The Benefits of Diversity

In this new reality, organizations will need diversity and cultural competence to compete. Beyond individual clients and customers, corporate clients will also demand diversity. Companies like Facebook and Verizon are already demanding diversity from the companies they hire. If organizations want to survive and thrive in the new America, they will need workers that understand the needs of diverse customers and clients. The world economy is more connected than ever.

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Increasingly, American firms conduct business at home and abroad. However, nondiverse companies may not be prepared to meet the challenges of a global marketplace.

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American companies have had some high-profile failures overseas. Reducing the likelihood of international embarrassment is one of the many benefits of diversity. Recently, Sodexho reported that when its staff achieved optimal gender balance, its brand image improved by five percentage points.

Companies that respect diversity show consumers that they are forward-thinking, but those that fail to diversify risk being labeled as bland and out-of-date. Also, in an increasingly diverse America, companies that value diversity also tell their customers that they are valued. EDI helps companies shine in the marketplace.

Diversity is the right thing to do. Catalyst found that companies with three or more women on their boards had higher returns on equity, sales, and investments. EDI gives companies an earnings edge in a competitive marketplace.

• 2. Benefit: Local market knowledge and insight makes a business more competitive and profitable.
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Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion help companies improve their brands and their bottom lines. Cross-cultural understanding, along with local market knowledge, lends itself the production of more effective marketing strategy and materials.

1. Benefit: Diverse cultural perspectives can inspire creativity and drive innovation

For example, high quality and culturally sensitive translations of websites, brochures, and other assets are essential. But these can be overlooked without the input of a native speaker. Even brand taglines can get badly lost in translation. Market-specific knowledge and insight is invaluable when it comes to for imagery and design,too. What might work well on a billboard for a British company could fail or offend elsewhere. A memorable McDonalds print ad in Finland may have been considered clever locally, but it was seen as confusing and even grotesque by foreign audiences.

The danger of making a serious marketing blunder, which can cause irreparable damage to a brand or business abroad, can be mitigated by employing a diverse workforce with local marketing savvy. According to a Glassdoor survey , two thirds of job hunters indicated that diversity was important to them when evaluating companies and job offers. In a competitive global job market, demonstrating that your business is invested in fostering a multicultural and inclusive environment can make you stand out to the right candidates.

Making diversity an important part of the recruiting process will broaden your talent pool of prospective employees. Not only does hiring from a more diverse talent pool makes your business attractive to ambitious, globally minded candidates, it also helps you to keep them on board. Diversity, including diversity of gender, religion, and ethnicity, has been shown to improve retention and reduce the costs associated with employee turnover.

In a diverse workplace, employees are more likely remain loyal when they feel respected and valued for their unique contribution. This, in turn, fosters mutual respect among colleagues who also value the diverse culture, perspectives, and experiences of their team members. An inclusive atmosphere of cross-cultural cooperation is an excellent way to bond colleagues and teams across the business. Studying and sharing a campus with students from different nationalities has been an awe-inspiring experience.

Diversity and international exposure have always been important to the decisions I have made in my career. By drawing from a culturally diverse talent pool, companies benefit from hiring professionals with a broad range of skills that are often not accessible when hiring locally.

Globally oriented companies can add to their service range by leveraging the skills and experience their international employees bring to the table. A broader skills base and a more potentially diverse offering of products and services can help your business to have the competitive advantage of adaptability.

The Benefits of Diversity

Adaptability means faster and more effective planning, development, and execution. A company with cultural and cognitive diversity can be quicker to spot a gap in the market. It will also have the global or market-specific insight and experience to help a new or adapted product to meet changing consumer behavior—and succeed. The range of experience, expertise, and working methods that a diverse workplace offers can boost problem-solving capacity and lead to greater productivity.

In fact, studies have shown organizations with a culture of diversity and inclusion are both happier and more productive. Where working in homogeneous teams can seem easier, it can cause a business to settle for the status quo. Diversity, on the other hand, can breed healthy competition, stretching a team in a positive way to achieve their best.

This atmosphere of healthy competition can lead to the optimization of company processes for greater efficiency. As a recent article in the Harvard Business Review argues, the challenges of working in a diverse team are one of the reasons why diverse teams perform better: Fundamentally, an inclusive and culturally diverse business will attract talented, ambitious, and globally minded professionals who will appreciate the opportunity for personal and professional growth.

Working across cultures can be a truly enriching experiencing, allowing others to learn about perspectives and traditions from around the world. Bonding over similarities and differences can help you to become a global citizen, abandoning prejudices or an ethnocentric world view—something that is increasingly valuable. A diverse set of colleagues can be professionally enriching too—exposing you to new skills and approaches to work, and developing an international network that can take your career in exciting new directions or abroad.

However, the presence of diverse brain power alone is not enough. This can be particularly challenging for colleagues from polite or deferential cultures.

The Benefits of Diversity | Experience

We always need to branch out and work with people who are from different backgrounds and have different working and thinking styles. After you do an assessment develop a plan to address issues and create a plan to support diversity. Are you lacking diversity at the employee level, management, or board of directors? Some organizations have been able to recruit diverse employees but their executive leadership is exactly alike in terms of race, age gender, geographic background or education. If you always recruit from the same sources you will always get the same people.

Talk to other companies that have successfully recruited and maintained a diverse workforce. Find out how they get their candidates and what they have done to create a more inclusive environment. They still feel encouraged even if their ideas are not accepted each time. Just having people who are different from each other is not enough.

Depending on the size of your organization you might want to form a diversity council to champion your diversity initiative, deal with issues and build a stronger team. Learn from other organizations but be aware of what your group can do specifically to be more inclusive. Educate and train people to be aware of their conscious and unconscious biases and assumptions that impede working together.