What are the benefits of diversity and inclusion in the workplace? There are several important prerequisites that needs to be in place in order to succeed with diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Of uttermost importance is to clarify the business reasons, what the benefits are for the organization and the workplace, to focus on diversity and inclusion.
All organizations must live up to the discrimination legislations in the countries/regions in which they operate, as well as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Besides that – what are the business reasons for diversity and inclusion for your organization?
Business reasons for diversity and inclusion can for example be about being an attractive employer. An employer that attracts, recruits, retains and develops diverse competence in the workforce, as well as takes advantage of individuals’ differences in order to become an even more successful company. Business reasons can also be to be better at understanding and meeting the needs of customers, clients, users, patients and residents, thanks to the diversity of the workforce and the inclusive organizational culture.
What are your organization’s business reasons for diversity and inclusion? The starting point are your business goals. How can a commitment to diversity and inclusion contribute to positive development of your business? How can it be a means to make the organization more effective at achieving its business goals, to do better business and attract the right competence?
The business reasons can often be found in the following five areas:
- Workforce, competence, skill supply – the organization can improve its ability to attract, recruit, develop and retain diverse and business critical competence.
- Creativity, innovation, development – diversity and inclusion can lead to increased creativity, and the organization can utilize the employees different perspectives to develop the operations.
- Performance, engagement, productivity – according to research, there is a relationship between inclusion and increased employee engagement, as well as increased productivity when the organization takes advantage of employees’ different perspectives to develop their operations.
- Customers, residents, users, clients, patients – the organization improves its ability to understand and meet the needs, requests and demands for different products and services. The organization reaches and sells to larger shares of the market/society, and reaches new markets/parts of society. The organization communicates better/more effectively with a larger part of the market/society.
- Society, owners, stakeholders, sustainability, etc. – the organization increases its credibility, improves its image, takes social responsibility, meets shareholders’ demands of initiatives on gender equality, diversity and inclusion, etc.
Click the link to read a compilation from Catalyst of over 70 research studies on the benefits of diversity and inclusion.