Take a good look around your workplace. What is the demographic breakdown? Does it reflect the population in your city or town? Or is something missing?
There’s a renewed focus and emphasis on creating a diverse and inclusive workforce, an important goal that might feel impossible to reach but can be accomplished with a little preparation and reconsideration of how employees are hired.
First, what is an inclusive and diverse workplace? At its essence, it means hiring a variety of people with different backgrounds and experiences to reflect better the world in which you live and work.
It doesn’t just make good social sense. There’s an economic benefit for companies, too: Research indicates companies with a diverse staff outperform their competitors, have better employee retention and reviews and have better profits than ones that ignore these issues.
Here’s what an inclusive and diverse workforce can mean for your company:
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A variety of voices can prevent embarrassing messaging.
We’ve all seen companies post cheeky messages on social media only to pull them down a short time later due to backlash. If all the decision-makers in a room look the same, differing views, opinions and perspectives don’t exist, and these embarrassing mistakes are more likely to happen. People who have different experiences can raise their hands and draw attention to different definitions or meanings of words and phrases that might be well-intentioned but could hurt the efforts in the long run. By having more women and people of color in the decision-making process and listening to their feedback without charging ahead and disregarding other thoughts, companies can make better impressions with their potential clients, customers, and future employees.
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Increase your pool of talent and skills.
People from different backgrounds will come to your workplace with a variety of work and personal experiences. That means new perspectives on problem-solving, ways of being efficient, and methods for addressing the same task. Everyone has something to teach and something to learn. Sharing this information and perspective helps everyone do their jobs better.
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Improved innovation.
Research suggests companies with broad and deep inclusion efforts are more likely to be innovative, keeping them ahead of the curve when it comes to competition. These companies become leaders in their market, regardless of what their market is, because they have more voices offering ideas and methods for problem-solving, plus they’re more aware of needs in various communities. The more diverse the voices speaking, the more ideas will come forth, bringing with them new opportunities for your company to grow and push forward.
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Expanded candidate pool.
New hires, and experienced workers alike are starting to do more research on companies before applying for jobs. Many will be looking at your company’s demographics before deciding whether they want to give you a second thought. Having a less inclusive workforce could mean losing out on brilliant, creative minds that can help make your company better — if your competitor is better at representing your community, that means you lose twice.
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Your current employees will be happier.
No one likes to feel like the odd person out. If your workplace starts to open its doors more actively to a diverse candidate pool and hire more people of color and from different backgrounds, morale will improve, which means reduced employee turnover, more institutional knowledge is retained, better productivity from workers who feel valued, and included. Happy employees are also more likely to say good things about their place of work to their friends, thereby encouraging more people to apply and can also result in better online reviews, bringing in more diverse applicants who know this is a welcoming environment.
In short, there’s no downside to opening your doors to a more diverse and inclusive workforce. It benefits every aspect of your business to be more welcoming in addition to being the right thing to do.
If you need help finding more diverse candidates to get the ball rolling, contact Debbie’s Staffing. We have a deep database of people ready and eager to get to work, and we can help you find job candidates with just the right skills to join your team right away. Call Debbie’s Staffing today, and let’s get to work!