Why Are Companies Hiring Employees Representing Diverse Backgrounds?

The concept of workplace flexibility and productivity is evolving daily. Just as businesses cater to a global marketplace, workplaces are increasingly seeking to employ talent from a global pool.

Targeting talent worldwide involves hiring people from diverse ethnicities and linguistic backgrounds. But are such differences helping employers unite their workforce and meet their targets? Yes!

Let’s examine why companies are hiring employees from diverse backgrounds and how they achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

 

What is DEI?

 

DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. First, let us examine each term from the perspective of a positive workplace.

Diversity refers to having employees from different backgrounds regarding culture, religion, gender, finance, age, social status, education, geography, and more.

Equity refers to the respect and equality that all company employees receive, regardless of their diverse backgrounds and identities. Note that equity in DEI has nothing to do with finances.

Inclusion refers to the oneness among diverse employees within the organization. It means employee opinions are valued beyond their backgrounds with fairness and justice.

Taken together, DEI is about promoting a healthy culture of unity among people with inherent differences. While DEI involves many differences to resolve, it also involves unique perspectives and ideas that can bring positive changes to the workplace.

 

What is a DEI Program?

 

DEI aims to bring people from diverse backgrounds together in a team or group within a company. Every member works together by uniting on common work ethics, goals, and policies. When differences crop up, the team head and members resolve them amicably to work in a manner that does not affect each other’s beliefs and core values.

Such a diverse and inclusive workplace has proven to be more productive and engaging for both employees and employers. A study shows that employees prefer to recommend companies that emphasize DEI initiatives to their friends and acquaintances.

A DEI program helps foster oneness among diverse employees by curating common processes and policies that benefit and treat all fairly. Such programs are meant to remove any existing biases on certain groups of candidates and employees and provide a fair chance for everyone to prove their worth.

DEI initiatives are also a part of employee engagement. Such initiatives reassure employees that a company is not biased towards a particular group. Employees are motivated to join a company when they see that anyone can climb the corporate ladder.

Some successful examples of DEI include many women from different ethnic backgrounds who have held executive posts in multinational corporations worldwide.

 

Why Are Companies Prioritizing Diverse Hiring?

 

Diversity and inclusion are win-win solutions for both employers and employees. When people from different backgrounds feel a sense of belonging within their company, their natural instinct is to work productively and bond with their team better.

A recent study shows how diverse members in top leadership roles drove innovation and higher revenue for their companies. In contrast, companies that failed to take steps to include a diverse workforce saw greater turnover, less innovation, and less progress.

As a result, more companies are making several changes in teams comprising members from different cultural and educational backgrounds, maintaining uniform gender ratios, and more.

Here are some reasons why companies are increasingly adopting DEI initiatives for their workforce:

 

Improved Innovation and Creativity

People from diverse backgrounds bring many unique perspectives from various aspects that have shaped and influenced them. When employees are exposed to different approaches to arriving at a solution, new ideas are born.

Such ideas may be new for some but the norm for others from a particular background. Soon, these can become new processes or policies that benefit a majority. Problem-solving in a diverse and inclusive team happens much faster and better, thanks to the many ways and approaches to arriving at a solution.

Enhanced Customer and Partner Relationships

Nowadays, businesses target a global marketplace. Organizations partner with peers across continents with different linguistic backgrounds and cultural beliefs.

Having employees equally as diverse as their target customer base gives companies a competitive edge over their peers. The company’s employees often get a chance to work at the client’s location, fostering new relationships and partnerships.

Higher Employee Engagement and Retention

When employees find people of their kind in prominent positions in a company, they are naturally more inclined to work there. On the other hand, seeing only a particular group of employees occupying major positions in a company can make the others sense that they don’t belong there. Hence, turnover!

For instance, when working mothers find more of their peers returning to their company post-maternity leave and subsequently growing in their careers, they are more likely to switch to places that value their work-life balance. Similarly, companies with a balanced gender ratio in every team are preferred as great workplaces.

Market Readiness and Stronger Culture

With lawmakers developing different work policies worldwide, companies must be ready to adapt to the ever-changing environment. Hiring a particular group alone can be fatal if that group must adhere to a new law that does not permit them to work. Such cases are common among workers on work visas living in another country.

Such situations are best avoided with a diverse workforce coming from different backgrounds. Employees from diverse cultures can unite over a common culture that makes the company stand apart. Popular culture changes include celebrating prominent festivals worldwide to increase oneness among the employees.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Legal Compliance

More and more companies are trying to establish a global presence with physical offices. As part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives, companies hire people from the locality where they set up their offices, allowing them to collaborate with members around the world.

Moreover, DEI is a great way to educate employees about respecting everyone in the company and teaching them ethics and moral values in a corporate setting. Anti-discriminatory, anti-racist, and anti-linguistic-bias laws help safeguard employees' rights when working toward collective betterment.

 

Challenges Companies Face When Implementing DEI Initiatives

 

Companies worldwide are trying to incorporate DEI initiatives in the best possible ways. Even small changes in hiring and promotion processes have significantly impacted a company's progress.

However, incorporating people from diverse backgrounds brings a new set of challenges. Let’s look at some situations that can hinder DEI implementation and how to resolve them.

   

Communication and Language Problems

The most common issue employers face when tackling diversity among employees is handling and facilitating clear and open communication. While English is the preferred language across global workplaces, communication between employees from similar backgrounds can alienate others.

Language-related clashes are quite common, especially when most team members ignore members who do not understand a local language but discuss work tasks in that language.

Therefore, companies must try to create teams where employees with different mother tongues or language skills can communicate in a common language.

Cultural Differences

Employees of a particular religion or culture have their own beliefs and practices. Having similar employees work together in a team can cause friction or affect the team's working setup.

Companies must work to ensure that popular cultural beliefs are respected and celebrated. Moreover, they must refine their hiring practices to ensure that their applicants can belong to any cultural background.

Unconscious Bias in Hiring

Some employers have an unconscious or predetermined opinion about certain applicants during the hiring process. For instance, even today, many employers are skeptical about employing women who are married or have children, anticipating the additional maternity and childcare costs that they must bear.

Companies must identify and handle those who hold such opinions when getting along with team members from a particular background. Moreover, companies must understand and refine their policies to provide equal opportunities to all diverse groups.

Different Working Styles

A certain group of people prefer starting their work early as part of their lifestyle or cultural beliefs. However, some others prefer starting late and syncing their productivity to their body clocks. When members from such different beliefs come together to work in a team, problems will arise.

This is where leaders and HR professionals must intervene and decide on negotiables and non-negotiables concerning working styles. Flexible work times, remote work, and planned team meetings help the team members connect better while following their work styles.

Tackling Generational Gaps

The age gap between leaders and team members is often a cause of concern when resolving problems. The approach the leaders offer may not be in line with the risk-averse approaches suggested by budding team members or interns. Such reasons unknowingly cause rifts between employees and leaders.

Companies must ensure that every team has members from different age groups. Employees must be educated to value opinions and their correctness, irrespective of age and experience.

Lack of Diversity in Leadership Roles

In most organizations, the top leadership roles are often occupied by males. Similarly, some companies have leaders from a particular community or ethnic group. When women or leaders from diverse backgrounds are absent from leadership positions, employees can feel a sense of detachment.

While it can be easy to suggest, companies must develop mandates that ensure a fair distribution of leadership roles among employees of all genders and prominent ethnic groups in the organization. Seeing one among them as a leader motivates other employees to perform better and reach that position.

Adaptability

No matter how hard a company tries to make employees feel inclusive and equal, some may not because of disengagement, which can lower the willingness to accept other diverse members. These members can also be a cause of disengagement, bringing down the team or group’s overall morale.

HR and leaders must devise ways to identify such members and educate them on the importance of DEI. Failure to meet the requirements can be penalized by even terminating employment.

 

How Does R180 Support Companies in Building Diverse Teams?

   

Since DEI is part of employee engagement, companies can use employee engagement solutions and platforms to implement and monitor various strategies to promote diversity and inclusion.

R180 is a pioneering employee engagement solution that caters to companies worldwide. From small startups to large corporate organizations, our team has helped several C-suite and technical teams improve their productivity and unity.

Our special DEI initiatives aim to build robust teams through comprehensive assessments, workshops, communication sessions, and more.

Here is a walkthrough of how we handle differences within teams:

1. Assessments to Reduce Unconscious Bias: Our proprietary assessments help organizations move beyond hiring on a gut feeling by identifying candidates based on their values, competencies, and potential. These assessments identify core strengths and blind spots to ensure better role alignment while minimizing the influence of unconscious bias in hiring decisions.
2. Team Dynamics Report: Based on the results of our assessments, we use data-driven and AI-powered insights to understand the team's value blockers and address the issue at hand.
3. Leadership Development: We train leaders and managers by providing workshops on bias awareness and inclusive leadership. We coach them on effective communication, decision-making, and creating growth pathways that ensure opportunities for all employees.
4. Interactive DEI & Well-Being Workshops: We conduct customized DEI and well-being workshops to help teams build a thriving and diverse workforce. These interactive sessions guide employees in recognizing how unconscious biases impact teamwork and decision-making. Additionally, they provide strategies to boost well-being, foster healthy workplace dynamics, and strengthen team unity.

 

Conclusion

   

Many companies are hiring employees from diverse backgrounds as part of their DEI initiatives. This change ensures that people from different ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds work towards common goals with uniform policies and procedures.

For most companies, implementing DEI has shown improved productivity and better engagement among employees, thereby improving their business in the global marketplace.

Hiring and maintaining diverse teams within an organization can be challenging for companies, but the best DEI practices can help them.

Our curated services have benefited many companies, from hiring the right mix of diverse talents from talent pools and training them with DEI norms to handling diversity conflicts within teams.

Contact us today with any concerns about Diversity and Inclusion in your company. Our team will help you identify the best initiatives to ensure smooth team functioning across all teams.