The importance of Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace
The importance of Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace
Human Capital is the biggest asset of any company and forms the corner stone of a sustained competitive advantage which can lead the company towards profitable growth in the market place on both short term and long term.
The idea of diversity and inclusion has exceeded the basic concept of having a diversified team in terms of gender, age, race, physical challenges and gone beyond to include having a qualified team member who complement each other skills, competencies, mindset and interests.
The deepest value of attracting different talents and retaining them is increasing the creativity and innovation through having various ideas, opinions, intuitions which can be discussed, challenged and combined resulting in a new business practice that didn’t exist before. Having said that, diversity without empowerment is a nonsense and might even lead to undesired consequence.
Above and beyond that, diversity can’t happen without inclusion as each employee will feel alienated if the company and specifically the HR department don’t activate inclusion initiatives that can bring all the team together and eliminate the boundaries between them. Once the whole team are talking the same language regardless of their differences, a true value is added.
Another important aspect of diversity is having a reflective sample of the community which the company operates in, this strengthens the business decision making on a strategic and operational level especially when it comes to entering a new market, designing and launching a new product, targeting a new consumer segment.
Local companies are also concerned with diversity as each country has its own demographic factors which makes it rich and distinguished from other populations. Hence, the role of Human Resources and specifically the talent acquisition team is to hire a pool of talents who can constitute the power on one, engage these talents, empower them and cultivate the working environment to make these talents fit together for the best interest of the company.
A key success factor of attracting and retaining diversified employees is tailoring the policies and procedures to embrace these differences. For example, having flexible working hours and remote jobs are fundamentals for working moms, quick accelerating career paths are main concern of millennials and generation Z, effective reward and recognition programs are basic motivators for high achievers and so forth.
In conclusion, diversity and inclusion should be a strategic objective for each company that aims to succeed by the power of its people, the preparation and implementation of creating a diversified team should be well planned and supported by high management in order to achieve the real value out of it.
Rawan Nino
HR Consultant & Advisor
