One of the big business stories of the summer of 2017 has been the leaked internal “anti-diversity” memo—some have called it a manifesto—written by a staff engineer at Google, who argued that women aren’t suited for many technical jobs because of “biological” issues. The engineer was subsequently fired.
It’s just the latest big reminder that diversity remains elusive at many companies, and there are still people with mindsets that could be described as anti-diversity.
For business owners and managers, it should also raise some introspective questions: How diverse is your company? When you look at your workforce, is everyone the same color, or sex? Or, do they look different but all think alike?
There comes a point in the lifecycle of every business where the strength of a unified approach to business becomes a weakness because the company can’t overcome the sameness of the way it approaches the marketplace. If your company’s approach never varies, eventually someone will come along and do what you do better, faster, or cheaper.
When you embrace diversity, you begin to create a more well-rounded business. Here are some of the advantages of focusing on diversity in your business.
- Attracting talent. For starters, when you expand your recruiting sights beyond your traditional “feeder systems,” you automatically open your business up to a greater talent pool; it’s basic math. A study by Glassdoor showed that 67 percent of workers say a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating employers and job offers. Perhaps just as important is the fact that diversity helps with talent retention—most professionals today view different viewpoints and experiences as an important aspect of work.
- Better problem solving and decision-making. When you have diverse viewpoints in the room, you’re far more likely to consider a wider variety of solutions. To make this work, your business needs to create an environment to ensure that differing viewpoints are considered in the decision-making process.
- Increasing revenue. This might sound like a stretch, but studies have drawn a correlation between having a diverse workforce and having a better bottom line. A McKinsey study found that companies in the top 25 percent for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have above-average financial returns.
In addition to these business reasons, many people would argue that having a diverse workforce is, very simply, the right thing to do. This notion of fairness will be more than enough to convince many business owners and executives to work to ensure that they employ a diverse workforce. If you haven’t taken a look at your workforce and how you stack up in terms of diversity, it’s a good idea to consider this soon.
After all, it’s good for business.
Contact us at 215.441.4600 or Email if you have questions or would like to discuss how this topic may impact your business.
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