Do You Believe You Need Diversity?

Not only do you need diversity, you should want diversity. The challenge with many organizations is that diversity is treated like a PR initiative or a corporate mandate to avoid consumer backlash. It is so much more than that. You must first understand and embrace the need for diversity before you’ll be able to reap the benefits of properly integrating diversity & inclusion practices into the corporate culture.

One of the things that I love about how millennials operate is that they need to understand “why” they are doing something. When you take the time to understand “why” you are doing “what” you are doing the “how” becomes a lot easier and more meaningful. Many companies and organizations are suffering with “how” they employ effective diversity and inclusion practices because they haven’t truly embraced the need for diversity.

Diversity in many organizations actually has a negative connotation because it is viewed as something that they have to do. It’s often perceived as additional work that has to be done in an effort to avoid discrimination accusations and to help enhance the company image.

The company’s that embrace the need for diversity understand the benefits of diversity.

These company’s are the one’s that tend to do a much better job with how they integrate diversity and inclusion into the corporate culture. It’s the organizations that treat diversity as a transactional corporate mandate that suffer the biggest loss. What does it truly profit a company to hire valuable diverse talent and not empower that talent with a voice or a seat at the table? This pattern of dysfunction is actually more damaging to companies than they may realize. It comes across as even more discriminatory to hire diverse talent and then minimize or suppress their value. That’s where the “inclusion” piece of Diversity & Inclusion comes in folks.

Diversity offers many benefits to an organization. Some of those benefits include but are not limited to improved innovation, recruiting tool for top talent, stronger morale, increased productivity and greater creativity.

In order for organizations to reap the benefits of diversity, you first have to believe in and embrace the need for diversity. If you don’t understand the “why” behind diversity, you will never get the “how” right.

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/strategy/believe-need-diversity-0596950?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=believe-need-diversity