Skip to content

3 Ways You Can Benefit From Diversity In The Workplace

BY Rebecca | 14 August, 2015 | no comments

How diverse is the company you run? Do you have a good mix of people, male and female, able-bodied or otherwise, and of different ethnic background? If not, you are missing out on many different benefits. Here are three of them which, we hope, will give you a clue as the success you can enjoy by embracing diversity in the workplace.

It shines a positive light on your business

Diversity in the workplace exists – and is a legal requirement – due to many reasons. However, principally, it’s because of people’s natural tendency towards prejudice. If people were accepting of differences, there would be no need for any laws, to put it bluntly. But unfortunately, that isn’t the case. So, by embracing diversity in your business, you are marking yourself out in a very positive way. There is a lot that you can do to move forward. Hire more women, for example, and put them into positions of power. You could look into adapting your building with commercial public access lifts for wheelchair users. You might want to think about having a better ethnic mix in your workforce. And, as we will see throughout this article, you will reap the rewards for doing so.

It produces a more creative environment

What makes a business creative? It’s not the business itself – it’s the people that work for it. And when you have a melting pot of people, cultures and backgrounds, it all makes for a much tastier creative stew. You’ll be a more innovative company if you can pull in the cream of the crop from all areas of life than you would with a team, say, of middle aged white men. That’s not to say that those people have nothing to offer – of course; they do. But a better mix will have a better effect, of that there is no doubt. You will also start to find you have a much wider pool of talent to choose from. Sadly, many people with different needs to the norm or from different backgrounds worry about fitting in. If they know that you embrace diversity, they will be much more confident about joining you.

It opens up new markets

No matter how good your marketing team is, they can only go on what the stats tell them. However, with different types of people on your team, there are many opportunities to expand your entire market. For example, if you hire someone of Chinese descent, what’s stopping them becoming a translator for you to bring your product to China? People from different backgrounds and cultures can help you expand your business into new territories. And not only territories but new industries, too. It would be a foolish business owner who wanted to pass up on all of that opportunity.

So there you have it: three key reasons why you should be embracing diversity. Yes, it’s the law. But the benefits are so clear that it is hard to believe that people sometimes moan about our diverse society. Embrace it, and reap the rewards!

2

Picture from Flickr

 

Discussion

There are no comments on this entry.

Add a Comment