The Social and Business Cases for Workplace Diversity

Diversity is good for business in a myriad of ways. It can increase innovation and collaboration, help companies make better business decisions, and provide organizations with access to a much broader talent pool. More importantly, it can act as a vehicle for social change. 

Take a deeper look at the social and business cases for workplace diversity with Dr. Mike Szymanski, Academic Director in the Diversity and Inclusive Leadership online short course from EGADE Business School at Tecnológico de Monterrey. 

Transcript

Diversity in the workplace often offers many benefits to the company, such as increased innovation and collaboration between team members. However, it may also lead to conflicts and instances where diversity isn’t managed well or team members don’t feel included. 

In this video, we will consider two cases for organizational diversity. The first case explains that diversity is good for business because it improves performance. The second says that diversity is good because it is the right thing to do.

The business case for diversity

Diversity is good for business because it is good for business. When you bring a diverse group of people to your organization, you will see more creativity. Diverse teams are more likely to find new, sometimes unorthodox, solutions. Because of the variety of experiences and the wide range of perspectives, diverse teams are less likely to suffer from tunnel vision or groupthink. In other words, diversity improves the decision-making in organizations. 

But the business benefits do not end there. By allowing people of different races, nationalities, ethnicities, sexual orientation, to enter your organization, you will have access to a much broader talent pool. By showing that your organization is open, you will also attract potential talents who might have been previously discouraged from applying to your company.  

The social case for diversity

In today’s world, diversity is an important social cause. By making your company diverse, you improve its reputation and show to the world that you’re not only interested in money, but you want to change the world for the better.

By excluding entire social or ethnic groups, not only are we wasting a great opportunity to tap into a larger human talent pool and take advantage of the business benefits of diversity, but we are missing an opportunity to transform our society.

We must remember that big companies are not only profit-making machines, but might be also vehicles for social change. Some of the most successful American companies, such as Google, Facebook or Marriott International, actively engage in workplace diversity, which is not only aimed at generating more profits for the company, but to promote inclusiveness in the society and to professionally activate some underprivileged groups.

Marriott is an interesting case as African-Americans, Latinos and other ethnic minorities, make up more than 60% of its staff in the United States. While some may comment that the company does it simply to tap into vast resources of cheap labor, the company is constantly highly ranked as one of the best places to work for minorities, and praised for its efforts to transform societies. In other words, workplace diversity is not only good for business, but it has the power to change the world.