The Importance of Diversity in the Workplace
The more integrated we seem to become in the complicated, dynamic, and diverse world we live in today, the more polarized or separated our communities appear to have gotten. Hence, stating that “We are an equal opportunity employer” is standard in HR policies. We favor fostering inclusive communities and valuing diversity. Although these terms are frequently employed in corporate jargon, it is essential for businesses to understand the importance of diversity in the workplace if they are to flourish.
Today’s businesses must understand the importance of diversity in the workplace because a wide range of people from various cultures and origins gives us the variety of perspectives and voices we need. Unfortunately, it appears that many companies still do not employ a diverse workforce with a good balance of employees from all backgrounds.
This is something that needs to be changed. This blog reflects on the reasons for the importance of diversity in the workplace and how it can have a huge impact on businesses in the short and long term.
Understanding Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion (DEI) & the Importance of Diversity in the Workplace
Diversity is the existence of disparate elements within a particular context. Gender identity, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, community, sexual orientation, location of practice, and nature of practice are all included in this. In order to have a diverse workforce, an organization hires people from a range of social and cultural backgrounds. This guarantees that many perspectives, experiences, and voices contribute to the development of the business.
The deliberate, ongoing effort to ensure that individuals with different identities can fully engage in all facets of an organization’s work, including leadership roles and decision-making processes, is known as inclusion. It speaks to the manner in which varied people are seen as respected members and accepted in a workplace or community.
The term equity describes a strategy that makes sure everyone has access to the same opportunities. It acknowledges that there are advantages and obstacles, and that everyone does not begin the same. Recognizing the imbalanced starting point is the first step in the equity process, which aims to identify and address the imbalance. Equity guarantees that everyone, regardless of identity, has the chance to advance, contribute, and flourish.
Why is the Importance of Diversity in the Workplace Directly Related to Organizational Success?
According to a McKinsey Global Institute analysis, bridging the gender gap would enhance the value of the global economy by 26%, or $28 trillion, by 2025.
- D&I has an impact on financial viability
Along with increasing empathy among teams and giving employees a sense of belonging, creating inclusive settings also helps D&I businesses succeed financially.
The CS Gender 3000 research from Credit Suisse provides unique insight into the gender diversity mix among 30,000 top executives at more than 3,000 businesses worldwide. According to the 2019 report’s findings, businesses with 10% or more female board members beat those with less than 10% or none.
Businesses with 20% or more women in management have improved their share price performance compared to those with 15% or less women in management.
- Embracing talent and abilities
Understanding the importance of diversity in the workplace helps organizations attract the best personnel. According to Glassdoor’s D&I workplace poll, 76% of job seekers and employees value a diverse workforce when assessing businesses and job offers. To that end, in 2020 Glassdoor introduced a brand-new workplace factor assessment for businesses called the Diversity & Inclusion Rating. Salesforce has the highest D&I rating (4.6), followed closely by Google and Accenture.
- Employers of Millennials
Organizations must understand the importance of diversity in the workplace if they want to tap into the millennial population, which makes up about 75% of the workforce. Millennials approach DEI differently. Almost 86% of millennials believe that despite differences in viewpoint, teams can succeed. When millennials feel that their firm promotes an inclusive culture, they are more likely to be engaged, at about 83%. Millennials anticipate supportive workplace environments where their identities and perspectives are respected from their leaders.
- Balanced teams perform well during crisis
Covid-19 altered how teams operate on a global scale. Remote working gave managers a glimpse into the daily activities of their staff. Businesses that cultivated diverse teams and inclusive leaders discovered that having a varied workforce helped them tackle challenging issues. Businesses with inclusive cultures used teamwork to discover and reduce risks, as well as new business opportunities.
Importance of Diversity in the Workplace
- Greater Innovation and Creativity
Innovative and creative ideas will increase in a workplace where there are employees with a variety of backgrounds, abilities, experiences, and information. This will eventually aid in the business’s expansion, which could have a significant effect on it. When original ideas are exchanged in a varied atmosphere, employees will feel more at ease sharing them with others. Understanding the importance of diversity in the workplace makes a company stand out from its competitors.
- Wider Range of Skills
As everyone has unique abilities to offer and can improve a firm, it is crucial to hire people from varied backgrounds. While brainstorming, problem-solving, and producing new ideas in business, an inclusive and diverse workplace enables wider perspectives to be merged.
- Boost in Business
Diversity and inclusion are important characteristics that many individuals look for when evaluating a job offer. People are more likely to accept your employment offer and feel at home if they see that your company understands the importance of diversity in the workplace. This will enable businesses to hire the finest talent as well, ensuring that the best talents are hired as opposed to just based on appearance.
- Content Employees
The workforce will be happier! A workplace that understands the importance of diversity in the workplace will have happier employees, and this will be reflected in the caliber of the work produced. The organization will prosper generally because employees will be successful in their roles and opportunities will arise.
- Enhanced Efficiency
In the workplace, cooperation and teamwork can boost productivity. This is so that other coworkers may learn from and get along with one other while a diverse team can offer a range of experiences and skills. Improved productivity allows for the interchange of ideas and allows the company to outperform rivals that do not employ a varied and inclusive staff in a shorter amount of time.
- Understand Your Customers
Understanding the importance of diversity in the workplace will benefit your business both internally and, most crucially, externally—for your clients and potential clients. This is possible since you can advertise your company to people from various backgrounds who are like those who are currently employed. Employees can effectively market the company because they share the same demographics as the targeted target market. As a firm, there is a possibility for expansion as you grasp the differences between various demographic groups and how to appeal to them.
- Wider Talent Pool
When it comes to hiring new talent, there is a larger pool to choose from if the company understands the importance of diversity in the workplace. Instead of recruiting a particular type of person who looks a certain way, the focus will be on the skills a person can offer and contribute to the business. The hiring of only the best talent will help the business expand because they will be selected for their abilities. Due to the fact that only the greatest talent will be hired, this will aid in the business’ growth.
- Higher Revenues
More revenues will eventually result from properly managing a diverse and inclusive staff. Employees will be content with their work, new ideas will emerge, and production will rocket. More internal business successes will result from this, enabling it to grow and differentiate itself from rivals. I’m not saying you should do it for the money, but if it improves the company’s culture, productivity, and bottom line, isn’t that a no-brainer?
It’s time for businesses to be more proactive about hiring a diverse workforce that represents the actual citizens of today’s society.
What is the Importance of Diversity in the Workplace?
Ask the correct questions and start the introspection first. What are the unpackable unconscious biases? Where should the organization start when implementing D&I? Can the company form employee resource groups (ERGs) to modify the terminology used in each department?
Analyze the data related to human resources next. What hiring procedures were used? Is it encouraging for people from different groups to apply for the job? What racial and ethnic groups is the talent acquisition team targeting? Do we build well-rounded teams at the top and throughout the hierarchy?
Moreover, adjust D&I programs in accordance with regions, departments, and demographics. Not every squad deal with the same difficulties. Leaders will be able to design individualized yet scaled efforts for diversity equity and inclusion in the workplace by cultivating a questioning mindset and empathy for employee experiences.
Finally, strive to integrate an employee into the company culture rather than only focusing on acquiring people from diverse backgrounds. Alter the way you hire people so that you are instead looking for people who will contribute to the culture.
7 Best Practices for Facilitating the Importance of Diversity in the Workplace
It takes work to create, uphold, and nurture a culture that values equality, diversity, and inclusion. There are several essential processes involved. Let’s investigate them further.
- Establish Official Guidelines and Procedures
Aligning the strategy with corporate objectives and core values is the first step in creating a more diverse, equal, and inclusive workplace. Otherwise, formalizing the initiatives is difficult. So, developing a set of guidelines, guidelines, and guidelines is essential.
Conversely, 41% of respondents in a study of Fortune 1000 corporations claimed that their organizations’ diversity efforts were very informal and lacked structure because they were “too busy”.
- Heighten Internal Awareness
It is crucial that businesses consistently explain the importance of diversity in the workplace, notably through their CEOs, HR departments, and internal communications teams. Employers must be able to win over employees and instill new behaviors in order to create and maintain a culture of diversity and inclusion.
This is especially crucial nowadays, when asynchronous communication has taken over as the primary method of business communication. Employers are finding it more difficult to break through the clutter and communicate the correct message to the right personnel at the right time. Employees might thus be unaware of crucial information on your projects and activities aimed at creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace.
But, this year, 41% of employers plan to provide more materials or information for extra DEI training or support, and 51% are currently promoting our DEI initiatives through company-wide channels.
- Reevaluate Your Approach to Hiring and Recruiting
The removal of bias and discrimination from employers’ hiring practices and making others understand the importance of diversity in the workplace is a major responsibility of talent acquisition teams. Nonetheless, many firms still engage in bias and discrimination in the hiring process.
Training hiring managers and creating diverse panels of interviewers who would choose candidates based on skills and experience is the greatest method to get rid of such bias. The most popular strategy to increase diversity in recruiting is to use an internet platform to analyze applications in bulk and remove prejudice from job advertisements.
- Promote a Sense of Community
Every organization should be concerned with fostering a culture of inclusion and a sense of belonging. But employees find it more difficult to connect when working remotely. As a result, organizational silos are a problem for many businesses today, which lowers employee happiness and morale.
For organizations to understand the importance of diversity in the workplace and feel more inclusive, eliminating organizational silos and enhancing team and cross-functional communication are essential.
- Promote Employee Voice among Coworkers
More frequent staff surveys are one of the top DEI projects businesses expect to implement in 2022 and beyond, according to the data stated earlier. The greatest way to get employee opinions and attitudes about the importance of diversity in the workplace —as well as to let them know that their opinions are valued—is through surveys.
- Be more accommodating while still giving everyone the same opportunities.
Most employees nowadays rely on workplace technology to successfully do their duties. Fortunately, contemporary solutions for employee engagement are made to be used by all employees, regardless of their location, generation, or line of work. Every employee should be able to use these technologies, thus they should be user-friendly and mobile-first. This is how organizations understand the importance of diversity in the workplace.
According to a Lever survey, 60% of employers say they’ve given employees the tools, resources, and accommodations they needed to succeed, and more over half (51%) say they’ve implemented flexible policies. Companies must increase these numbers going forward if they want to strengthen their overall DEI plans.
- Make employees your advocates to strengthen your employer brand
The majority of D&I-focused businesses lack a strategy for how to better communicate this to the public and enhance their employer brand. Generating employee advocacy and ambassadorship is the greatest method to accomplish this. Customers and potential employees are more likely to believe the words of your staff than those of CEOs and other corporate positions.
Employers should encourage and support their employees in sharing information regarding diversity, inclusion, and equity activities outside of the company. This might be the best method to demonstrate to everyone how much you care about the importance of diversity in the workplace.
Strengthscape is a global consultancy firm that offers customized coaching and training programs to Fortune 500 companies and others. We assist firms in increasing employee connection and engagement, promoting workplace advocacy, and empowering managers to take a more people- and data-driven approach. Our Diversity and Inclusion Champion Certification enables organizations to navigate the journey from their current state to an inclusive and profitable organization that understands the importance of diversity in the workplace.
