Companies often ask, ‘why should we care about D&I (Diversity and Inclusion),’ apart from the fact that it’s the right thing to do and good for business?
To back up this claim, a statistical report submitted by McKinsey back in 2018 proved that gender diversity and inclusion of different races in executive teams improve profitability and value creation.
But first, let us straighten out some things, like what is diversity and inclusion?
Diversity is all the traits, little quirks, and characteristics that define our personality, work, experience, lifestyle, ethnicity, age, culture, gender, and sexual orientation.
We proudly show the world what we want while hiding specific aspects of our personality hidden, sometimes due to fear.
Inclusion is to give respect. To acknowledge, respect, value, and carefully consider the outlook and needs of other people.
With movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter emerging, any business needs to attract a labor force that reflects the diversity of the communities in their area of operation.
Putting too many limitations or restrictions in hiring can create a hostile environment for employees and the management.
In addition, you stand to gain everything by allowing more diversity as it aids in better communicating with customers and strengthens the employee brand.
Following are ways how diversity and inclusion improve business outcomes.
1. Greater Potential of Innovation and Creativity
A work environment that includes employees and staff members from different cultures, backgrounds, skills, and experiences will automatically increase the number of innovative ideas developed.
Thus, it increases the potential for originality and creating something new. It can positively impact your business, making and developing things uniquely your own, allowing your business to have a specific distinction or a trademark to be identified.
It will also be a more comfortable and open environment as diversity will motivate more people to step forward. It is better than businesses that function with only ‘one voice.’
2. Widens the Range of Skills
Hiring individuals with distinctive qualities and skillsets can speed up work. It can enable the workforce to work more effectively, tackling problems from two or more different routes.
It also enhances the team’s brainstorming ability and allows for a more multifaceted problem-solving process. According to Deloitte reports, the variety of thinking processes:
- Improves innovation by about 20%
- It makes it easier for groups to spot risks, reducing them by up to 30%
Our differences widen our perspectives and make us stronger, a fact that affects a business from the bottom to the top chair.
3. A More Successful Business
Diversity and inclusion are significant factors influencing people’s decisions when looking for jobs. Seeing an assortment of people from different cultures will likely convince them to accept employment and embrace their differences.
It also allows a business to attract, retain, and develop the best talent. Soon, D&I will not be something that is ‘nice to have”; it will be a ‘must to have, especially for scaling businesses.
The younger generations are growing up in a world where equality and acceptance are the running themes. They will choose organizations and companies that prioritize these subjects.
Businesses that promote a more diverse staff will create a positive dynamic for the people who work there, allowing them to thrive and use all the available tools and their capabilities to the fullest.
4. Content Employees
Employees are much more comfortable and expressive in this type of environment. This content manner reflects on the work produced.
It creates a more productive atmosphere, where everyone thrives and allows multiple opportunities to arise, which is good for business.
With unsatisfied employees, project outcomes are affected, no matter what treatment you give it. Therefore, it’s imperative to ensure this optimism does not fade away.
5. Higher Productivity Rates
With everything in place, a diverse team, inclusive atmosphere, content employees, and the attraction of new customers, an increase in productivity is, of course, expected.
Combining the plethora of skills, knowledge, and experience and mixing it under a single roof allows for ideas and transactions to occur in a relatively shorter instance of time than those organizations that lack this essential trait.
6. Understanding your Buyers / Customers
This approach not only benefits your business chain of command and soothes things out in internal matters. It also helps the business overall, more importantly to your consumers or your potential customers in the foreseeable future.
Understanding your customers enables you to market your business to those different groups of people as those who work within the business guide you.
Promotion and marketing are most effective when employees with similar cultures can target their intended audience.
Moreover, there is always room for growth; eventually, people will learn the differences between various traditions and backgrounds, which permits them to amass more knowledge that they can use effectively while marketing.
7. More Top-Notch Talent to Choose from
Many organizations’ hiring practices often exclude potential applicants (though, in most cases, it is unintentional).
Furthermore, employee turnover is too high a cost affecting both the employers and the staff. So how do businesses successfully communicate to retain talent?
The key is not to choose them based on how they look or speak in a particular manner, but what skills they bring to the table and how they can aid in the business’s growth.
Hiring with only the former aim in mind will be like collecting a bunch of empty oysters hoping to find a pearl.
8. Higher Revenue
Higher productivity combined with happier employees will ultimately produce higher revenue. In McKinsey’s report, Diversity Matters, data from 366 public companies across various industries in Latin America, the UK, Canada, and the US was carefully analyzed.
They found that businesses at the top had racial and ethnic diversity and were 35% likely to generate higher revenues than non-D&I industry competitors.
The Verdict
To sum it all up, if organizations want to succeed in their field and retain their employees, it’s time to take a more proactive approach in employment to support all kinds of people.
But, if organizations use D&I as a purely strategic approach, they may as well flush their investments down the drain. The goal should be to be as respectful as possible with the acceptance of every sort of person.
