What Is Diversity and Inclusion in Workplace?

“A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone.” — Sundar Pichai.

What is Diversity?

Diversity is understanding individuals’ uniqueness and recognizing their differences. The differences can be in various dimensions such as gender, race, ethnicity, caste, etc.

Diversity includes more than tolerance. It includes understanding and having mutual respect between people with diverse backgrounds.

What is Diversity in the Workplace?

Workplace diversity means accepting the differences between people of various races, gender, caste, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientations, and disabilities.

Diversity hiring is far beyond “just a trend” right now. Workplace diversity has become a common topic of discussion among employees.

More and more workplaces are now aiming to implement strategies and practices that include diversity.

Diverse companies are more creative and adaptable to changes.

What is Inclusion?

Inclusion in the workplace aims at creating a collaborative, healthy, and supportive environment. This increases participation and contribution from employees as they start feeling included.

Through inclusion, one can aim at reducing intolerance, barriers, and discrimination among individuals.

What is an Inclusive Workplace?

An inclusive workplace does not mean having diverse people just present in a company. It has to be about them involving, developing, and empowering the business.

Inclusive hiring should be the ultimate goal for every company.

Inclusivity in a workplace increases the quality of work and also enhances creativity. An inclusive workplace holds equal access to opportunities for everyone.

Why are Diversity and Inclusion Important in the Workplace?

A diverse and inclusive workplace has a bunch of benefits.

• There’s an increase in creativity and innovation.
• Higher revenue growth is evident.
• There has been an increase in retention rate by 5.4 times.

For the time being, the retention rate has been a concern for most companies to exist. Inclusivity has efficiently increased the retention rate.

According to research, employees feel comfortable knowing that they and their colleagues will be treated fairly regardless of their gender, race, caste, or sexuality.

During the research, the below statistics were found to be true:

• People will 8 times be more likely to work in a company if it is inclusive.
• They are 3 times more likely to take pride in their work.

Aren’t those some fantastic statistics?

What is the Difference Between Diversity and Inclusion?

One of the most significant confusion to deal with is the difference between diversity and inclusion. We often get confused between the two since they are both used in the same context and hence are treated as synonyms.

While you may prepare your organization for an inclusive and diverse work environment but the chances are that you might get chained in the cycle of puzzlement.

Diversity is the presence and representation of different people with diverse backgrounds in a company. At the same time, inclusivity ensures that everyone is treated fairly and equally regardless of their age, gender, caste, race, or sexuality.

Diversity brings the ‘What’ factor, while inclusion brings the ‘How’ aspect to the table.

Diversity ensures that your workplace is filled with diverse minds, while inclusion creates a work culture that empowers every employee to work and thrive for success.

Diversity and Inclusion Priorities

According to a survey conducted by Forbes Insights, 32% of HR and talent management professionals found the following diversity and inclusion priorities in their workplace:

• 65% of them said they wanted to recruit diverse employees.
• 44% said they wanted retention of diverse employees.
• 29% of them said they wanted to develop a secure channel of diverse talent.
• 35% of them said they aim at ensuring diversity in their workplace.
• 28% said managing cross-generational issues was their concern.

Best Practices of Diversity and Inclusion

Professor Roberson surveyed 330 HR executives and found out the best practices of diversity and inclusion.

• Equal and fair treatment.
• Equal access to opportunities.
• Teamwork and collaboration.
• Focusing on innovation and creativity.
• Flexibility, responsiveness, and agility.
• Fix unconscious employment discrimination.
• Collaborative conflict resolution processes.
• Diverse education and training
• Diversity among internal and external stakeholders.
• Diversity at all levels of the organization.

Strategies for Diversity and Inclusion

Bersin by Deloitte included the following diversity and inclusion strategies into his framework:

• A focus strategy must be created at the CEO/COO/CHRO level.
• attract a diverse workforce.
• Integrating diversity recruitment strategy at recruitment level, in performance management, leadership assessment, and into training.
• Assigning top executives the responsibility of leading and sponsoring programs related to diversity and inclusivity.
• Generating behavioral standards, diversity metrics and holding leaders accountable for their results.
• Training people at all levels on sensitive topics like unconscious bias, structural bias, similarity bias, and self-rater bias.
• Holding your company accountable for competing in external awards.
• Creating scorecards, external and internal, to measure progress in the company.

Success Metrics of Diversity and Inclusion

The Forbes Insights survey says that about 60% of companies have metrics to measure the success of diversity and inclusion in their workplace.

The most popular success metrics are:

• 58% – employee turnover
• 67% – employee morale
• 77% – employee productivity

Senior executives were held accountable for their diversity and inclusion programs through:

• 41% – promotions
• 42% – salary increases
• 48% – business/department reviews
• 51% – bonuses
• 66% – performance reviews

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