Over the past years, more and more people have been demanding business organizations become more inclusive. Diversity inclusion does have a significant impact on the improvement of an organization’s performance. Deloitte revealed that diverse organizations enjoyed 2.3 times higher cash flow per employee.
What is Diversity? It means differences in political beliefs, race, culture, religion, class, sexual orientation, and so forth. A workforce must include individuals from all walks of life who bring something new and unique to the table to improve diverse staffing successfully.
Meanwhile, diversity inclusion implies that everyone in the workforce feels valued, respected, and treated fairly. Without inclusion, diversity may develop into a toxic culture. Inclusion, without diversity, can make a force unimaginative and less productive.
Diversity and inclusion go hand in hand and can significantly boost the performance of a company. Let’s take a look at how your organization can benefit from the variety!

Increase in the Size of Talent Pool

According to Gartner, highly diverse and inclusive workforces bear witness to improved team performance by up to 30%. It is because diversity allows access to more talented people and new ideas and innovations.
If a company has been hiring the same type of people for the longest time, chances are most of the employees are of the same time with similar ideas. Moreover, over half the workers see diversity as a deciding factor while looking for employment.
If your organization wants to attract more interested individuals equipped with tremendous qualifications, you should consider making the employment process more inclusive.

New Ideas and Innovations

There is a reason why so many studies point towards improvement in team performance due to diversity recruitment. The Harvard Business Review concluded that there was an essential relationship between diversity and innovative results.
There are so many dimensions to diversity, including migration, gender, age, industry, education, and so on. All of these dimensions are significantly related to innovation. Industry, gender, and nation of origin have been found to have a significant impact on the revenue of a company.
Also, employees from backgrounds that are less predominant in workforces worldwide have always strived to improve their talents and skills due to the obstacles they were subjected to during the employment process.

Improvement in Team Engagement

In a study, the Harvard Business Review revealed that more diversity resulted in less fear and improved performance. After all, less inclusivity forces employees to fit the standards set by a company, and they display a certain apprehension when it comes to expressing new ideas.
If a workplace encourages new opinions and innovations, employees feel included and feel a need to outperform. In 2013, Deloitte revealed that innovation sees an 83% rise due to improved inclusivity.

High Profits

Thanks to diversity recruitment, brand new ideas and innovations are borne out of workforces. These innovative perspectives can translate into better business results and ultimately high profits. A study has revealed that more diverse companies enjoyed a 19% increase in revenue than the less diverse ones. Also, executive teams with more varied staffing in the form of gender were found to be around 21% more likely to outperform in the context of revenue.
The correlation between diversity and profits becomes more apparent in times of crisis. It is well-known that recognition is a massive factor behind a person’s motivation to engage actively in a company’s functioning. The Great Place to Work study revealed the same.
In the study mentioned above, they assessed numerous publicly traded companies working before and after the Great Recession of 2009. According to the findings, highly diverse companies saw a 14.4% gain compared to the S&P 500, which bore witness to over 35% decrease in stock performance between 2007 and 2009.

Boosts the Reputation of a Brand

In the modern-day world, millennial and Gen Z customers are becoming increasingly more socially conscious about the type of organizations they are pouring their resources into. If your organization does not display diversity in its staffing, there are huge chances that many people may hesitate to work with you or buy your goods and services.
Diversity helps you increase your customer base in more ways than one. A diverse workforce can help you learn about the needs and issues of people coming from different walks of life. As a result, you can fashion your products and services so that more people are willing to buy into the same. These steps go on to ensure that your company’s reputation stays positive.

Global Impact

An inclusive organization can make a huge difference in today’s world. Working with a workforce that includes employees from different abilities, creeds, and experiences, allows you to enjoy a more diverse and global perspective.
Finally, your own experience with a mixed workforce will help you connect with businesses from other countries and global markets efficiently. Diversity warrants international success.

What Are the Challenges to Diversity and Inclusion?

Communication Barriers

While diversity can significantly improve the exchange of new and better ideas in an organization, challenges in communication can act as a significant barrier. Even when people use the same language, different accents and colloquialisms come into play.
Moreover, some phrases or gestures in one culture could be considered offensive by another.

Stereotypes and Prejudices

Years of the non-diverse workforce has to people having unwarranted stereotypes about others from different cultures. These prejudices often translate into an unwillingness to work with one another.
The onus is on the company to make employees more aware that their beliefs are unfounded and to establish better relationships among everyone.

VISA Requirements and High Cost of Accommodation

The pursuit for a diverse workforce comes with a fair share of costs and burdensome processes. Business organizations will need to set down guidelines for working VISA arrangements and employment policies at par with local labor and immigration laws.
Also, many business organizations have to bear the costs of transferring talented employees from different parts of the world to their places of work. Traveling costs, accompanied by the cost of accommodation and other expenses, can result in a lot of administrative work.

To Sum Up

In 2021, workplace diversity is the need of the hour. Every company should aspire to make its workforce more inclusive to ensure improvement in innovation and higher productivity. An organization can establish great relationships with global markets by becoming more embracing in nature.

Posted in IT Infrastructure Transformation