It is crucial for companies to understand the benefits of diversity and inclusion. In recent decades most large corporations have made significant efforts to install diversity training. Unfortunately, many business leaders still don’t grasp the importance of diversity. This leads to discrimination and also hurts the success of their business.
Inclusion makes businesses better. How? It creates a dynamic environment where every employee can leave a unique imprint. We need people with different views, perspectives and backgrounds. This leads to improved product and service.
Diversity means having respect for the differences in ethnicity, gender, disability, religion, and age. It means embracing and valuing different styles and mindsets.
“Workforce diversity means a workforce made up of people with different human qualities or who belong to various cultural groups. From the perspective of individuals, diversity refers to all the ways in which people differ, including dimensions such as age, race, marital status, physical ability, income level and lifestyle.” (Daft, 2011 p.332)
Diversity and inclusion are good for business. As an example, take the historical lesson of the Irish Potato Famine of the mid 1800s. In the early 1800s almost half of the Irish population lived off potatoes alone. They had failed to diversify in their crops and in 1845 all the potatoes had rotted. This caused approximately 1 million people to die. The Irish Potato famine is a great lesson on the importance of diversity.
Inclusion and diversity is not just an HR initiative. Business leaders need to build a culture of diverse people, products, and strategies.
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