In most modern workplaces, the terms ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusivity’ have transcended merely being employed as marketing buzzwords and have evolved into factors that can considerably impact a company’s financial results. Moreover, experts’ extensive research initiatives show a causal relationship between diversity within a workplace and innovation revenue. 

Canada’s continual commitment to encouraging diversity within its borders effectively means that Canadian business owners are ideally placed to reap the benefits of diversity, such as enhancing their workplace productivity and maximizing their ‘diversity dividend,’ which simply refers to the revenue potential of a company that has successfully diversified its workforce at all organizational levels.

What is Diversity in the Workplace?

It is imperative to understand the concept and the updated definition of diversity before taking an in-depth look at how it can benefit your company’s bottom line. Diversity in the workplace refers to strategically hiring individuals from different socio-economic, racial, ethnic, cultural, and ideological backgrounds to invite multiple points of view and enrich the intellectual composition of a workplace.

Furthermore, employers must recognize, value, and integrate employable individuals of different age groups, genders, academic backgrounds, and sexual orientations. These individuals bring unique, distinguishable skillsets and experiences to the table. This essentially means that in addition to coming up with novel perspectives and multiple solutions, your workforce will also be more responsive to unforeseen problems and will be able to successfully navigate through a wide array of challenges.

How Does Diversity Boost Innovation?

Employees in a homogenous workplace may possess a high degree of similarity in thoughts and perspectives, which can inhibit innovation and invite the risk of complacency. On the contrary, a diverse workplace is replete with individuals voicing out their different approaches and ideas and questioning the validity of others’ ideas, which compels individuals to think their thoughts through before putting them up for scrutiny. 

Individuals who bring international experience to your organization can also play a vital role in identifying gaps within the market and assist your product development team in developing products that can meet them and consequently drive up your innovation revenue. Innovation revenue refers to the portion of income a company has earned entirely from new products and services they have developed in the last 3 years. 

Thus, in the long run, employing a diverse workforce ensures that your company continues to innovate and furnish your consumer base with newer products and services, a practice that can enhance your position in the market or even catapult you to the forefront of your industry.

Financial Benefits of Diversity

Apart from helping your organization innovate better, a diverse workplace can also enhance your market capitalization and contribute to revenue growth. For example, a comprehensive study conducted by Harvard Business Review revealed that from a fiscal standpoint, diverse companies in the US fared better than non-diverse companies or companies with below-average diversity quotients. In addition, a higher EBIT margin was reported in most diverse companies compared to their non-diverse competitors, with some EBIT margins extending to as much as 10%!

Encouraging gender diversity in your company’s top and middle-level management can be financially rewarding. McKinsey Global Institute and CIBC show that companies with a gender-diverse leadership composition generally perform better than their competitors.

A long-term advantage of encouraging workplace diversity is that it may enable you to cater to your client’s requirements better, which can result in higher financial yields in the future. For example, an edition of Harvard Business Review claims that if a workplace team member shares the same ethnicity as your client, they are twice as likely to understand your client’s requirements and expectations.

How Can You Make Your Workforce More Diverse?

Enhancing the diversity quotient of your workplace does not translate to mass hiring of individuals from diverse backgrounds or saturating the entry-level roles within your organization with immigrant workers. For optimal long-term results, a strategic approach to recruitment is necessary, wherein inclusive recruitment policies are incorporated and implemented over time instead of ushering a whole host of changes overnight.

A prominent way to achieve optimal workplace diversity is by establishing a dedicated variety and inclusion advisory board. Setting up an advisory committee will equip your company with a direct and clear communication route between your management and your employees. In addition, this move can encourage your employees and management to take collaborative action to achieve workplace diversity.

However, it is inadvisable to engage in efforts to improve your workplace’s diversity without receiving professional guidance and training from reputed professionals to remove implicit and unconscious biases within your employees. Unconscious biases refer to social stereotypes every individual harbors without being consciously aware of them. These biases can affect your recruitment and employee retention rates and thereby negatively impact the company’s bottom line.

The Role of RDR in Enhancing Diversity and Inclusion

Regional Diversity Roundtable is a renowned non-profit organization dedicated to assisting companies in strategically improving their workplace diversity and realizing the true commercial potential of their business. In addition, RDR hosts several conferences and workshops for working professionals to help them understand the importance of diversity and inclusion. RDR also offers a wide array of training modules that could assist you in implementing relevant DEI strategies at your workplace and help you build up your collective DEI capacity.

Moreover, RDR specializes in offering customized, in-person training that could help your workforce understand the practical significance of being culturally proficient. This training could also equip your staff with practical ways to deal with their unconscious biases and consequently helps your firm recruit better. With the help of RDR, you can gradually bring about a change in the culture of your workplace and implement a genuinely inclusive and diverse workplace environment. You can book a free 30-minute consultation with RDR’s trained specialists to learn how encouraging diversity and inclusion can improve your work culture and your company’s bottom line.

In most modern workplaces, the terms ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusivity’ have transcended merely being employed as marketing buzzwords and have evolved into factors that can considerably impact a company’s financial results. Moreover, experts’ extensive research initiatives show a causal relationship between diversity within a workplace and innovation revenue. 

Canada’s continual commitment to encouraging diversity within its borders effectively means that Canadian business owners are ideally placed to reap the benefits of diversity, such as enhancing their workplace productivity and maximizing their ‘diversity dividend,’ which simply refers to the revenue potential of a company that has successfully diversified its workforce at all organizational levels.

What is Diversity in the Workplace?

It is imperative to understand the concept and the updated definition of diversity before taking an in-depth look at how it can benefit your company’s bottom line. Diversity in the workplace refers to strategically hiring individuals from different socio-economic, racial, ethnic, cultural, and ideological backgrounds to invite multiple points of view and enrich the intellectual composition of a workplace.

Furthermore, employers must recognize, value, and integrate employable individuals of different age groups, genders, academic backgrounds, and sexual orientations. These individuals bring unique, distinguishable skillsets and experiences to the table. This essentially means that in addition to coming up with novel perspectives and multiple solutions, your workforce will also be more responsive to unforeseen problems and will be able to successfully navigate through a wide array of challenges.

How Does Diversity Boost Innovation?

Employees in a homogenous workplace may possess a high degree of similarity in thoughts and perspectives, which can inhibit innovation and invite the risk of complacency. On the contrary, a diverse workplace is replete with individuals voicing out their different approaches and ideas and questioning the validity of others’ ideas, which compels individuals to think their thoughts through before putting them up for scrutiny. 

Individuals who bring international experience to your organization can also play a vital role in identifying gaps within the market and assist your product development team in developing products that can meet them and consequently drive up your innovation revenue. Innovation revenue refers to the portion of income a company has earned entirely from new products and services they have developed in the last 3 years. 

Thus, in the long run, employing a diverse workforce ensures that your company continues to innovate and furnish your consumer base with newer products and services, a practice that can enhance your position in the market or even catapult you to the forefront of your industry.

Financial Benefits of Diversity

Apart from helping your organization innovate better, a diverse workplace can also enhance your market capitalization and contribute to revenue growth. For example, a comprehensive study conducted by Harvard Business Review revealed that from a fiscal standpoint, diverse companies in the US fared better than non-diverse companies or companies with below-average diversity quotients. In addition, a higher EBIT margin was reported in most diverse companies compared to their non-diverse competitors, with some EBIT margins extending to as much as 10%!

Encouraging gender diversity in your company’s top and middle-level management can be financially rewarding. McKinsey Global Institute and CIBC show that companies with a gender-diverse leadership composition generally perform better than their competitors.

A long-term advantage of encouraging workplace diversity is that it may enable you to cater to your client’s requirements better, which can result in higher financial yields in the future. For example, an edition of Harvard Business Review claims that if a workplace team member shares the same ethnicity as your client, they are twice as likely to understand your client’s requirements and expectations.

How Can You Make Your Workforce More Diverse?

Enhancing the diversity quotient of your workplace does not translate to mass hiring of individuals from diverse backgrounds or saturating the entry-level roles within your organization with immigrant workers. For optimal long-term results, a strategic approach to recruitment is necessary, wherein inclusive recruitment policies are incorporated and implemented over time instead of ushering a whole host of changes overnight.

A prominent way to achieve optimal workplace diversity is by establishing a dedicated variety and inclusion advisory board. Setting up an advisory committee will equip your company with a direct and clear communication route between your management and your employees. In addition, this move can encourage your employees and management to take collaborative action to achieve workplace diversity.

However, it is inadvisable to engage in efforts to improve your workplace’s diversity without receiving professional guidance and training from reputed professionals to remove implicit and unconscious biases within your employees. Unconscious biases refer to social stereotypes every individual harbors without being consciously aware of them. These biases can affect your recruitment and employee retention rates and thereby negatively impact the company’s bottom line.

The Role of RDR in Enhancing Diversity and Inclusion

Regional Diversity Roundtable is a renowned non-profit organization dedicated to assisting companies in strategically improving their workplace diversity and realizing the true commercial potential of their business. In addition, RDR hosts several conferences and workshops for working professionals to help them understand the importance of diversity and inclusion. RDR also offers a wide array of training modules that could assist you in implementing relevant DEI strategies at your workplace and help you build up your collective DEI capacity.

Moreover, RDR specializes in offering customized, in-person training that could help your workforce understand the practical significance of being culturally proficient. This training could also equip your staff with practical ways to deal with their unconscious biases and consequently helps your firm recruit better. With the help of RDR, you can gradually bring about a change in the culture of your workplace and implement a genuinely inclusive and diverse workplace environment. You can book a free 30-minute consultation with RDR’s trained specialists to learn how encouraging diversity and inclusion can improve your work culture and your company’s bottom line.