How Workforce Diversity Impacts Engagement
Posted January 11th, 2016
The idea of diversity has become an important one in today’s business world. Having a diverse workforce has a number of advantages, such as fostering a diversity of ideas and viewpoints, and advantages in dealing with customers and clients of different backgrounds.
But diversity has another advantage as well, and that is helping with employee engagement. This becomes especially important when surveys have shown that many workers today are reporting that they are not engaged with their jobs.
Diversity can be defined as all of the ways that someone is different from another person. Diversity can refer to differences in traits like age, gender, education, socioeconomic status, religion, physical ability, and race or ethnicity.
Benefits of Diversity
Management experts who have looked at companies that encourage inclusion or diversity, and develop an atmosphere of fairness, where employees are treated equally no matter what their background, found a number of benefits to having a diverse workforce.
These companies tend to be more innovative, have a safer work environment, have greater customer satisfaction, have better financial performance, and have more engaged and committed employees.
Studies of many different companies have shown that there is a definite positive relationship between satisfaction of employees, company efficiency and how employees feel about the fairness of the company in dealing with people and customers of different backgrounds. Surveys have shown that in companies where employees indicate higher levels of engagement, they also score higher on diversity levels as well.
When companies operate with fairness, employees develop greater trust in their employers, and because of that trust, they feel better about their employer and are more engaged in what they do. It is this trust that leads to greater employee engagement.
What Your Company Can Do
So, in general, diversity and engagement go hand in hand, but each company may be different based on the particular policies in place at the company to encourage diversity. To determine how diversity, or the lack of it, is affecting your business, and how it could affect it, you need to monitor employee attitudes toward diversity. You need to get their opinions on diversity and how best to develop it at your company.
If your company is looking for competent, reliable employees in the science and technology areas, Bayside Solutions can help you find the talent you need. Bayside specializes in recruiting science and technology workers, saving clients time and money in hiring. Give Bayside Solutions a call today.
