Diversity & Inclusion is a trend that we notice in society, cinema, politics, culture, and learning. More and more progressive companies are improving diversity in recruitment in diversity hiring platforms. This agenda in their development strategy digitizes the results and publishes open reports on indicators of diversity and inclusiveness. In this article, we understand what a D&I culture gives businesses, what inclusive leadership is, and how companies can benefit from financial and HR indicators.
Giant companies prioritize Diversity Inclusion programs. Every year, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and others make public reports on diversity and inclusion.
The theme of diversity is everywhere: in movies, cartoons, politics, culture, education, but D&I is not just a trend, but a valuable resource for company development. Diversity is beneficial, no matter how cynical it may sound.
A team of people of different genders, ages, nationalities, cultures, levels of education and opportunities work more efficiently. But diversity will not be useful without inclusion – creating an environment in the company where employees feel comfortable and do not face harassment and discrimination. Diversity works when the company has a strong corporate culture, where everyone can express and realize themselves, where there are no prejudices and stereotypes. Therefore, the concepts of Diversity & Inclusion are considered as a whole.
D & I is not just a trend
What if all this passes soon? Of course, what is new and popular may be temporary. But the effectiveness of a culture of diversity has already been confirmed by research. In addition, gender equality and the promotion of sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all are targets that are part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Sustainable development is actions that should preserve resources for the opportunities and needs of future generations while meeting the needs of the present. Read more about sustainable development on the practice page.
How to implement D & I in a company?
The culture of D & I is a challenge for the leader. How do companies usually hire employees? We want a dream team, but we are recruiting the “right” ones. We recruited “devotees”, but we ask how with the “smart”. “Necessary” and “devotees” are easier to recruit than “smart” and “different”, which create serious personal problems. The manager has to put up with diversity, taking into account different points of view. It takes willpower to work with such a team and see diversity as a resource for the team.
First of all, we need to move away from the habit of recruiting employees “in our image and likeness.” It’s a popular trap when we hire people who think the same way, who are like us. It’s nice to communicate with like-minded people, but then the variability of opinions disappears because there is no cognitive diversity in the team.
Without cognitive diversity, a polarized opinion will never gain support, although it may turn out to be correct. Without different points of view, it is more difficult for a team to respond to adaptive challenges. Only cross-disciplinary interaction and cross-disciplinary thinking will allow us to find answers where we were not even looking for them because of the same paradigm.
When drafting a D & I policy, avoid these typical blunders.
- Consider D&I as an HR function. The biggest blunder is believing that D&I is only the job of HR, according to Bach. He claims that “D & I that live in HR will typically die in HR.”
- Making policies visible on paper. Employees can be irritated by policies that look good on paper but aren’t implemented in the workplace, according to Nannina Angioni, a labor and employment attorney and partner at Kaedian LLP. She claims that “employees can smell lip service from a mile away.” “HR teams must have a regular discussion with company leadership about a program’s core elements and how they plan to put it into practice in the workplace,” says one expert.
- Applying a one-size-fits-all method. It’s likely to fail if an HR team member copies and pastes a D&I software from the internet or modifies one received from another HR friend or a previous workplace, according to Angioni. “Every work atmosphere is different,” she explains. “Demographics, work connections, collaboration levels, and operational functions will differ among employees. Companies should tailor the program to the specific needs of their employees.”
- Prioritizing diversity or inclusion. According to Vina Leite, chief people officer at tech firm The Trade Desk, firms often make the mistake of focusing just on diversity and neglecting inclusion. If team members do not feel respected as members of the team, diversity will be meaningless.
- One demographic at a time. According to Sharon E. Jones, CEO of the consulting firm Jones Diversity, Inc., focusing just on one demographic group in the workplace, such as women or racial and ethnic minorities, is a common error.
