Many business owners are suffering from diversity fatigue, as they think it’s too much of an effort to implement diversity. In fact, businesses with a homogeneous workforce suffer a disadvantage in comparative success to more diverse companies by a quarter to a third. Diversity for diversity’s sake is certainly a noble business goal, but it can also result in improving a company’s bottom line or overall profits.
Whether you call it unconscious bias or homophily, we tend to gravitate to people who have similar backgrounds. Large companies are typically ran by white men who have Harvard MBAs, which is a really small community. While this is changing somewhat, these fields tend to be very homogeneous despite substantial business incentives associated with diversity.
A lot of smaller companies tend to think that they only have to worry about culture once they get bigger. However, studies show that if a company can prioritize diversity early on, it is more likely to become increasingly diverse as it grows. Otherwise, a big company would be made up of like-minded people seeking like-minded people and getting more ingrained and harder to change.
The Benefits of Diverse Hiring Teams
One of the easiest ways to increase diversity is to have a diverse hiring team. Homophily, which is the propensity to seek out people with similar backgrounds, can work to a business owner’s advantage if they have diverse hiring teams who are more likely to at least consider candidates that look and act like they do.
The best way to increase diversity within a company or personally is to make friends with people who don’t look like you, whether that’s inside or outside of the business. Breaking the cultural hierarchy allows employees to make relationships with people in different ways and has a positive effect on the diversity within a company.
For more tips on business incentives associated with diversity, call one of the employment law attorneys at the Spiggle Law Firm today.
