that’s more inclusive (and has less unconscious bias).
• Video Interviews: Conduct video interviews with diverse interviewers so your applicants can get a first-hand look at your company’s diversity.‍

Before investing in one or all of these tools, make sure to schedule a demo so you can get a feel for the platform and actually see how things work. And ask questions to help you really understand what the tool will do for you and how you can use it most efficiently. Here are some questions to start with:

General questions related to third-party tools:

• How will this solution fit into the rest of my tech stack and therefore what integrations do I need?
• How will others in the organization use this solution?
• What are the key features I want to ask about?
• What are the things that would make me nervous about buying this sort of solution
  

Questions specific to diversity hiring tools:

• Do you target a specific under-represented demographic?
• What other changes to my hiring process do I need to make this effective?
• How does your tool help brand my company as a best place to work for diversity candidates?
• Does your tool help with a specific level of hire?
• How will this impact the metrics in my hiring funnel?

Many of these tools are easy to get started with and probably familiar (especially job boards which we've all used before). But a key piece of the implementation puzzle here is on your overall DEI strategy — i.e. not just diversity hiring, but how you’re building a fair and inclusive workplace that attracts AND retains top talent.

• Partner with Internal Stakeholders: Work directly with VPs, SVPs and other team leads to learn more about their strategy (including both their business strategy and their people strategy). You want to be a team’s key partner for all HR-related needs, especially as it relates to driving business. Understanding who they want to hire as well as what they need to make existing employees happy is key.
• Conduct an Internal Audit: Find out exactly where you need to focus your diversity and inclusion efforts — i.e. is it on hiring, unconscious bias training, employee benefits, etc. There are a number of ways to do this. You can conduct anonymous employee surveys, look at your company ratings on Glassdoor or Comparably (the latter of which actually shows a rating for how inclusive your company/culture is), or engage an outside firm to handle the research and analysis.
• Update Employer Branding: There are ways to subtly and overtly show your diversity and inclusion efforts in your employer branding — from showcasing diversity in leadership positions (for example, with headshots on your About page), highlighting diversity investments and data on your job site and individual job postings, or adding language like “... and allies” to your messaging, for example.‍
• Appoint or Hire A DEI Manager: As you probably know by now, creating a DEI-friendly workplace is not as simple as uploading job postings on diversity hiring websites. There’s the entire hiring funnel to think about, and an inclusive culture to build - it can be a long and hard journey. As your team grows, consider appointing or hiring someone whose sole focus is on building out, executing on, and continuously improving your Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy.

What is diversity and inclusion?

Diversity is a person’s unique qualities, while inclusion is the creation of a welcoming environment. Together, they are initiatives to make people from all different backgrounds and experiences feel comfortable in the workplace.

What are diversity and inclusion hiring tools?

Diversity and inclusion hiring tools are solutions designed to remove hiring bias, connect diverse talent with hiring managers, and create a more inclusive hiring process.

What are the benefits of using diversity and inclusion hiring tools?

The benefits of using diversity and inclusion hiring tools include increased number of diverse applicants, filled hard-to-fill positions, improved employer branding, improved skills-based hiring, and improved job descriptions.

What are some other important considerations to think about when using a diversity and inclusion hiring tool?

When considering using diversity and inclusion hiring tools, there are a few things to consider. Think about the entire hiring process. Don’t forget unconscious bias training. Cost-per-hire will likely increase. And finally, think about how diversity and inclusion affects the whole employee lifecycle, not only hiring.