Diversity and Inclusion are Required
Diversity and inclusion are a requirement for modern businesses.
Why?
Because from where I sit as a hiring consultant in today’s competitive talent marketplace, a diverse workforce can no longer be an aspirational, long-term strategic ideal. Your leadership team can’t think of diversity and inclusion as something they hope will happen.
Today, the diversity of your workforce is a key growth driver and talent attractor. It can define your company’s culture and success.
Here are some of the top reasons why diversity should be a priority at your company:
Enhanced Creativity and Innovation (which also leads to faster growth). The diversity of your employees creates the pool of perspectives into which your company’s leadership can tap. If everyone on your team looks and thinks alike, how will you identify new products for market segments that don’t look, think and act like your team? How are you going to solve complex human problems with homogeneous thinking? The answer: You're probably not.
The more diverse your company’s makeup, the more innovative it becomes.
Improved Brand Reputation. Diversity not only engenders goodwill among consumers, but it also allows your customers to see that your company “looks” like them. As a result, consumers feel that your company understands them better and your products and/or services become more relevant to them. This works for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies. This sense of being understood drives purchase decisions in powerful ways.
We want to work with and purchase from companies that understand our problems, needs, and desires.
Heightened Sensitivity. If your products, services, policies, marketing, or advertising messages are coming across as insensitive or out of touch, you probably lack diversity at your company. A diverse workforce nurtures empathy and a heightened sensitivity that permeates all aspects of a company, from products and services offered to policies, culture, and marketing and advertising messages.
When you are more in touch with your buyers, your revenue grows.
Consistent Compliance. Diversity hiring is especially important for companies that engage in federal contracts. If you can’t meet a contract’s hiring requirements around diversity, you might not land (or be able to keep) key government contracts. This can have a major impact on your bottom line, especially if a big portion of your revenue is devoted to government contracts.
Avoid Negative Consequences. Discrimination lawsuits, failed ad and marketing campaigns, bad reputation with consumers and the talent market—these are just a few of the negative consequences that you can avoid if you create a plan to make diversity and inclusion an intentional business strategy for your company.
To learn more about how diversity and inclusion strategies can help you win the war for top talent, CLICK HERE to purchase my book Talent War!: The Unintended Consequences of a Broken Hiring Process or schedule your free discovery call today to learn how JLW Consulting LLC’s partnership with Fytster could transform and protect your business!
