People spend a bigger portion of their lives in the workplace. A healthy working environment not only promotes efficiency but also helps broaden the scope of an organization. Diversity in the workplace includes creating an inclusive environment that acknowledges individual differences and enables employees to achieve their full potential. This in turn allows a business to reach its full potential. An organization that values the difference between its employees can create a positive impact on other employees, productivity, and customer experience. There are multiple tangible benefits of having a balance in terms of diversity. Maintaining a good diversity ratio will help an organization in numerous tangible ways.
What is the diversity ratio?
Any diversity ratio is the measure of the employees found in minority to the total strength of the organization. Diversity ratio can be based on gender, ethnicity, age, etc. The diversity ratio gives valuable insight into the broadness of the perspectives an organization receives.
What are the few types of workplace diversity? • Gender – This is the most common parameter to measure diversity ratio as workplaces have traditionally been male-dominated. Over time, things have changed but women sometimes face discrimination in the workplace till this point. • Religion – Religious beliefs, prayer schedules, and attires of various religions must be respected to establish religious diversity. • Generation – Organizations have a multi-generational workforce that includes Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Diversity will mean a mix of experience and innovation. • Race and ethnicity – People from various races and ethnic backgrounds must be given equal opportunities to have racial and ethnic diversity.
What are the 12 reasons to maintain diversity in an organization?
• Boosts employee engagement – When any organization has a good diversity ratio, different ideas are constantly brought to the table. This encourages employees to express themselves when the opportunity arises. They feel that their views will be heard and valued, and hence they engage actively in the workplace environment.
• Increases employee confidence – An organization that embraces and celebrates the different individuals in it has employees that feel more accepted and valued in the workplace. These feelings boost their morale and confidence to talk about what is on their mind and build better relationships with their colleagues.
• Raises productive performance – As mentioned in the previous point, workplace diversity increases the morale of employees. When an individual has high morale, they are motivated to complete their tasks on time. This increases the overall efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity of the company.
• Increases knowledge and skills – When employees have a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, and skills, an organization will benefit from that large talent pool having a wide spectrum of creativity and perspectives. For instance, older employees have experience and younger employees have new ideas. Combining these two can lead to better results.
• Foster innovation and creativity – An organization is set apart from others because of its creativity. Diverse groups of people will have individually unique ideas. When all these ideas get heard and combined, the output will be something more innovative than an organization with less diversity.
• Faster problem-solving – A team that shares similar backgrounds, age, or gender has certain biases which will cause them to think in one direction. Diversity encourages various directions that will lead to the end goal; hence a diverse team can choose a path that is the most efficient. This will allow faster problem-solving.
• Easier recruitment – A diverse workforce will attract a similar crowd into an organization, hence recruiting new people while maintaining the diversity ratio will be much easier. This will also ensure that the company shows a steady performance over the years because of the broad range of its talent pool.
• Understand customers better – Irrespective of the diversity ratio in the workplace, the diversity ratio of your client base will be high. When a company has a workforce that comes from various backgrounds, there will always be an employee who can connect to a customer from a similar background and understand their qualms better than others.
• Reduce employee turnover – Diversity in the workplace has often been linked to employee retention. Diversity indicates an environment of mutual respect. When employees feel supported and valued at their workplace, they are happier and more satisfied and prefer to stay in the same company for a long time.
• Raise profits – The financial performance of an organization becomes better when the organization is more inclusive. This is because of better productivity levels, higher confidence among employees, and general job satisfaction which helps individuals work with sincerity and at their peak efficiency.
• Boosts reputation – Having a diverse workforce indicates that your company is open-minded and welcoming to ideas from all over the world. Diversity is considered a good business practice. This attracts potential customers and employees alike. It makes them feel at ease while working with the organization and gives it an edge over its competitors.
• Reduce conflicts – Conflicts are inevitable in the workplace. However, having mutual respect can reduce the likelihood of many conflicts and unite employees with a common purpose. Developing cultural awareness and practicing open communication comes more naturally to employees who are exposed to ideas and values different from them. Diversity in the workplace promotes this and helps reduce a lot of conflicts.
Thus, as the world becomes increasingly interconnected, interactions among different cultures have increased. The workplace must reflect this diversity to understand the needs of its customers and employees better. A diverse workplace reaps great rewards as the employees as well as customers have an overall positive experience which motivates them to support the company in its endeavors. Having a good diversity ratio also attracts diverse people into the organization, adding fresh ideas to the board and causing the company to rise steadily amongst its competitors.