September 8, 2020
Dean Mathews, Business 2 Community
A “more woke society” is calling for an end to discrimination in the workplace. Today, businesses are facing immense pressure to build diverse teams at work, with several high-profile organizations compelled to divulge their diversity and inclusion statistics. Besides being the right thing to do, cultivating diverse teams in the workplace is more than just an HR fad or an effort to look good in the public eye. There is mounting evidence that diversity and inclusion leads to tangible and measurable positive outcomes.
The benefits of having diverse teams at work
Workplace diversity isn’t exactly a new concept. In fact, a number of scholars trace the first workplace inclusivity initiative way back to 1948 when President Truman signed Executive Order 9981 to desegregate the armed services.
That said, it’s not surprising that the benefits of diversity and inclusion in the workplace have been well studied and documented in different organizations across various industries.
Let’s look at some of the most recent numbers that speak volumes about the positive outcomes that are correlated or directly attributed to workplaces having diverse teams:
- Businesses with more diverse leadership teams report 19 percent more innovation revenue.
- According to Gartner, 75 percent of companies with diverse frontline decision-making units will exceed their financial goals while currently, more gender-diverse organizations outperform their more homogenous counterparts by an average of 50 percent.
- The same Gartner study reveals that employee performance in diverse organizations is 12 percent higher than employee performance in companies with no inclusivity efforts.
- Diversity and inclusivity improve employee engagement, which in turn increases retention by 19 percent and collaboration by 57 percent.
- Glassdoor’s Job & Hiring Trends report cites diversity as one of the “Big 9 Cultural Values” in a list of core values listed by top organizations to have the most significant impact on business outcomes.