This document, “TOOL: CALD staff recruitment and retention,” focuses on providing organizations with strategies for recruiting and retaining a culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) workforce. This can support transparency and accountability when engaging with multicultural communities by ensuring that the organization’s internal workforce reflects the diversity of the communities it serves.

The document emphasizes understanding the diversity profile of the organization by collecting internal data on cultural diversity and languages spoken at home by staff and assessing their cultural competency. This allows organizations to identify whether the diversity of their staff aligns with the diversity of their external stakeholders and whether changes need to be made to address any gaps. Traditional recruitment processes are often a barrier to attracting and hiring diverse talent due to implicit and explicit biases, insensitivity to cultural norms, language barriers, overlooking qualifications from other countries, and inflexibility in considering familial and cultural needs.

The document suggests making changes to existing recruitment practices to attract more diverse candidates, including identifying any cultural, linguistic, or other diverse groups to target, broadening the distribution of job descriptions, adjusting the essential and desirable criteria for positions, and ensuring the application process is clear, simple, and accessible. To retain a diverse workforce, the document suggests fostering a welcoming and adaptive work environment by implementing culturally competent workplace policies, providing facilities that accommodate cultural and religious needs, and creating a culture that celebrates diversity. These efforts can promote transparency by demonstrating the organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion and accountability by ensuring that multicultural communities are represented within the organization.