Business Case for Diversity

• Recruiting, retaining and promoting diverse employees is essential to an organization's success in a constantly evolving marketplace. Because of shifts in terms of the United States' workforce as well as the need to expand globally, companies have instituted wide-scale diversity initiatives. The payoff has been an infusion of new ideas and innovative thinking. That has turned into better products, better customer service and access to new client bases --- along with a healthy boost to the bottom line. You may think of diversity in terms of demographics, such as race, gender, age and sexual orientation. But your workforce can be diverse in far more ways, and when it comes to productivity, diversity in background, skills, education, experience and ideas may be what counts the most.
  
  

Diversity and Team Work

• Diversity in the workplace changes team dynamics. As long as everyone has equal opportunity to express ideas and act on them, the end result is positive for the company. Research from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, for example, says that when done well, diversity sparks constructive conflict --- debate --- around the task at hand. Different people get together to solve a problem, bringing together the wealth of their various backgrounds. However, when diversity is not well managed, it can also create costly conflict, engendered by miscommunication or lopsided opportunity.
  
  

A Productivity Boon

• Two research studies, one by a group of business professors from Washington University in St. Louis and another by Census Bureau researchers, concluded that overall, diversity has a positive effect on worker productivity. It happens in different ways than you probably imagine, however. The WUSTL researchers evaluated the productivity of workers in factory that shifted from paying based on piecework to group productivity. They found those groups with diversity in skills --- different kinds of experience and training --- were the most productive. And because they were so productive, and earned the most money, these groups experienced less frequent turnover, saving the company even more money. Members of the team were able to offer unique contributions. Their value to the team wasn't based on a variable they couldn't control, like race or age, but rather on their abilities.
  
  

Productivity Bust

• When you group workers together simply based on a perceived need to have different demographics working together, you can create communication problems, which ruin their productivity. Some workers may have a natural preference to work with people who are similar, and if they have not been educated about the business benefits of diversity, they may feel threatened and imposed upon. This could limit how much information they share with team members. These loosely tied groups also have less trust among members. In addition, if some employees' opinions are valued and acted upon more than others, your organization is bound to see higher turnover, all of which negatively affect productivity.
  
  

Get It Right

• It's easy to get diversity wrong. What's important to remember is that diversity, like any other initiative, must support your business goals. It's not a feel-good solution, so don't worry about painting a rainbow with your workforce. By seeking to maximize the talents and skills of your workforce, demographic diversity and improved productivity will be natural by-products.