Any HR outsourcing service will tell you that the retention and hiring of talented and skilled workers are related to workplace culture. If your office is a place where people feel welcome, accepted and appreciated, individuals will want to work for you for years to come.

Workplace diversity will have an impact if it affects the way people in the community and other prospective employees view your company. However, even when you open your pool of potential hires to include people from different backgrounds, it’s important to realize their decision to work for you may depend on their perception of your atmosphere. All of these factors are related, and the solution may lie in changing the culture from the inside out.

Become conscious of the unconscious bias
Josh Bersin, the principal and founder of Bersin by Deloitte, wrote a column for Society for Human Resource Management, in which he pointed out that many of the big tech companies – Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter – admitted that most of their technical professionals and engineers were white males. Furthermore, less than 5 percent of the CEOs from Fortune 500 companies are women. These trends don’t necessarily inspire confidence in talented female prospects.

This underscores the importance of workplace culture.

“If we measure and understand our culture well, we can hire people who fit and use that to drive performance and alignment,” Bersin wrote in his column. “If we have a disparate, unclear or unhealthy culture, we need to measure it more carefully and take steps to improve it. If your leadership team has not tried to write down or describe your culture clearly, you may be missing a major opportunity: Companies now use culture as a tool to assess candidates, identify leaders, drive change and improve productivity.”

Make attractive changes
Cristina Cordova, a business development expert, wrote a column for Business Insider on how companies can recruit more female talent. Much of it starts with the job description. Because some women may feel undervalued in their skills, they may not feel comfortable applying for jobs that look for “ninjas,” “hackers,” or the “top 1 percent of candidates.” Additionally, you need to be aware of what female recruits look for in a work environment, which may skew more toward communication and autonomy rather than free beer and snacks.

During the interview stage, female employees should be present to interview all prospects, regardless of their gender. When evaluating candidates, remember that males may be more focused on emphasizing results while females may provide more information on their work processes, a distinction that shouldn’t necessarily exclude anyone.