How Diversity Improves your Workplace Culture
Diversity in the workplace has become immensely popular in the past few years with more and more organisations adopting diversity in their recruitment and employment practices. We have seen many companies with a more diverse workforce and how pleasing it is to see how successful many of these have become. Diversity has proven to improve their workplace culture and companies have largely benefited from it. How could workplace diversity transform your company culture?
Diversity in the workplace refers to the manner of recruiting and employing people from across different characteristics and background, such as their age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual preference, educational background, economic status or income level, religious beliefs, among others. A workplace that is diverse offers equal opportunities to everyone regardless of their background, which thus prevents discrimination or bias.
As many organisations have seen and experienced after adopting workforce diversity, they reaped the many benefits of doing so. For one, diversity helps in increasing productivity, fostering creativity, nurturing employee engagement, lessening employee attrition, gaining more profits, improving the company’s reputation, and enriching cultural understanding. Truly, diversity in the workplace has afforded a lot of benefits and advantages.
Through diversity in the workplace, recruiting people coming from various backgrounds, cultures, and nationalities provides new perspectives and fresh viewpoints. With these varying ideas, knowledge and experiences, and eventually coming to a convergence, it helps in solving problems and agreeing on decisions as a team. It thus increases productivity, encourages openness, and stimulates better decision-making.
A company that prioritises hiring a diverse range of people enables a broader pool of talents. Thus, this attracts more potential candidates who are equally qualified and are seeking more than just monetary compensation as a motivation. Instead of opting for the typical set of qualifications, having a wider pool of recruits increases the opportunities of finding the best talents. It also removes having bias or prejudice based on people’s backgrounds when reviewing talent qualifications.
Being diverse in the workplace also fosters innovation and creativity. Because of different backgrounds, the pattern of their life and work experiences, as well as their manner of decision-making, contributes to finding the most unique and effective solution to problems. This divergence can spark new ideas through healthy brainstorming sessions and discussions. Laying these ideas and suggestions on the table would definitely make for better informed decisions or solutions.
Diversity encourages openness and respect for each others’ differences. By knowing that the organisation nurtures the uniqueness of each individual and promotes diversity, makes people more comfortable with their own distinctiveness. Thus, they would feel respected and valued, leading to more job satisfaction, increased productivity, and better employee performance.
As diversity benefits the organisation as a whole, it will ultimately assist in producing increasing company profits. There are reputable studies of consulting firms where companies who are diverse racially and ethnically are found to have more financial revenues than their industry’s average. A diverse workforce is beneficial not just on the working level, but also on the management level as well. Decision-makers who are divergent and eventually convergent contribute to a company’s great performance.
Diversity in the workplace can also be fostered and promoted in your own organisations. Carrie Benedet is an experienced leadership coach who can provide guidance towards workplace diversity. Send her a message today.
