In today’s businesses, diversity management is extremely important. Diversity can help make a healthy office environment. Studies show that it can help make employees happier and think more critically, which has been shown to generate more revenue. Diversity management can make all of this a reality. In this article, we will talk about how human resources can help increase diversity in the workplace.
How Can You Define Diversity in the Workplace?
Workplace diversity entails appreciating, valuing, and accepting differences among people of various races, genders, ethnicities, religions, ages, sexual orientations, and disabilities, as well as those with various personalities, experiences, educational backgrounds, skill sets, and knowledge bases.
It is estimated that different generations have different perspectives on diversity. Millennials see workplace diversity as the blending of diverse origins, ideas, and opinions and they feel that capitalizing on these differences is innovative thinking. While on the other hand Gen Xers and Boomers view workplace diversity, in a different way, as identical and reasonable representation.
Diversity Best Practices
Here are some of the best practices of diversity at the workplace.
- Collaboration and teamwork with an emphasis on innovation and creativity
- Equal access to resources
- Education and training on diversity
- Diversity representation among internal and external stakeholders
- Diversity representation at all levels of the business
- Responsiveness, flexibility, and agility in the workplace
How Human Resource Departments Can Increase Workplace Diversity
Here are some of the tips that tell you how human resource departments can increase diversity in the workplace.
1. Commit to establishing a diverse group of employee prospects
It is feasible to have a diverse group of employees who are made up of high performance individuals. Companies benefit from diverse workplaces because every employee comes from a different background or culture which creates opportunities for collaboration or ideas that wouldn’t be expressed otherwise.
2. Begin with your senior management team
Senior leaderships should be diverse from the get-go. However, another important step is to have senior leadership agree that a workplace focused on diversity, equity and inclusion is beneficial to employees happiness, the bottom-line and overall company’s success.
Over time you’ll even be able to measure that impact diversity has on success. It important to think in terms of systems and to avoid the common trap of tokenism.
3. Let everyone participate
Managing a diverse workplace entails making individuals feel like they belong and are involved in the decision-making process. Find way to make them feel as if their voices are being heard and that what they have to say is significant.
4. Measure your efforts
Diversity is necessary for achieving better business results. You must measure your efforts to ensure that you are on the proper route. You won’t know how much of an impact you’re making or how to improve unless you have metrics to review. Define the criteria, analyze your performance, and then try to improve it.
5. Creativity & Innovation
Diversity in businesses helps employees to get more creative and innovative. When people are not from the same area or same place they tend to be different from each other and which leads to more innovative and creative ideas. Too much similarities can cause groupthink which diminishes innovation.
6. Globaization & Localization
Because we live in a global economy, a company with a diverse workforce is better able to grasp the demographic characteristics of customers from a specific region. This will help improve marketing strategies on a global and local basis.
7. Adaptability
Finally, organisations in today’s market must be technologically and culturally adaptable. This is necessary for promptly responding to competition and staying on top of industry developments. Diverse workplaces push companies to be more ethical about who they support. A great example to showcase this is the Facebook boycott where thousands of companies stop advertising on the platform because of social justice and civil right controversies.
Roles of Human Resources Management Team
The human resource management team helps keep businesses moving forward and because of this they have a lot of important roles. Some of their roles and responsibilities are listed below.
- Training & onboarding of employees
- Hiring employees
- Employee promotions
- Managing company policies
- Creating a workplace focused on diversity and equality
- Ensuring that important documents are accessible to employees
- Conducting exit interviews
