Blog Post

July 2017

5 Tips: How to Create a Diverse Workplace

A more diverse workplace is a more inclusive, productive, and well-rounded workplace. B6y increasing your company’s diversity, you will introduce a variety of perspectives and resist traditional barriers that marginalized communities face. Recent McKinsey data shows that companies with gender diversity are 25% more likely to outperform their competition. What’s more, ethnically-diverse companies are 3% more likely to outcompete their peers.

Follow these re-organizing tips to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace environment for your employees.

1. Adjust your talent acquisition strategy. Be sure that your organization is recruiting from a wide variety of sources. This could include universities, job agencies, diversity networks, and a variety of job posting websites. Implementing strategic human resources strategies will bring in a diverse pool of applicants.
2. Diversify all project teams. When selecting employees to work on certain projects, make sure that you are selecting employees of different ages, races, and genders. This will prevent the team from having one central perspective rise out of similar life experiences.
3. Provide inclusion training for managers. Your management team should be displaying inclusion best practices and setting an example for the rest of your team. Achieve this by providing diversity trainings at least one or twice per year. This will help them assess themselves and their team for areas of improvement.
4. Allow time off for religious and cultural holidays. Once you build a more diverse workforce, make sure you are putting in an effort to retain them. By allowing your employees to take time off for holidays and celebrations, you are honoring their culture and fostering a more accommodating work environment.
5. Hire a diversity expert. Consider hiring a chief diversity officer or other expert to constantly assess your company’s diversity successes and failures. Make a full diversity analysis their first project and use their data to move forward with your strategy.

Building a more diverse workplace is a company-wide effort, so make sure that your managers, human resources consultants, and general employees are all on board. Diversity will likely be an ongoing project for your organization, so always leave room for improvement. The effort will likely take some strategy restructuring, but it will be worth it once you build a well-rounded organization.