The globalization of workforces has pushed for more than just gender diversification. Diversity in the business environment now includes everything from gender, race, and ethnicity as well as religion, political beliefs, sexual orientation, culture or disabilities.
Companies around the world are discovering that supporting a culture of inclusion offers them many more benefits. Intuitively I think we know this, but making a business case for building a truly diverse workforce is still important.
So what are the benefits of creating diversity in the workplace? Here are a few:
Better Innovation
Many organizations with fully diverse enterprises are also the most innovative, according to this study by the Harvard Business Review. Measuring the freshness of a company’s revenue mix against the average of six dimensions of diversity (migration, industry, career path, gender, education, age), proved workforces with higher levels of diversity also had 19% higher innovation revenues and 9% points higher EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) margins, on average.
Performance
According to McKinsey’s most recent “Delivering Through Diversity” report, found that corporations that embrace gender diversity on their executive teams were more competitive and 21% more likely to experience above-average profitability!
Employee Engagement
Forward-thinking companies should be looking for ways to encourage employee engagement in which a sense of inclusion and belonging has a direct impact. Gallup has found that employee engagement and inclusiveness are connected. It found the combination of employee engagement and gender diversity resulted in 46% to 58% higher financial performance
Faster Decision Making
Inclusive teams make better decisions up to 87% of the time. Teams that follow an inclusive process make decisions 2x faster with half of the meetings. Decisions made and executed by diverse teams delivered 60% better results.
Re-engineering your company culture isn’t easy but you have to do it if you want to reap the benefits of creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. Push beyond company policy, focus on true equality and communicate the importance of this culture to every department in your organization.
Are you looking for ways to shift your HR strategy to a more inclusive one? Give us a call. We’d be happy to consult and see if there is any way in which we can help.
