The Importance of Diversity in Solving Problems
Diversity in the workplace has solid and concrete benefits for both a company’s performance and the employees’ creative and logical development.
When a company employs a wide range of diverse individuals, we say that there is diversity in the workplace. Diverse individuals are those with diverse characteristics such as gender, age, religion, race, ethnicity, cultural background, sexual orientation, religion, and more. Diversity isn’t about wider inclusion to improve a company’s reputation.
Diversity in the workplace has solid and concrete benefits for both a company’s performance and the employees’ creative and logical development. According to the Harvard Business Review, teams solve problems faster when they’re more cognitively diverse.
A variety of perspectives and increased creativity
Solving a problem often requires you to approach the issue from different perspectives. Much like inherent bias, a single point of view can be limited. A combination of diverse points of view allows for a panorama and an all-round solution that takes care of the problem in its entirety is consequently far more possible. When diverse employees are faced with an issue, they bring the experience of diverse skills, histories, characteristics and perspectives to the table.
Different perspectives and views boost the combined creativity of a team. Out-of-the-box ideas are likely. According to Josh Bersin research, diversity in the workplace allows companies to become 1.7 times more likely to be innovative leaders. Diverse individuals bring diverse experiences and skills to the table, thus allowing teams to up their cognitive power when solving problems. A McKinsey and Group research also found that gender-diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform their peers, and ethnically-diverse companies are 35% more likely to do the same.
Diversely built teams can better identify potential risks
A crucial part of problem-solving is being able to identify potential risks and make better business decisions about mitigating those risks. If you put like-minded people in a room and ask them to solve a problem, there is a good chance they will look at the problem from only one perspective, and their problem-solving capabilities will be narrowed. However, with diversity present, you get different experiences, local knowledge, and niche expertise.
Employee engagement is high
For an employee to perform amazingly, you need to make sure they are highly productive and tapping into their potential. This can be accelerated when the employee is highly-engaged and active in the workplace. A simple way of making surethe employee is engaged is to make them feel included and valued.
Inclusion allows people to feel safe and comfortable in the workplace. This allows them to feel safe and comfortable engaging with people outside their social circles. In this way, employees not only engage well with their teams and peers but also across multiple teams. A survey by Glassdoor suggested that 67% of job seekers consider diversity in the workplace an important factor when considering employment opportunities. Employees are clearly looking for companies that are enthusiastic about hiring a diverse workforce, and current employees want their companies to be more interested in diversity as well.
Diversity is equally important at corporate level
Solving day-to-day issues isn’t just the preserve of the lower ranks in a company. Leaders face their own day-to-day issues as well and diversity at the top is likely to have benefits as well. According to a study by Harvard Business Review, 78% of employees said they work at organizations that lack diversity in leadership positions.
However, when a company needs to make high-risk business decisions every day, it is crucial to bring fresh, innovative, and cognitively strong ideas to the table. Promoting and establishing diversity in leadership is an important part of being able to do so.
A study by Fast Company has shown that a higher representation of women in C-suite level positions has resulted in 34% greater returns to shareholders. So, even if you can establish diversity in the workplace in non-leadership positions, to be truly able to solve problems and truly take your company forward, diversity in leadership positions is necessary too!
