5 Reasons Smart Leaders Prioritize Diversity
The case for workplace diversity and inclusion goes far beyond social responsibility or meeting prescribed compliance standards. Smart leaders know that creating an inclusive workplace culture leads to major competitive advantages.
Would your workplace benefit from diversity and inclusion training?
"When we listen and celebrate what is both common and different, we become a wiser, more inclusive, and better organization.”
– Pat Wadors, Head of HR at LinkedIn
When you select employees from the largest and most diverse set of candidates, you improve the odds of finding the best and the brightest people available. And when your organization is known as respectful and inclusive, you naturally attracts skilled, talented people who are evaluating companies and job offers.
Actively fostering diversity and inclusion not only attracts great new hires... It also makes it easier to retain them over the long term.
It is a beneficial hiring cycle. Embracing diversity increases the talent pool for new hires and having a diverse, inclusive workplace culture makes your company more attractive to job seekers.
To best serve the market, you need to "employ the market". We live in a global economy. Our customers come from increasingly diverse backgrounds. A diverse work force offers insights, experiences, and perspectives into the needs of diverse customers.
How can you improve your hiring practices?
How To Reduce Unconscious Bias In Your Hiring Practices is for anyone with hiring and talent acquisition responsibilities, including HR professionals, business leaders, managers, and supervisors. It includes practical guides, checklists, and templates to help develop fair and equitable processes, and reduce unconscious bias in your hiring practices.
In a competitive market, people make choices based on many factors. One of the most important factors is how they feel about your brand.
When you pro-actively employ a diverse workforce, you demonstrate that your company is socially responsible and supportive of people from diverse backgrounds.
This enhances your brand image. It helps form stronger bonds with existing customers and prospects. And it broadens the market for your goods and services.
By adding the voices of individuals from different backgrounds, you broaden the range of ideas and perspectives in your workplace.
When you create policies and practices to ensure that each voice is equally heard and respected, you free your brand from the shackles of Groupthink.
Having more diverse voices in the room challenges everyone to think outside the box.and challenges people to think outside the box. As a result, diverse teams are likely to come up with more creative ideas and ways of solving problems.
Research tells us that employees are more productive when they feel safe, respected, and valued. Consequently, fostering a respectful, inclusive workplace culture can lower absenteeism and turnover.
And happier, more engaged workers are naturally more productive. So ultimately, diversity and inclusion are good for the bottom line.
Smart leaders recognize that education plays an important role in workplace culture.
The Respectful Workplace is an online training course that explores both acceptable and unacceptable workplace attitudes and behaviours. Participants gain practical insights into ways to build and support a more inclusive workplace environment where every voice is equally heard and respected.