Until a few years ago, businesses didn’t consider the potential benefits of having people from all walks of life work together or within a group. Nowadays, they are becoming more vocal about it and taking pride in having a diverse workforce.
Diversity can be a great way to boost your business, but in order to implement it, we first need to understand it.
Understanding the 4 Types of Diversity
Diversity can exist on a very broad spectrum. We can try to simplify things by categorizing diversity into four different types.
- Internal Diversity
These represent the characteristics a person is born with. Race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, and culture.
- External Diversity
These are characteristics that a person is able to change about themselves, such as interests, appearance, location, and religious beliefs.
- Organizational Diversity
Refers to the position one occupies within a workplace and is affected by multiple factors such as place of work, job function, department, work experience, seniority, and pay.
- Worldview Diversity
The 3 types mentioned above have an impact on our worldview. This is how an individual sees the world, influenced by each person’s own experiences and lessons learned. This includes political beliefs, a moral compass, and a person’s outlook on life.
Now that we have an idea of ways to classify diversity, here is how implementing it into your business can help boost your growth and increase your business’ performance and potential.
1. Greater Creativity
When in a group, you want different people to come up with and generate ideas. While people working together usually facilitate and make work more efficient, it can become counterproductive when like-minded individuals work together.
The issue is that people who think and analyze things similarly will generate similar ideas. However, this is easily rectified by including individuals from different backgrounds and educational levels who can bring their own unique perspectives to the group. This will help generate more ideas at a faster pace. Nowadays, it’s all about who is first, and a diversified group where everyone is pitching different concepts and ideas is the best way to come up with and implement new ideas.
2. Better Problem Solving
The key to success is to resolve and fix problems quickly and efficiently.
A diversified workforce is able to solve problems quicker by looking at and analyzing issues from multiple perspectives. They can also teach each other how to tackle different issues and come up with different solutions, expanding the experience and skill sets of everyone involved.
Having a team consisting of people with different experiences, insights, and perspectives will improve problem-solving capabilities and improve workplace collaboration.
Through better problem-solving and greater creativity, you achieve greater productivity, a positive outcome that every business strives to accomplish with its workforce.
3. Increased Employee Retention
Employees tend to feel more at ease and comfortable in a diversified environment.
They tend to be more loyal and stay longer at companies that recognize them for the work they do and respect them regardless of their background or anything else that defines their individual characteristics.
Your employees will feel at ease knowing they are accepted for who they are and what they bring to the table in terms of performance. In exchange, they will reward you and your business with loyalty and dedication.
4. Improved Business Reputation
With the ongoing shift towards being more tolerant, inclusive, and accepting, having a diversified workforce in your business would appeal greatly to the public (and to investors).
When a business promotes diversity, it is perceived as more responsible, accepting, and in touch with the times.
This in turn will make your business more appealing, attracting new customers, partners, and deals. This will also help attract a pool of top performers when trying to bring in new employees.
A diversified workforce can help you in many positive ways with little to no downside.
