In today's modern world, diversity and inclusion are terms that shouldn’t be used for mere PR movements. As the world continues to change and evolve, we are becoming more conscious of not only our commonality but, our differences as well. These include our history, backgrounds, experiences, culture, race and ethnicity.

To guarantee that every individual leads a fair and comfortable life, the issue of diversity and inclusion is extremely important, especially in the workplace. While it’s every person's responsibility to educate themselves in this area, HR professionals and leaders need to be well informed in the areas of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Before we go deeper into dissecting how this topic impacts the workplace, it’s worth knowing what exactly it means.

What is diversity?

Diversity is defined as traits and characteristics that make a person unique. Put simply, workplace diversity defines the act of a company hiring a diverse group of people. Diversity covers a wide range of unique traits, both visible and invisible, which include race, ethnicity, religion, socio-economic status, age, gender, and sexual orientation, just to mention a few.

What is inclusion?

Workplace inclusion on the other end defines practices, behaviors, and social norms that include people with unique traits and characteristics in the workplace. An inclusive workplace boasts people with different backgrounds, talents, and experiences to create a dynamic and tolerant environment.

Why is D&I important?

Admittedly, in the past years, societies haven’t been as diverse and inclusive; disproportionately impacting those less privileged. The lack of workplace diversity and inclusion (and not just in the workplace), has impacted communities both financially and socially.

For example, according to the Harvard Business Review, Black people represent 12% of the U.S. workforce, yet only represent 8% of managers and 3.8% of CEOS. This further drives and increase in the racial wage gap, where Black men make $0.87 for every $1.00 a White man makes.

Workplace inclusion doesn't only mean addressing the unemployment gap amongst different social or ethnic groups, it also helps to create a deeper understanding of what each social group experiences. However, D&I executed with proper strategies comes with a wide selection of benefits. These include; 

Cultural Bridging

In 2017 in London, Unilever faced backlash after its Dove commercial included a black woman removing her top to reveal a white woman. This 3-second video caused a Public Relations (PR) disaster for the brand. However, this is just one of the many controversies in brand marketing and advertising.

According to experts, many companies make these "PR blunders" due to the lack of diversity and inclusion at the top level and managerial positions. A diverse managerial team in areas such as PR and Marketing can easily capture and remedy these discriminatory moments, before they enter the mainstream. 

However, these are not the only shortcomings experienced by companies. In other times, brands are unable to appeal to certain groups as they fail to create campaigns that relate to the said individuals. On the other hand, companies such as Nike, which excel in this area, have enjoyed a steady rise in popularity and receptiveness towards their brand and products from a diverse audience.

Human Rights and Fair Treatment

With quite an infamous global history of discrimination, many laws and regulations, including the UN framework on international human rights, call for equal treatment of all people regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, or other distinct differences. Therefore, workplaces are put at both a moral and legal obligation to meet these laws.

Better Perspective

Many diverse companies tend to see steadier growth, profitability, and even popularity compared to those who are not. After all, with a diverse team from different backgrounds, at different levels of the company, brings a blend of varying perspectives. This leads to increase creativity and innovation. No matter the niche of the business, this always comes with an advantage.

Better Problem Solving and Decision Making

Increased innovation and creativity means that the problem-solving and decision-making spectrum widens. In addition to this, companies can circumvent issues such as producing discriminatory ads or even focusing on campaigns that would do the brand good.

Better Brand Receptiveness

At the end of the day, companies that display and truly invest in diversity enjoy better receptiveness and more popularity from the public. With people feeling that they are represented within a brand, they are more likely to trust it.

Diversity & inclusion workplace benefits

According to a 2018 survey conducted by Forbes and Statista, the Enterprise giant SAP topped the list for the best employer in diversity. Tech giants such as Google, IBM, and Uber saw a significant decline in the rankings. In another 2018 survey conducted by the National Urban League, fewer than 3% of tech workers identified as black at tech companies such as Uber, Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

At SAP, the top position as a D&I employer was not achieved through "online" campaigns but actual groundwork. The company employs 22.6% of women in managerial positions globally and aims to reach 30% by 2022 – still a steep gender parity but significant progress towards D&I. Furthermore, SAP ranks in the top 25% of companies with 10000+ employees for diversity score. Another survey by Josh Bersin found the following national scale results when it comes to workplace diversity and inclusion;

• Only 6.6% of all Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs

• Companies such as SAP with high female employment rates have seen higher returns

• 69% of executives believe D&I to be amongst the important issue

• 70% of companies with more diverse managerial positions exhibit higher profits whilst those with racial and ethnic diversity perform at a higher level by up to 35% more

Yet, there are still clear issues with diversity and inclusion in the workplace as evident in the statistics. According to the survey;

• Up to 50% of black candidates are less likely to receive call backs compared to their white counterparts

• 41% of managers state "being too busy" as the main reason why they don't implement D&I initiatives

• Nearly 40% of people believe there are double standards when hiring women

Diversity & inclusion best practices

Nevertheless, according to HR practitioners, implementing a series of actionable practices can ensure better diversity and inclusion in the workplace. According to SAP's head of people sustainability and chief diversity and inclusion officer, D&I should be beyond campaigns and programming but rather focus on actual groundwork.

Employers should not only focus on launching mentorship programs, conscious bias training, or creating events for black history month, companies should focus on the entire company and people culture - the best way is to focus on outcomes rather than activity. Some of these key practices include;

• Fair treatment

• Providing equal access to opportunities

• Focusing on the brand's mission

• Focusing on innovation and creativity

• Organizational responsiveness, flexibility, and agility

• D&I representation at all levels of the company (internally and externally)

• Leadership involvement at all levels

• Hiring a D&I team

• Assigning an executive to steer the D&I team

Diversity & inclusion initiatives and strategies you can implement

According to Judith Williams, companies can integrate their diversity and inclusion strategies into daily affairs. Some of the best strategies companies can implement include;

• Sharing actual required skills (e.g. programming) in marginalized or minority groups (for example, HBCU universities) to allow graduates to leverage career opportunities at the companies with the skills they learn

• Encouraging honest and consequence-free discussions between workers and leaders – allowing the leaders to identify and help the under-recognized top performers

• Capturing promotion ratios for different groups – this can be gender-based, racial based, etc.,  but of course, the focus should be performance-based and not just for the numbers

• Clearly tracking promotion rates amongst all groups

• Holding sensitivity and awareness training

• Organizing D&I workshops

• Setting up pre-employment training

• Implementing useful conflict resolution education and programs

• Creating employee networking groups

But most importantly, it goes back to the basics – the best D&I practice is to, of course, be diverse and inclusive in the hiring process too.

Recap and Key Takeaways

As evident with other organizational issues, companies will always experience barriers when trying to implement D&I programs. Yet, the smart thing to do is to identify possible barriers and try to mitigate them as much (and as early) as possible. In tackling diversity and inclusion issues in the workplace, there will be barriers — especially for larger corporations.

According to research conducted by Forbes, many companies experience four common barriers. These include middle management bureaucracy, lack of budget or funds, economical issues affecting the organization, and even lack of cultural/experiential understanding. In these cases, middle management at times, fail in the proper implementation of D&I programs.

In other cases, a lack of funds or minimal prioritization may hinder the implementation of diversity and inclusion programs. Sometimes, the company may be too overwhelmed or too focused on profits and returns rather than enriching their employee population or tackling the lack of diversity and inclusion.

In other serious cases, companies may still lack adequate cultural or experiential understanding. While they may try to tackle the statistics side, it takes more than just numbers to truly address the issues of D&I. Nevertheless, the recommended practices and strategies still prove that there are ways to tackle serious issues of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Conclusion

Beyond company profitability and popularity, a focus on diversity and inclusion in the workplace is still a moral obligation. After all, this is the only way companies can ensure fair treatment and equal opportunities for all. Lack of D&I in the workplace goes beyond work. These issues have significantly impacted minority groups and communities both socially and financially.

Over years, there have been higher statistics of crime and abuse in marginalized and minority groups associated with unemployment. Therefore, inclusivity in the workplace can help reduce these rates as people begin to prosper economically. On the business side, diversity and inclusion in the workplace has proven over and over again to not only enhance creativity and innovation but also improves the brand's popularity and profit returns.