What is Diversity in the Workplace?

Diversity has become one of the most important topics in the HR world. Employers nowadays emphasize diversity in the workplace more than ever before. This is because diversity has a positive impact on the success of the team. But what does it mean by the diversity in the workplace, and why organizations emphasize it?

Diversity in the workplace occurs when organizations intentionally employ employees with different backgrounds. This includes different gender, age, education, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, race, and other necessary attributes. A diverse workforce is also essential for building a supportive organizational culture. It increases employee engagement by motivating and equally treating all employees. It also reduces turnover because diversity aligns with the individual goals, beliefs, and values.

Besides, it also increases employee engagement. Diversity establishes a good employee connection with the organization, which ultimately decreases turnover. Moreover, through employee diversity, employers can also boost employee productivity, improve onboarding operations, build a strong brand identity, and create a healthy work environment. That’s why diversity is considered one of the essential topics in HR. However, implementing diversity is a challenging task. It has its own set of challenges that are hard to neglect. So, it is important to focus on both sides of the coin to understand the concept better.

The Importance of It

Organizations with a diverse workforce have a lot of advantages. It is important for increasing the number of representatives and bringing new perspectives, increasing talents, profitability, and competitiveness. Some benefits of diversity in the workplace are discussed below. 

New Perspectives from Different Types of People with Diverse Background, Nationalities, Cultures, etc.

In organizations where all employees are from the same backgrounds, cultures, and nationalities, all of them will most likely have the same knowledge and ideas. But that’s not enough for the growth and development of an organization. Bringing new perspectives to the table is highly essential for organizations, and that’s only possible through diversity. Diversity will increase employee productivity and enable them to solve the issues conveniently.

This concept can be illustrated through a simple example. Consider you are on a treasure hunt, and you have a whole team with you. You have an option for finding the treasure. First, all team members stay with each other and collectively move in a single direction, searching for the treasure, and second, they divide the team and send them to different locations. Which method will be more effective? The second method.

The same rule applies in organizations. If employees recruit a diverse workforce, it will ultimately positively impact its growth and profitability, which is quite a difficult task with employees from the same background. Moreover, bringing a new perspective is also considered very intimidating for employers. This is because a diverse workforce leads to better decision-making.

Recruit More Talents

Diversity in the workplace also increases the talent pool; unlike the old times where employees normally focus on getting a 9 to 5 job with good money, a quite opposite scenario can be experienced in the modern world. It is one of the most important diversity benefits. Now, the employees crave the places where they can utilize their talent, grow, and get challenged. And the offices with a diverse workforce offer all of these things. Diversity creates a progressive workplace where employees can work on their talents.

Increase Competitiveness and Profits, etc.

Studies have shown that diversity in the workplace works great for increasing the performance of employees. A report issued by McKinsey in 2015 stated that companies with a diverse workforce have 35% higher financial returns than organizations with a non-diverse workforce. Another study issued by McKinsey found that organizations with diverse executive boards get a 95% higher ROE than other firms. 

Challenges

Recruiting a diverse workforce can be an easy task to achieve. However, it has its own set of challenges because diversity also means different mindsets, languages, and cultures. That’s why organizations need to focus on relationship management in the workplace. These challenges are discussed below.

Companies Must Align a Consistent Rule Which Suits all the Staff Well Despite the Differences

Diversity in the workforce indicates that each employee will have their personal goals. Sometimes, it gets hard to align these goals because organizational success can only occur if the employee’s goals setting aligns with the organization’s. Along with creating diversity, employers must also focus on their individual goals. Having a diverse workforce without their goal alignment will not be effective for the success of the business.

Training Management

Employee diversity in the workplace is not a solo task. It requires team efforts and cooperation. Managers must focus on organizing management training. This training should emphasize and teach managers the diversity goals of the organization. This training should cover different aspects of diversity like relationship building, designing custom solutions through the assistance of experts, and forming networks.

Harmony in the Office

Employee diversity is intentionally built in the organizations. However, some employees resist such things. They are normally biased, and these factors highly influence their decision-making and behavior with each other. And in such an environment, creating harmony in the office can be challenging for the managers. However, additional training by the employer in these regards can be a good help for creating harmony in the office.

Along with managing diversity in the workplace and creating diversity in the workforce, management should also be trained to care about the small needs of employees. And in an office set-up, it is only possible by using some high-quality and comfortable set of a standing desk and other furniture items. We recommend getting it through ergonomic office bulk order and ensure diversity in a comfortable environment.