The need for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace
The general consensus is that a successful team is a diverse one. If you have a team of people working towards a similar goal, you would think it makes more sense to have a more homogenous group of people. Wrong. A successful team is filled with those of differing but compatible and complementary skills and experiences. When forming a team, diversity should be built up in a multitude of ways.
What is diversity?
When we think of diversity, we often think of physical appearances. The main two aspects that come to mind are race and gender. While each of those are very important topics and is part of this discussion, there are other forms diversity can take. While this isn’t an exhausted list diversity can look like:
- Religion
- Sexual orientation
- Work experience
- Skillset
- Education
- Personality
- Work styles
How diversity benefits the workplace?
Faster problem solving
It’s not that a more homogenous team can’t problem solve, but can they do it efficiently? With a group of like-minded individuals, they are bound to hit a wall at some point. Having fresh and differing perspectives can generate many more solutions and at a faster pace.
Unfortunately, as humans we all have implicit bias. These biases can affect how we solve challenges and the solutions we choose to implement. A homogenous team is more likely to have the same implicit biases and might not take into consideration how they affect others.
Easier recruitment
Diversity can even make hiring a more straightforward process. By looking for people with a variety of skills and experiences, it opens your candidate pool up. If every candidate needed to have the exact same skill set or work experience, it could take forever to fill a position. When diversity is done right, it should foster a sense of community where everyone can feel safe and accepted. This can keep people on long-term and even lessen turnover rates.
Better understanding of your consumers
When creating a product or service, you need to understand your audience. Having team members who share identities with your audience allows you to customize your product or service to exactly what that person needs and not what you think they need.
Increase in creativity
If everyone all thought the same way, we would never create or think of anything new. A diverse team can think of new ideas and build on one another to develop new products and services.
Professional development
Working in a diverse team benefits everyone. Colleagues can challenge each other’s way of thinking and grow together as people inside and outside of work. Not only can colleagues challenge each other, but also teach and learn from one another. The beauty of a team with a diverse skillset is everyone gets to adopt new skills and better themselves.
How to foster diversity in the workplace
Revamp the job description
If you want to attract different types of people, it begins with the job description. Refrain from using exclusive language such as gendered terms. It is also wise to drive home the concept of flexibility in the description. The job description is a candidate’s first impression of the company. After an individual reads it, they can make one of two decisions: apply or discard it and move on to the next job posting. Preferably you want the former.
Create a culture of belonging
While it’s nice to be inclusive, genuine diversity is about belonging. When working as a team, no one should feel like they were forced to be include. Many companies struggle with diversity initiatives because they divert to filling quotas rather than focusing on company culture. These companies often look at filling a certain percentage of positions with women or people of colour. But you can’t achieve diversity by filling quotas.
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