People are diverse—whether in terms of gender, ethnicity, race, religion, or anything else. These uniquenesses make it possible for each individual to have a distinctive mindset, understanding, or perspective on any given matter. Businesses that are receptive to these differences in the workplace can benefit from diversity, which will drive change in the world.
EMBRACING DIVERSITY
According to the World Economic Forum, it has become a company's culture to accept a variety of abilities and experiences and makes inclusion the standard. In addition to positively impacting the financial bottom line (net income, net earnings, or net profit), embracing diversity also affects brand loyalty, employee loyalty, and the business's reputation and credibility. These are all crucial for sustainable business growth in today's global economy. Diversity is also one of the ten principles of the United Nations Global Compact's (UNGC) Article 6, "Labour" as a principled approach to establishing a sustainable business.
DIVERSE WORKPLACE IS GREATER
According to articles from the Harvard Business Review, a workplace that is open to diversity is more likely to be more innovative, which is accelerated by people from various backgrounds sharing knowledge, ideas, and understandings. This will lead to organizations being able to capture new markets, which is 70% more likely to occur with organizations that have diverse employees than with the organizations that lacks diversity. Additionally, businesses that foster diversity in their workplace have more engaged employees due to employees’ impressions that the everyone’s individuality and difference are being met by the organization. The HBR studies have shown that in diverse workplace environment, employees’ ability to innovate increases by 83% and responsiveness to changing customer needs increases by 31%. Moreover, their team collaboration is 42% higher than those in the organizations that are not diverse.
Take Johnson and Johnson as an example. The leading pharmaceutical firm can be seen as a workplace with diversity across all employee levels where women account for nearly half of the total workforce of over 130,000 people. Besides, the company is open to people of many nationalities, such as Asian, African American, Latino and others. The company received Inclusion Index Member in diversity best practices aspects in the top 10 and a Best Employer for Diversity 2021 from Forbes for three consecutive years. As a result, their employee retention rate increased by 27%, employee engagement rose by 43%, and customer loyalty stands at a remarkable 58%, which is a substantial measure of success for any company.
Diversity, therefore, not only positively affects employees but also increased efficiency for the business. Brands should encourage diversity to emphasize inclusion of everyone in the society, which would lead them to become more sustainable and resilience for the challenging business world.
#BRANDi #ThinkWithBRANDi #Sustainability #Diversity #DiversityAndInclusion #Workplace #business #management
Priding ourselves on sharing GREAT insights to society, we will continue to publish FREE content for ALL readers to uplift their knowledge and go from Good to GREAT!