5 Tips on How Diversity in your team will Drive Business Success

Diversity and inclusion can play an important role in a workplace regardless of size. Employees in your small business often have a direct impact on your business success. If you have a diverse team with you, your business is more likely to be successful. Diversity in businesses is the practice of including or involving people from different social and ethnic backgrounds in daily business operations. 

There are different types of diversity that can or cannot be embraced by organizations; Cultural diversity, Racial diversity, Religious diversity, Age diversity, Gender diversity, Sexual orientation, and Disability.

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Improving diversity in your small business.

1. Evaluate your current diversity status
To stabilize diversity in your organization, start a realistic evaluation of what policies and practices exist, this helps you to establish what you need to add or improve on. Your evaluation can start with the opinions and experiences of your employees and even your loyal customers.

2. Educate staff and seek support
Hold training sessions and discussions on the value of diversity and inclusion in the workplace and involve staff at all levels of the organization to ensure their buy-in and support. Creating a committee and setting accountability standards for it, also enforces its importance to the organization.

3. Measure the effectiveness
Regularly evaluate the progress or failure of your plan and adjust it as needed. The needs of the industry, the marketplace, your company, and your employees are always changing, your plan should be flexible to adapt to those changes. As a small business owner, you should adjust your environments and operations to support a more diverse and inclusive workforce to reap the benefits of your efforts operationally and financially.

How can diversity help small businesses?
Businesses can benefit from being diverse in their daily operations. Organizations with diverse leadership prove to perform better which directly impacts every level of the business.

• Innovation
Diverse opinions bring new perspectives, which can drive business success. As the population grows, the market also grows. Having a diverse staff can be beneficial to your business as new experiences and skill sets expand what is possible, resulting in new ideas and opportunities. These innovations can also expand your market reach because customers often find it appealing to work with someone with whom they can relate. Companies that are having diverse teams earn through innovation. This is because different people bring in more innovative ideas owing to their different backgrounds.

• Improves employee engagement
An additional benefit of a more diverse and inclusive workplace is happy employees, which translates to a more engaged team. Research has found that when companies embrace diversity and inclusion policies, employees perform at a higher level. A focus on this can also improve team morale and create a higher level of trust between employees and company management

• Better and fast decision making
A diverse team of employees has more experience in different walks of life; they provide the business with different ways of thinking and innovating. Decisions made by a diverse team deliver 60% better results. A diverse team focuses more on facts and they process the facts carefully, this makes them smarter and reliable for a business.

• Recruitment of employees
When it comes to recruiting new talent and holding on to valuable employees, one of the key factors that potential and current employees consider is the company’s culture. Small businesses with diverse teams have a greater ability to produce creative ideas that catch the attention of consumers and resonate with a more widespread audience. Most job seekers report that a diverse workplace is always an important factor in evaluating an employer and the workplace. Having a diverse work culture can help your small business attract talented employees.

• Financial performance
According to a 2017 McKinsey Report, companies that have leadership teams that rank in the top 25% for racial and ethnic diversity are 33% more likely to outperform their industry peers in terms of profitability. By creating a more interconnected workplace, the level of decision-making in the workplace is front-lined, this will help the company to exceed its financial targets.

Also Read:

1. How to Build a better Business for the Future.
2. 5 Ways to Protect your Small Business from Fraud.
3.  Tips to Finding the Right Investor for your Business.

With the above tips of success with a diverse and inclusive environment, businesses can achieve more. In a diverse environment, everyone is human, discussions are done together and employees feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking questions, or offering new ideas.

Mombasa, Kenya.

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