Author: Future Manager Research Center

When a company wants to change and innovate, increasing diversity represents a significant challenge for many businesses.

On the other side the number of diverse teams in all industries is rising because in a diverse group, every member will have a specific task, yet all of them work towards the same goal and together are able to reach great results thanks to their different backgrounds .

 But what is workplace diversity?

When people think of diversity, they usually think of race, age or gender. However, diversity is a much wider and inclusive notion.

There are two main classifications of diversity:

• Inherent diversity: demographic characteristics like race, gender, and age.
• Acquired diversity: such as education, skills and values.

Workplace diversity is defined as understanding, accepting, and valuing differences between people indifferently from their race, gender, age, religion, disability, as well as skill set, experiences, and knowledge.

Diversity within an organization is about promoting an inclusive workforce – embracing employees of different backgrounds, ethnicities and cultural beliefs.

Recruiting diversity is looking for people from different backgrounds and making the application process accessible to all that embrace different perspectives, ideologies, and beliefs in order to bring different ideas and opinions together within the organization.

Many are the advantages of recruiting diversity

• Diverse groups are more apt to manage the increasingly complex processes: with their innovative thinking and the combination of their different knowledge they are able to find alternative perspective and ideas on the same issue.
• Increased productivity, work rate & efficiency: According to McKinsey’s analysis, companies with diverse executive boards enjoy significantly higher earnings and returns on equity. Moreover, a study of more than 500 organizations has found that every 1% increase in gender and racial diversity is correlated with a 3% to 9% increase in sales revenue, respectively.
• Increased employee morale & teamwork: Forbes Insights has identified workforce diversity and inclusion as a key driver of internal innovation and business growth.

Nevertheless managing diversity comes with its own challenges because the benefits of diversity, such as innovation and creativity, are often the result of conflicting perspectives. These conflicts often require more thorough and lengthy communication to resolve and to reach a common understanding.

However as diversity enhances the competitiveness of the business both within the workforce and the organization attracting and increasing diverse talent is an important competitive differentiator for companies and gives them a competitive edge;

Organizations that want to reach out to the best candidates, regardless of gender and class, should design the recruitment process to appeal to a diverse candidate base.