What the World Would Be Like If Diversity Didn’t Exist

The opinions that we have are all formed by the education we’ve received, the places we’ve grown up in, and our own experiences as people. If you are only hiring people who look and act like you, you’ll be speaking to an echo chamber.

While it might seem appealing for you as a boss to always be right, that may not be the best move for your business. We all make mistakes, but by saying you and people like you are the only experts and are always right, you cannot grow your business much.

To make sure your workplace has as many differing opinions as possible, you should be bringing as many voices as possible to the table. This means focusing on diversity efforts to make your business attractive to people who are different than you.

More needs to be done than simply hire diverse voices. Opportunities need to be given for these employees to present ideas and be part of your company’s actual operation to embrace diversity truly. 

Without diversity efforts, your employees are not likely to succeed in moving up corporate structures. Even with newfound motivation for companies to push for diversity and inclusion efforts, there are still extreme obstacles your employees must face when climbing to newer and greater positions within your company. 

Think critically about how your employees act with one another. Are your staff of color frequently expected to behave in ways you would stereotypically assume them to act? Are employees making “jokes” at the behest of a gay colleague’s adoption? 

Without diversity in the workplace, the workplace will remain hostile and discriminatory for anyone other than the majority, and that’s not an environment anyone truly wants to work in.

Diversity influences how workplaces treat their employees, and that’s a known fact. Diversity efforts, though, have made it possible for your employees to enjoy flexibility and freedoms never possible before. 

Take, for instance, a flexible workday. When only the man of the house was permitted to work in many cases, there was no pressure on the employer to allow for a flexible work schedule, as there was someone at home with kids. 

Thanks to diversity efforts increasing opportunities for women, it’s much more common for an employer to offer these sorts of flexibilities. These perks are often critical things that make your employees want to stay with your company and can be easily attributed to the past’s success of diversity efforts. 

This also goes to show that diversity allows for opportunities beyond just race. Your workplace diversity goes much deeper than skin color. Think about the ages of the people you employ, their gender, sexual orientations, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and disabilities. 

All of these categories represent groups of people commonly left out when diversity isn’t discussed.

The thought of putting a heavy focus on diversity efforts can seem terrifying as you might be thinking about the cost to your bottom line. 

However, this is the exact opposite of the truth. Emphasizing diversity and inclusion efforts at every workplace level, from your company culture to hiring practices, can lead you to outperform your less-diverse competition by 33%. 

By including more voices, more skills, and more perspectives, your employees will be more motivated, develop more innovative ideas and increase productivity amongst your team.

At Bench Builders, can help you face any challenge you may be facing, and this includes helping you take a critical look at the diversity of your workplace. 

By focusing on making your workplace as genuinely diverse as possible, you can create a better company. You can have better, more innovative products and services, and employees are more likely to stick around and feel like their voices, no matter how different from yours, matter.