Diversity in the workplace is arguably one of the most spoken about subjects and has become an everlasting challenge for HR, recruitment, and other departments. But why is it so challenging? And why is it so important? And more importantly, what exactly is diversity in the workplace?
“Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.” —Malcolm Forbes
Workplace diversity is a term which refers to a company which employs people regardless of certain characteristics, such as gender, age, religion, race, ethnicity, cultural background, sexual orientation, religion, languages, education, abilities, etc. Sounds simple, right?
It has been said that workplace diversity has an abundance of benefits which have a direct impact on a company’s bottom line. A few of these include reputation, better decision making, employee retention, creativity, employee engagement and financial performance. A study [i] has shown diverse companies enjoy 2.3 higher cash flow per employee...Cha-ching!
However, when there is a good, there tends to be bad and diversity in the workplace has also been proven to throw a few spanners in the works. These challenges are in the format of communication issues, too many opinions, the actual implementation of workplace diversity, hostility, and retaining bad talent purely to hit diversity figures. But surely the good outweighs the bad?
For the most part, the effects of cultural diversity in the workplace depend upon how well they are being managed by the organisational leaders. With the correct strategic planning, we can enhance the positive effects and reduce the negative effects of cultural diversity in the workplace and therefore make it less challenging.
“41% of all managers state “being too busy” as a reason to implement any kind of diversity and inclusion initiatives. [ii]’’
It’s quite clear that the statistic above is not how a business should operate with the intent of moving forward. Investment in addressing the issue is paramount, as after all we know the lack of diversity in the workplace is potentially detrimental to a company’s success.
At Executive Network Group, our continued research and investment in this field has led to the creation of a unique platform to help our clients overcome these challenges and outperform their competitors, in both the short and long term: the ENG 3D Ecosystem®.
The ENG 3D Ecosystem® is underpinned by 3 key pillars of recruitment expertise and you guessed it, one of those is diversity! To learn more about the ENG 3D Ecosystem® and to see how others have embedded our recruitment expertise in their wider business strategy, email us at 3D@executivenetworkgroup.co.uk.
[i] builtin.com