It has become a hot topic in recent years and businesses are understanding more about the importance of diversity in the workplace yet, there is still lots more to learn. Today we are going to take a deeper look into inclusivity and diversity, why it is important and how you can invest in the right strategies to improve workplace culture.
Why should you invest in diversity and inclusion?
Improving workplace diversity and inclusion has been shown to create an environment where there is greater innovation with problem solving and better overall customer service. Get these areas right and you improve your overall performance and bottom line.
Overall company culture
With a wider range of voices to be heard (age, gender, race, religion), your company will benefit from different insights. This can innovate products or service offerings or improve your business' understanding of the marketplace.
Valuing staff
Employees should be able to express themselves based on their unique perspectives. Regardless of their age, gender, race and religion valuing your staff’s views and opinions leads to overall satisfaction and “safety” to express different points of view.
Being more progressive
The workplace will naturally lean towards more progressive attitudes which in turn opens the business to new opportunities and marketplaces. A view of different cultures, religions, gender and race mean that product and service development will have unique perspectives.
Foster diverse thinking
From generating ideas to developing work practices such as, collecting and receiving feedback at work, email tone or workplace dress wear. Fostering diverse thinking takes many paths but is essential in developing workplace culture.
Giving every person a voice
By giving every person a voice you are making the workplace a “safer” place for people to be their natural selves - in a professional context. You want to foster that feeling so that people feel comfortable, respected and improve general wellbeing.
How to invest in diversity and inclusion
As seen, there are many benefits to developing diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Investing in the right areas will help your business achieve this. Here are some suggestions on how to do it properly:
Recruitment
Simple steps to remove recruitment bias could be as simple as implementing a referral system, widening the scope of your candidate pool. Blind CV (where names and other persona; details are redacted) applications have shown to increase the diversity pool of candidates.
D&I initiatives
There are so many initiatives that a business can offer. Mentoring new recruits, improving D&I training, strengthening anti-discriminatory policies and holding active listening sessions are all simple measures that can be done.
Community volunteering
After work programmes or getting your organisation to create one where there is outreach into new communities to help broaden viewpoints are a strategic and fun method to improve D&I initiatives.
Internal promotions
This is about removing bias in the promotion review & process. Blind CV & staff appraisal, rewriting job descriptions and setting diversity goals are all part of the process.
Other strategies to improve workplace culture
There are other practical ways that you can improve your workplace culture. These include things such as;
Regular reviews
Holding one-to-one meetings where people can speak freely. Open up about the workplace and what can be done to improve in the cultural aspects of the organisation.
Robust feedback mechanisms
Aside from one-to-one meetings, investing in technology for feedback is a great step forward. This can be done anonymously, and let people know that the business is open to change.
Performance reviews
Done with the right scope in mind, these reviews can identify future talent and further internal promotion opportunities.
Improving workplace diversity and inclusion has many benefits. From improving the culture to even increasing the bottomline. Taking the right steps from recruitment to outreach programmes and expanding different points of view will have a positive impact. By setting goals and making it a strategic as well as culturally fair process to increase diversity is something that today’s modern businesses cannot underestimate.
Improve inclusivity and diversity in the workplace with Thomas
A lack of diversity in your workforce and unconscious bias in your decision making processes is harmful to your business can prevent you from hiring and keeping genuine talent. Our talent assessment platform can help you to increase the diversity and inclusivity of your workforce and reduce unconscious bias in your decision making processes.
If you would like to find out more about how we can help you address unconscious bias and increase the diversity of your workplace, please speak to one of our team.
