Top 13 Reasons Why is Diversity Important? [2024] (2024)

13 Top reasons Why is Diversity and Inclusion empowerment important in Business and Society?

Diversity is important in today’s world because it helps us learn from each other and understand that everyone is unique and special in their own way. Diversity is important for several reasons, both in society and in various contexts such as the workplace, education, and communities. Here are some key reasons why diversity is important:

1. Enhances creativity and innovation: A diverse group of people can bring together a wide range of perspectives, ideas, and experiences, which can lead to more creative and innovative solutions to problems or challenges.
2. Better decision-making: Diverse teams are more likely to consider multiple viewpoints and approaches, which can lead to better decision-making and improved outcomes.
3. Encourages learning and personal growth: Interacting with people from diverse backgrounds can help individuals expand their knowledge and understanding of different cultures, values, and experiences, promoting personal growth and empathy.
4. Improved performance: Research has shown that diverse teams tend to outperform hom*ogeneous groups, as they can draw upon a broader range of skills, experiences, and perspectives.
5. Fosters inclusivity and social cohesion: Encouraging diversity and promoting an inclusive environment can help reduce discrimination and foster a sense of belonging for all members of society.
6. Enhances adaptability and resilience: Diverse groups can be more adaptable and resilient in the face of change, as they are more likely to have a range of skills and experiences that can help them respond to new challenges and opportunities.
7. Reflects and serves the needs of diverse populations: In a diverse society, organizations and institutions need to be able to understand and meet the needs of different groups. A diverse workforce or community is better equipped to do so, ensuring that products, services, and policies are more relevant and accessible to all.
8. Economic benefits: Diversity can contribute to economic growth by increasing the talent pool, fostering innovation, and promoting better decision-making within organizations.
9. Social justice and equity: Promoting diversity is an essential part of working towards a more just and equitable society, where all individuals have equal opportunities and are not held back by discrimination or prejudice.

Overall, diversity is important because it can lead to better outcomes in various aspects of life, fostering creativity, innovation, empathy, and social cohesion. It also helps create a more just and inclusive society, where everyone has an opportunity to succeed.

Just like how each person has their own interests, hobbies, and talents, people also have different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences. When we have diversity, we get to learn about and appreciate these differences, and we can also learn from each other.

For example, if you have a friend who is from a different country, you might get to learn about their language, food, and traditions, which can be really interesting! Or if you have a classmate who has a different skin color than you, you can learn about their experiences and how they see the world, which can help you see things from a different perspective.

Having diversity also helps us to be more accepting and inclusive of others, and to treat everyone with kindness and respect, no matter what they look like or where they come from. This is important because it helps create a better and more peaceful world where everyone can feel happy and included.

Diversity and inclusion is important because it brings lots of benefits. Diversity empowerment is evidently to have many benefits to a diverse workplace environment. However, working is not the only activity that we perform daily, we also have our social lives, our relationships in our community. In this article, we will learn:

• Why diversity is important to our society?
• Why is cultural diversity is important?
• Why is diversity important in school?

There are many reasons why diversity is important, before you start, it would be helpful to understand what is diversity?

Opening up Productivity power

Cultural diversity is very popular in western countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. New immigrants move into these countries every day and become part of the community. A diverse working environment welcomes hiring diversity, and logically when you are more open to more candidates regardless of their diversity, you have more choices. Diversity can be in many different diversity dimensions.

When people from different backgrounds, cultures, or experiences work together, they bring unique perspectives to the table. This can lead to more creative problem-solving, as well as increased innovation. Diverse teams generate more ideas. Research has shown that diverse teams make better decisions up to 87% of the time, compared to non-diverse teams. This is because they’re more likely to consider multiple viewpoints and challenge assumptions, ultimately leading to more informed choices.

When people feel like they’re part of an inclusive and diverse workplace, they’re generally happier and more engaged in their work. Happy employees are more productive and less likely to quit, which benefits the overall company. Happy employee, higher employee satisfaction!

And the best is diversity brings in more profits! Companies with greater gender and ethnic diversity are more likely to outperform their competitors. A study by McKinsey & Company found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were 21% more likely to have above-average profitability. For ethnic diversity, this number rose to 33%.

Every person is unique and the more someone is different than you, it is more likely their skills and knowledge will be different from you. An example would apply to the same careers too, a dentist who studied in Korea likely have a different experience than a dentist who studied in Cuba. Not only the knowledge is acquired and delivered differently, but the population of patients would also be different too.

With regulations aside, now, if a dental clinic is hiring for a new dentist in South Africa, and the clinic values diversity and inclusion. They now have two great dentists to choose from given the large pool. Mckinsey’s research shows a clear correlation between Gender & Ethic diversity to profitability.

The same example applies to an economist, data scientists, hairdressers, and many other professionals. The society is the summation of everyone, if society welcomes more diversity, it will have more variety and productivity.

Don’t miss the high-demand jobs from diverse and social impact valued employers

Reduce Discriminations and Racism

When you experience or see more of something, it will become normal. Putting biology aside, and have an example. When you first see a polar bear in Africa, you may find it strange because it is out of your typical experience. However, once you see more polar bears in Africa you will start to believe it is normal.

The same ideas apply to discriminations. If you are introduced to or become more aware of a different culture, race, gender in a diverse environment or society. You tend to become less discriminating because of your new world experience. The citizen in the society

More Colorful life experience

Our world view changes the way we experience our lives, as we describe above. When you interact, socialize, and work with people from different experiences, you can hear and learn from people. Not many people are fortunate enough to be able to travel the world, or work as an ex-pat in many different counties. Alternatively, we can learn from people coming from different backgrounds.

Building a more balanced world

Extremists usually have extreme views because they do not have the opportunity to understand the other sides’ arguments. Having diversity and inclusion will improve the balance of opinions, views in any setting. A well-balanced world will accept different opinions and reduce fears towards differences. A well-balanced world can also improve the average cultural competency in the society.

Inviting more investments

As discussed in the benefits of diversity in the workplace, diversity can add different segments to a community. For example, gender diversity will bring in investment and innovation from different gender; cultural diversity will bring in ideas and traditional wisdom from other cultures; age diversity will bring in experience and problem-solving methods from people with different historical experiences. All these ideas will bring attract different investment because people in a diverse environment understand the needs better.

World Wide Vision, localized Experience

Once you have a team that share the generalized world view, but the additional ability to provide localized point of views, you will have the advantages of both worlds.

Improve Employee Satisfaction

A diverse and inclusive team not only gives the companies additional experience and point of views, but it also helps and improve the openness and tolerance of different cultural habits in the same work environment.

Smooth Recruitment

A diverse and inclusive employer has good employer branding. Diversity and Inclusion are becoming organization strategies nowadays. When talents search for a job, many consider the level of diversity and inclusion an important factor, especially for BIPOC talent. A diverse and inclusive company has many advantages over companies that do not advertise their diversity and inclusion policies.

Higher Customer Engagement

Happy employees, happy customers. Once you have the advantages to hire great talents, and with a diverse team with open world view, you have a great team to execute your strategy and serve your customers.

More creativities and ideas

Continuing on the previous point, ideas and innovation will come with diverse investments. According to UNESCO, women comprise 28.8 percent of the people employed in Research and Development. The global breakdown is quite interesting as it shows that the countries performing better in this regard are located in Central Asia, where women comprise 48.1 percent of the R&D workforce. North America and Western Europe occupy the fifth place with women making up 32.3 percent of the people engaged in R&D. Sub-Saharan Africa follows with 31.3 percent. In East Asia and the Pacific, only 23.4 percent of people conducting research are women, while in South and West Asia they encompass 18.5 percent of researchers. Gender diversity brings in diverse views and ways of solving problems.

Improved Reputation

In an inclusive environment, visible minorities, indigenous, disability people are welcomed to participate just like everybody else. The groups face challenges that are unique to them, and that also means they have observations that others can’t experience.

so really, Why is Diversity Important?

We talked about all the benefits and how diversity can impact our society. Let’s talk about how you are impacting others. Think of a time that you are left out and the awful feeling; on the flip side think about a time where you belong, the excitment that you have in a group?

The right to be able to enjoy the excitment that you have, no matter where you go or who you are with, is the reason we want a diverse and inclusive environment.

Your organization may need someone to champion this important work, a Chief Diversity Officer or leader is often assigned to lead such work. Sometimes, the Chief Diversity Officers will work with diversity consultants to improve the states and maturity of diversity in the workplace.

• Diversity Employers in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.
• Diversity Employers in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.
• Diversity Employers in the bottom quartile both for gender and for ethnicity and race are statistically less likely to achieve above-average financial returns than the average companies in the data set (that is, bottom-quartile companies are lagging rather than merely not leading).
• Racial and ethnic diversity has a stronger impact on financial performance in the United States than gender diversity, perhaps because earlier efforts to increase women’s representation in the top levels of business have already yielded positive results.
• While certain industries perform better on gender diversity and other industries on ethnic and racial diversity, no industry or company is in the top quartile on both dimensions.
• The unequal performance of companies in the same industry and the same country implies that diversity is a competitive differentiator shifting market share toward more diverse companies.

Diversity & Inclusion Increases Profitability

Deloittealso thinks that Diversity can be a benefit because diversity also brings adiversity of thinkingin aDiverse Work Environment. The different thinking from groups of employees coming from a diversity of backgrounds can reduce risks by 30% while improving innovation by 20%. The fact is that if you want to build teams or organizations capable of innovating, you need diversity. Diversity enhances creativity. It encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. Diversity can improve the bottom line of companies, improve employer branding, and lead to unfettered discoveries and breakthrough innovations. Even simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think. This is not just wishful thinking: it is the conclusion I draw from decades of research from organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and demographers.

A Diverse workforce Improves Customer Experiences

TheDiversity.Social Diversity and Inclusion Best Practiceis to intentionally structure your companies based on your target customers. You can’t focus on your customers if you don’t understand how they think. Having a diversity of thinking allows your team to understand and design better customer experience, which leads to better customer satisfaction. Better customer services. A diverse and inclusive workforce can improve customer services. As a matter of fact, a diverse workforce will often mean diverse expertise, talent, experience and capabilities in the employees. If a manager understands the intricacies and complexity of how to manage diversity effectively, he will be able to put the right person into the correct position, by minimizing his weaknesses while enhancing the particular employee’s strength. From this perspective, a diverse workforce enables a manager to choose the correct candidate for a particular position in the organization. For example, someone with a cheering personality and has the ability to build rapport fast with customers can be sent to the customer services department.

• Teams with a high deviation from the “standard” perspective (in other words, cognitive diversity) are more likely to solve a problem than non-diverse teams, according to an experiment run by theHarvard Business Review.
• In 2018, theBank of Englandlaunched its first-ever internal cognitive diversity survey to find out how the workforce feels about inclusion and its impact on problem-solving/performance. Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) indicated lower ratings, showing the way forward.
• ADeloittereport found that cognitively and demographically diverse teams can enhance innovation by 20% and identify/reduce risks by up to 30%.
• Gartnerpredicts that through 2022, 75% of organizations that boast of a diverse and inclusive culture among frontline decision-makers will exceed their financial targets.
• In 2019, IBM announced its effort to embraceneurodiversityby hiring high-functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The company stated that “Neurodiverse people approach problems differently and have to think harder to get around what the rest of us accept.”

Diversity in the workplace brings in new markets

There is a huge business case for diversity. You will be making products for people you don’t understand, you don’t interact with. If you don’t have an inclusive, diverse workforce, it makes you myopic.

Renee James

Minority Market. Women and LGBT+ consumers care and value companies that value Diversity and Inclusion. They know for a fact that these company knows of their existence and care enough to think of them. Some minority consumer groups also wield their influence proactively. The so-called “pink pound” refers to the influence of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) consumers. The Pink Pound consumer will become a major consumer segment as women become more independent with an increasing purchasing power.

Workplace Diversity enhances Reputations

Anotherbusiness benefit of Diversity and Inclusionis aboutBrand and Reputation enhancement.Diversity in the workplaceis vital for employees because it manifests itself in building a great reputation for the company, leading to increased profitability and opportunities for workers. Workplace diversity is important within the organization as well as outside. Business reputations flourish when companies demonstrate their commitment to diversity through aggressive outreach and recruiting efforts. An organization known for its ethics, fair employment practices and appreciation for diverse talent is better able to attract a wider pool of qualified applicants. Other advantages include loyalty from customers who choose to do business only with companies whose business practices are socially responsible.

It’s just common sense…when you put individuals with different worldviews together,you’re going to get a wide variety of ideas for solving problems or finding new, more efficient ways of doing things.

However, beyond the “common sense” factor, research backs this concept up.

One McKinseystudyfound that “Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.”

Think about what this could mean for your business.

Why is Diversity Good & Important?

Diversity is good, especially good with tangible benefits. There are manybenefits of Diversity in the workplace. With the above, it further translates the benefit to tangible ones:

Having a diverse workplace allows organizations to more effectively market, better serve and communicate to consumer groups from different cultures, races and religious backgrounds, which in turn may lead to increased sales and profits and access to a more diverse market. Mckinsey’s research shows that more gender diversity helps the performance of the company in general.

Productivity and innovation.

Diversity widens viewpoints and takes different ideas and perspectives into account. This can translate into creating richer solutions, obtaining better results and maximizing productivity, innovation and creativity.

Employee attraction and retention.

Recruiting from a diverse pool of candidates increases an employer’s chances of finding the best person for the job. Once onboard, employees that feel valued and respected and that are part of an inclusive work environment are less likely to leave. Doing both of these successfully can help reduce expenses related to recruitment and retention.

Another benefit of diversity and inclusion is it can lead to you explore the unknowns. A diverse workplace offers more than exposure to employees from different cultures and backgrounds. Employees learn from co-workers whose work styles vary and whose attitudes about work varies from their own. This is particularly true for employees within multigenerational work environments, as well as those who work in environments that are accessible to those with disabilities.

Diversity & Inclusion Improves Employee Engagement in the Workplace

Once you have a diverse workforce with an inclusive culture, your organization’s culture will change without you even knowing it. Your team from top to the bottom will interact with employees from different backgrounds, world views, or different life stages. And your employees will talk, they talk to each other, they work with each other. Your employees from diverse groups will have a better awareness of others’ world views.

A welcoming culture will increase engagement from employees because even your minority diverse employee will feel included in an inclusive workforce.

Prepare and Manage Risks with Diversity and Inclusion

Internally, being diverse and having a proper Diversity and Inclusion policy will protect the company from unexpected risks.

Yet another benefit and business case for diversity is the ability to operate effectively as well as efficiently in a global context. The fact that the entire world is a colourful depiction of diversity. Thus, to go global, a diverse workforce is some sort a basic requirement. If a business leader is serious about their business, having a diversity valued workplace can prepare an organization to go global and expand the business.

I am certain there are more benefits for abusiness case for Diversity and Inclusion, and the list of benefits will grow as companies measure and show ROI of it.

In the future, companies won’t have a choice. Why not start Diversity now?

Baby boomers are retiring, and the birth rate is dropping. The talent pool will be changing fast, and soon. If we want to continue to attract the best talent, we need to be reflective of the talent in the specific market and offer a work environment that employees want to be a part of.

If you know that diversity will be a key to success in 5 or 10 years, is it wise to start already?

In my next article, I will write about how to recruit for a diverse workplace fordiverse staffing, hiring, and building a diverse workplaceenvironment.

How does diversity help the workplace?

Reduce employee turnover

Fun facts:

• A Glassdoorsurveyfound that “57% of people think their company should be doing more to increase diversity among its workforce”
• A Deloitte University studyreportsthat “83% of millennials are actively engaged when they believe their organization fosters an inclusive culture, compared to only 60% of millennials who are actively engaged when their organization does not foster an inclusive culture.”

As millennials make up a sizableportion(two-fifths) of the working-age population, they have a massive influence on the ways that companies (who want to thrive) need to think about doing business.

Therefore, it stands to reason that smart businesses need to purposely seek to fill their ranks with diverse employees if they want to compete in the marketplace both now and in the future.

Company culture

Research published by the Harvard Business Review reported that“…people like to fit in, so they are cautious about sticking their necks out. When we have a strong, hom*ogenous culture, we stifle the natural cognitive diversity in groups through the pressure to conform.”

Therefore, diversity in the workplace can lead to creativity in resolving problems as well as creating new products and services.

In fact, astudyfound that diverse teams“were [sic] shown to make decisions faster than individualworkers, andbenefitted from a 60 per cent improvement on decision- making.”

When you create a culture of acceptance,each individualis empowered to bring everything they’ve got to work…nobody is afraid that their point of view will be dismissed so they can each confidently share their ideas with the team.

Compete globally

Adiverse teamcan help you compete in the global marketplace.And diversity jobs are one of the hottest jobs in the market, and the top leaders in any diversity function is usually the Chief Diversity Officer.

If you have employees who speak more than one language and/or understand otherculturesyou have an advantage over companies with a hom*ogenous workforce.

The co-founder and CEO of Wattpad, Allen Lau, once shared how diversifying their workforce helped the company to grow quickly. He said, “In the early days of our business, my co-founder Ivan and I searched for a way to kick start our audience growth. It was painfully slow until we made the decision to support additional languages on our app. Luckily, we had worked with people who lived in these countries who could provide the insight we needed to strengthen our product.”

Having adiverse teamof individuals with a variety of different cultural backgrounds can help you secure your place in the global marketplace.More and more potential employees are focused on diversity as a metric for deciding to work with a company.

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