Allyship and workplace diversity have become increasingly important in the current professional setup. Globalization has allowed businesses to work with people from a myriad of backgrounds. Businesses need to ensure equality and inclusion within the workplace to encash on the endless benefits of working with people of different cultures and ethnicities.  

But above all, the reason why diversity matters is that employees feel more valued and subsequently contribute more to the organization as well.  

What is Diversity?  

When we talk about workplace diversity, we usually think about gender, race, and religion. However, there is a lot more to it. Real diversity means ensuring different types of diversity in workplace, including people of different:  

• Gender  
• Ethnicity  
• Race  

• Sexual orientation  
• Educational qualification  
• Language  
• Abilities and skills  

The advantage of having a diverse workplace is that you learn from various people’s experiences and stay in sync with the changes and expectations in society at large.  

Is Workplace Diversity Beneficial?  

Several corporates and large organizations have embraced workplace diversity because of its endless benefits:  

Fresher Ideas 

When you have different types of diversity in the workplace, creativity is at its peak. This is because people from different backgrounds come with entirely different perspectives on a specific product or service. Putting like-minded individuals in the same setup makes patterns repeat, limiting innovation. However, this issue does not arise with diversity.  

Better Productivity  

How can diversity be beneficial to productivity? When employees feel included, their morale is boosted, keeping them more focused and motivated. Additionally, people from different backgrounds are more likely to solve a broader range of customers’ issues. Workplace diversity is known to improve productivity by almost 35%. Moreover, this also leads to better employee wellbeing.

Loyalty among employees 

Employees who feel engaged and included are less likely to leave your organization. This reduces employee turnover, which simplifies various HR processes and helps you save on recruitment and other related procedures. By improving diversity at workplace, you also ensure that your employees’ training does not get wasted because of high turnover.  

A wider customer base 

If you wonder how diversity affects us in customer service, you can cater to a broader range of audiences with workplace diversity. You can increase the range of customers that you interact with and, as a result, improve business.  

Increased profits 

Diversity can help your organization reach new heights in terms of profits and revenue. With improved productivity, properly budget finance, and a wider range of customers, workplace diversity is highly beneficial to any organization.  

Challenges With Workplace Diversity  

The truth about diversity is that it is hard to implement. There are three huge challenges that organizations face when it comes to diversity:  

• Existing prejudices: Be it the management, employees, or even customers, you will have to deal with prejudices or biases, especially regarding sexual orientation, certain races, or ethnicities. However, the onus is on the organization to ensure that employees from different backgrounds feel safe and protected at all times. While it is a challenge, it is a step worth taking considering the benefits.  
• Language barriers: This is a common issue that can lead to miscommunication within the organization. The answer to this issue lies in boosting workplace diversity itself. When you hire multilingual individuals, you can get translations done in real-time to prevent miscommunication.  
• Different understanding of professional etiquette: Etiquette varies from one country to another. Employees need to be aware of their expected behavior, especially if they are hired from other countries. The best way to do this is to make employees aware of different professional etiquette to appreciate and respect one another.  

Different Ways to Improve Diversity at the Workplace  

When you are recruiting, place a lot of importance on diversity. There are four simple measures that you can take:  

• In all your communication, be it your website or other promotions, make sure you highlight workplace diversity.  
• The interview panel when you are recruiting should also be diverse to avoid prejudices from getting in the way.  

• Ensure that you widen the talent-pool that you hire your employees from.  
• Make the most of diverse niche jobs to widen your talent pool.  

Workplace diversity is also a great reflection of the ethics of an organization. It always projects you in a good light as an organization that strives to provide equal opportunities for all.

Diversity training within the company is broken into three different categories;

1) Diversity Awareness, to help people understand the benefits of working with a diverse organization

2) Diversity Management, to help team leaders to successful manage diverse teams and

3) Professional Development, to enable minority groups to develop valuable new skills. 

Furthermore, In order to make that happen, you should make your hiring process more inclusive and inviting for people with different characteristics.

Here are some actionable advice you can implement right now to make your hiring process more inclusive:

Recruit from diverse talent pools Recruiting form diverse talent pools will give you access to a greater range of talent. Diverse panel interview. A more diversified recruiting team will be more attentive to diversity issues. Sensitivity training for interviewers. Provide training for your interviewers in order to help them become more aware of workplace diversity issues.