Diversity and Inclusion are two separate terms that can never operate exclusively in a modern workplace environment. These are becoming business-critical initiatives and no longer nice-to-haves. Increasing diversity is important and means having representation from various race, gender, age, educational background, cultural background, religious beliefs, sexual orientations, and skills.
Increasing inclusivity is taking it to the next level. This focuses on making sure the diverse perspectives are included, and the diversity you have is retained and cultivated—diversity and Inclusion at the workplace effort and initiative. Just like businesses need to create actionable, measurable business goals to move their strategic revenue goals forward, a business must create actionable, measurable diversity and inclusion initiatives to move the needle. The return on investment is tangible. Some returns on investment are below.
The Importance of Diversity and Inclusion in a Modern Workplace Environment
More Diversity Leadership Teams Creates a Financial Return
According to a recent global study published in the Financial Times, there has been a 2-4% increase in profits because of the 10% increase in gender diversity. You give your employees the chance to be more competitive and take responsibility for certain challenging roles. Then, you will automatically receive a higher profit and better financial performance. Diversity allows for an increase in revenue through higher market shares and innovation.
Increased Diversity and Inclusion allows for the recruitment and retention of diversity talent.
Diversity has a way of attracting talent, so by creating an inclusive environment in your company, you can recruit and support a diverse workforce that comes with many benefits. The more diversity in the workforce, the more efficiency and progress you witness before you.
Increased diversity creates increased innovation
Increasing your workforce’s diversity means seeing new ideas and perspectives. This helps a company flourish creatively and, at the same time, solve issues faster. With a bigger and diverse workforce, you can easily point out mistakes and fix them. Consequently, they prevent a company from facing a disaster while increasing profits.
Increased Reputation and Marketing
If you want to attract the right clients and customers, you have to showcase inclusive leadership. This will draw their attention to your company. In today’s era, people look for modernized backgrounds and teams to work with. So if you can offer that, you build a stronger corporate reputation. This is a great marketing technique, as well.
Bottom-Line
Any organization, company, association, or firm will benefit from focusing on Diversity and Inclusion. It’s not just the right thing to do; it’s a business-critical initiative in today’s market. If your organization needs support, hire a consultant. There’s no reason to re-create the wheel, and the return on your investment both from a morale, brand, retention, and recruiting standpoint is worth doing Diversity and Inclusion right.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are not foreign concepts in the workplace. However, as more organizations focus on these important principles, there are still common misconceptions. Knowing what something is NOT is just as important as learning more about the topic.
Here we have outlined some myths and misconceptions related to diversity to help your business evolve and improve.
Diversity Myths
Diversity or Inclusion Require You to Treat Every Individual the Same
One of the common myths related to diversity is that it requires you to treat every individual the same way.
In reality, treating everyone exactly the same fails to appreciate differences, important nuances, and may inadvertently alien groups in which you are trying to include. Understanding various backgrounds, adjusting approaches and including diverse perspectives will create an inclusive and diverse organization.
Everyone wants to feel seen and valued, brushing everyone with the same broad stroke may have the opposite impact if you are trying to promote inclusion and belonging in the workplace. It is essential that you take the “individual differences” of each worker into account. This way, the workplace environment incorporates the creative elements of different cultures and backgrounds.
Diversity is Exclusivity
This is another common misconception many people have regarding diversity. Focusing on including diverse perspectives does not necessitate excluding other perspectives. Ensuring one race does not feel alienated does not mean that members of another race should feel attacked.
Diversity can only be successfully cultivated and retained, if organizations create a culture where all individuals can thrive and feel valued and included. Put simply, organizations should respect the values and cultural differences of all employees without making them feel “different.”
Diversity Requires Lowering the Bar
Diversity and inclusion doesn’t lower the standard or quality of individuals or candidates, it widens the net to find, attract, and retain them. Diverse and inclusive organizations have less turn over, they attract more diverse talent, and more diverse perspectives lead to more innovation and higher profitability. Diversity, in fact, raises the bar.
Diversity is Only about Women and Minorities
Diversity means much more than gender or race. Everyone brings some form of diversity to the table. Whether that’s a different perspective, socioeconomic background, religion, disability, or experiences. Diversity is valuing differences and increasing the perspectives at the table.
It doesn’t confine itself to creating opportunities or respecting the differences of only women and minorities. It has a broader approach as it does not differentiate between people based on their gender only. In fact, diversity is all about recognizing individual differences.
Summing Up
All in all, these common myths can prevent your organization or company from hiring or retaining valuable and under-represented applicants. Debunking such myths and challenging yourself and your organization to grow in its approach to diversity and inclusion will create a more successful, productive, and profitable organization.
Diversity, inclusion, and equity are not just keywords. Rather, they are the scaffolding to a healthy workplace and key components for healthy workplace culture. Organizations and companies need these qualities to hone an environment where people from distinct backgrounds work together and achieve common goals. If you’re a business leader or executive considering updating the company’s culture, you must have a clear understanding of the key differences between inclusion, diversity, and equity.
Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity- The Key Differences
Diversity
Diversity is a broad term. It essentially means variety, or characteristics that distinguish people from each other. Note that diversity doesn’t confine itself to gender or race only. In fact, it includes ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, religion, age, disabilities, political perspectives, and much more. In a workplace setting, focusing on diversity is often looking at recruitment practices, attracting talent from a wide range of backgrounds.
Inclusion
As per Global Diversity Practice’s definition, inclusion refers to an organization’s efforts to accept individuals with different backgrounds and treat them equally socially. It considers all the characteristics that make people different and focuses on creating an environment of acceptance and respect . An inclusive culture makes members feel valued and focuses on retaining diversity.
Equity
Equity refers to a state of impartiality and fairness. It is a component that ensures everyone in the workspace receive equitable treatment. Forbes defines equity as a workplace characteristic that makes every employee feel empowered to bring their ideas and thoughts to the table. In other words, equity happens when a diverse population of a workplace gets equal opportunities to grow and succeed. It promotes fairness and justice within business processes, systems, and resource distribution.
Why Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Matter to an Organization
Diversity, inclusion, and equity are crucial components of an organization. A company that prioritizes these vital elements can develop a culture that not only respects but also values each individual‘s different identity. It doesn’t end here- an inclusive and diverse culture fosters a healthy relationship between employees and reduces bias. It recognizes systemic inequities and addresses them.
If an organization overlooks systemic inequities, it can make working or perform difficult for some individuals. It is among the issues companies need to address strategically. Therefore, diversity, inclusion, and equity should reflect in the vision, mission, and values of a company. More importantly, management needs to cascade them throughout the company.
An organization or company with these three essential components not only creates a diverse workforce, but also bring about a visible cultural change.
Summing Up
Building a diverse and equitable team is an essential aspect of an organization’s success. Diversity, inclusion, and equity are often discussed together, but have distinct meanings, each of which has a different focus, requires different efforts, and all of which are needed to attract, retain, and develop a productive and successful workforce.
If your goal is not to incorporate diversity into your workplace culture but to create it, you need to figure out your current cultures’ components.
Executives need to prioritize the primary requirements for diverse teams and leadership. Culture, in this regard, is a vital factor for diversity and inclusion management. It is time to assess and reframe equity, inclusivity, and diversity improvement strategies via the lens of culture.
Since implementing these improvement strategies is not an overnight process, we enlisted a stepwise outline to create a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable culture.
A Stepwise Guideline to Create Diverse, Inclusive, and Equitable Culture
Step1: Assess the Current Policies And Structure Of Your Organization
Before creating a plan to build a diverse, inclusive, and equitable culture, you must figure out the policies and practices your organization has in place. More importantly, you must determine how you will implement those policies.
Understanding what processes were developed without an eye towards diversity, equity, and inclusion, and consequently may inadvertently incorporate unconscious bias, will be important to begin implementing change. If you can, bring in a neutral third party to help you examine your areas of opportunity, conduct an audit of your policies, host listening sessions with your employees, or otherwise help advise you on best practices and where to start.
Step2: Designate a Leader or third-party consultant to help create a Diverse, Inclusive, and Equitable Culture
DEI is often a second, third, or fifth priority, given to individuals who have other full-time responsibilities in the organization and who do not have any formal DEI background. No serious priority gets accomplished this way. You must have someone who is accountable, has the capacity and the skillset to move your DEI initiatives forward. . Creating a full-time leadership position or hiring an outside consultant for inclusion and diversity shows your dedication, as well as ensures someone can move your priorities forward.
Step3: Communicate to Stakeholders
For your diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy to work, it is important to involve internal stakeholders. Ensure that you have a clear understanding of diversity and inclusion and the goals you expect to achieve and set expectations that stakeholders prioritize these initiatives.
Step4: Improve Recruiting Policies to Instill Diversity
One of the large areas in which organizations tackle unconscious bias and increasing diversity is in recruiting practices. Review closely with someone with a DEI professional background your job descriptions, your interview processes, your candidate selection criteria, and your data gathering practices to understand where you may have areas of opportunity.
Step5: Factor In Diversity, Inclusion, And Equity Into Day To Day Company Policies
There are many ways to involve diversity, inclusion, and equity in day-to-day policies. The key to make DEI a normal, everyday topic is to bring it into focus and practice it every day. Seek training and resources for your organization so that everyone has actionable day-to-day ways that they can help move the needle in their daily lives at work.
Summing Up
Creating diversity, equity, and inclusion in your organization requires a deliberate and intentional plan. The execution of important DEI initiatives should be treated just like any other important revenue-generating business goal. You must allocate resources towards DEI initiatives and bring someone with a related background on board. They have the capacity to push these initiatives forward.
Leaders have a crucial role in developing an inclusive and diverse workplace and know the value of doing so. A diverse workforce is essential to achieve organizational and financial goals and be competitive in the market. A bulk of evidence has shown that businesses committed to diverse leadership and inclusive culture become more successful.
Features of Transformative Diversity and Inclusive Organizational Culture
Organization’s and People’s Readiness
Culture has a strong driving force and can offer significant competitive advantages. However, a diverse and inclusive culture has a transformation readiness, meaning there is a true desire to improve and address areas of opportunity.
Such readiness allows organizations and companies to understand and assess the potential gaps and strengths in their processes and is ready to allocate the resources and budget necessary to address these gaps.
When they have the readiness to change, leaders, managers, and other employees can improve their skills, adding further value to the organizational culture.
New Innovation and Perspectives
Transformative diversity refers to a new vision, one that’s related to diversity development. It typically seeks to transform or improve the existing diversity program using an infusion or combination of intercultural perspectives.
The new vision of diversity takes the old approach beyond gender and race to propose a shift from conventional race-gender to the integration of minorities and synergy performance problems. Specifically, there is a significance of integrating minorities with varied cultural backgrounds into corporate cultures. This is different from the regular focus on diversity.
That is why a company with transformative diversity and inclusive culture has a higher chance of receiving fresh ideas and perspectives from a diverse group. A study published by the Harvard Business Review found a significant relationship between innovative outcomes and diversity.
The more diverse culture an enterprise has in terms of career path, age, education, and gender, the more innovative perspectives it will receive. The researchers measure this via the levels of profitability. All diversity dimensions correlate with innovation and improve profits.
Improved Performance
One significant feature that demonstrates diversity and inclusion in organizational culture is improved performance and increased productivity. A diverse culture is a competitive differentiator. According to McKinsey, organizations with more ethnic and racial diversity can outperform their competitors by 3.5 percent
Better Decision Making
Transformative diverse and inclusive culture promotes better decision making. A virtual decision-making platform, Cloverpop, assessed 600 decisions of 200 teams in different organizations. The results showed a significant improvement in decision-making. Mainly, gender-diverse teams make better decisions compared to individuals that set them apart from the rest.
Increased Employee Trust and Engagement
A diverse and inclusive culture makes employees feel trusted and included. And when employees are highly engaged, they won’t mind going the extra mile to perform for the organization. This higher engagement increases team morale, confidence, and employee retention. Inclusive workplaces have healthier environments as they promote better mental and physical health.
Summing Up
All in all, a transformative diversity and inclusive organizational culture promises positive changes. It involves and engages employees from diverse backgrounds to contribute to company success. Thus, leaders need to implement smart strategies to use assets and talent beneficially. The new approach is designed to create increasingly multicultural workplaces. Thus, transformational diversity includes an imperative focus on “inclusion” of highly diverse talent. It visibly contributes to performance and an inclusion-oriented system for all.
