Workplace diversity is among the contributors that set a company apart from its competitors. It recognises the effort of every team member and the potential brought to the company. This leads to enhanced creativity and innovation, better decision-making, higher team member engagement, better company reputation, minimised team member turnover, better productivity, and higher profit.

However, to boost workplace diversity, you must formulate tactics that work well with your company’s objectives. That said, here are four top strategies you can apply instantly to promote diversity in your workplace:

  1. Offer diversity training

At some point, your employees may convey some form of unconscious racism and biases. Unconscious racism is an attitude operating beyond your cognisance and control that you can’t easily be aware of. It’s mainly triggered by your brain’s swift decisions and evaluations about a person, thing or situation. It can be as simple as asking a black female worker to take notes during a staff meeting because you think such administrative duties better fit her. Although not intended, this might be interpreted as racism, primarily if you address her with a not-so-palatable tone which may inconvenience her ability to participate.

To offer diversity training, you need to first assess the culture in your workplace. Gather data to create a good picture of where you’re at in terms of diversity. Just like any training, you’ll need a pre-training assessment. Then you can move on to building a training program and getting the right people to conduct it.

  1. Recognise various customs and beliefs from diverse cultures

People from different backgrounds have multiple traditions and religious beliefs. Respecting and honoring them makes your employees feel valued and included in the workplace. Aim to give them time to celebrate their special days.

To achieve this, create a multicultural calendar. This enables you to identify and honor diverse, multicultural practices globally. Moreover, you can learn about the various cultures of your workers. For instance, different people have myriad ways of greetings. Some shake hands, kiss, bow or just wave. Having this information ensures you won’t disappoint your employees by violating their cultural beliefs.

  1. Develop structures that advocate for diversity

A company culture that advocates for diversity is a great way to show how much you value differences. When you hire employees, they feel included and respected right away. This accelerates their trust in you, and they can speak their minds without fearing discrimination. Additionally, it enables them to handle their tasks to their best abilities.

To build a culture of diversity and inclusion in your workplace:

  • Set up a structure: For your company to embrace diversity, you must make significant changes. Create a well-laid-out system that accommodates the changes without compromising the everyday operations of your firm.
  • Select your focus: With the various dimensions of diversity, you’d want to choose what you want to concentrate on depending on your business goals.
  • Implement clear policies: It’d be best if you have clear instructions informing employees of their rights to a working environment that’s free from discrimination. Tell them how they should behave and the consequences of being biased.

 

  1. Establish diversity mentoring programs

You can conduct diversity mentoring to optimise diversity, fairness, and inclusion within your company. You could look into age, gender, culture, race and social awareness. This helps your employees feel cherished, develop a good rapport with their colleagues and create essential skills to help them improve their careers.

To execute a workable diversity mentoring program:

  • Specify your schedule goals: The success of any project begins by defining goals that align with the company’s objectives. For diversity mentoring, you can strive to encourage an incredibly diverse company culture.
  • Understand your audience: It’s essential to know the people you’re mentoring to be sensitive about their requirements.
  • Develop an inclusive program: The purpose of mentoring programs is to enable employees from different cultures and programs to network. This means that nobody should be left out. An excellent way to accomplish this is by making the programs mandatory for every employee in your organisation. You can conduct surveys and interviews to identify their needs and use the information to plan an outstanding program.
  • Perform mentor training: It’s always good to conduct mentor training. Remember, every mentor and mentee have different skills and experience, so they must be given some guidance on what’s expected of them.
  • Determine the right mentors: To encourage intergroup relationships, don’t select mentors from the same diverse group as the mentees.

Conclusion

In the current world, companies are getting their employees from different parts of the world. These employees have varying races, ages, gender, experience levels and others. If you don’t create a conducive environment that supports these differences, you may lose skillful workers and even have a poor reputation. To stand out from the crowd and run a successful business, consider implementing the above strategies to promote diversity in your workplace.

References

  1. “8 Reasons Why Diversity And Inclusion Are Essential To Business Success”, Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/biancamillercole/2020/09/15/8-reasons-why-diversity-and-inclusion-are-essential-to-business-success/?sh=54fea0b1824f
  2. “Experts weigh in: Best practices for avoiding unconscious bias in the workplace”, Source: https://medium.com/@Peoplewave/experts-weigh-in-best-practices-for-avoiding-unconscious-bias-in-the-workplace-c619e4447002
  3. “Best Practices for Implementing a Mentoring Program for Diverse Employees”, Source: https://www.td.org/atd-blog/best-practices-for-implementing-a-mentoring-program-for-diverse-employees