Executive Culture: Diversity and Inclusion Equals Profits

established entrepreneurs Feb 01, 2021
Diversity and Inclusion

"What type of culture do we want to create in our company?"

If you are an Executive or a Founder, and you aren't asking this question, then you may need to make this a priority ASAP.

As someone that has owned many businesses over the years, I can tell you that company culture is the most important factor to the success of any business. The reason is because "Culture" touches on a number of areas.  A company with good culture should make the people feel:

  1. Respected: Having a voice and being heard
  2. Valued: Being an integral part to the business's mission
  3. Appreciated: Hard work and effort is appreciated by leadership
  4. Accepted: All are welcome and viewed as an equal

The "Accepted" category is becoming front and center today more than ever before. To be accepted means that regardless of background, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or physical appearance, everyone is welcome and viewed as an equal. This is called Diversity and Inclusion.

There are many Executives and Business Owner's whom fail to realize how Diversity and Inclusion not only improves "Culture", but that it also improves the bottom line. An interesting fact is that many businesses that have implemented Diversity and Inclusion measures within their company, but when audited by advisory firms such as Diversity Inc., the results show that the company has actually not done enough. This is why it's so important for companies to tackle this with priority.

To understand Diversity and Inclusion, let's define what each means:

Diversity in a workplace is having individuals with different genders, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation bringing a unique and valued perspective to the company.

Inclusion in a workplace is about making all employees feel respected, valued, appreciated and accepted. In other words, the employees are empowered!

So, you may be asking "How can Diversity and Inclusion improve my company and its bottom line?"

Let me paint you a picture on how Diversity and Inclusion provides companies financial and emotional advantages:

  1. A truly "Diverse" and "Inclusive" company fosters a culture that creates trust within the organization and its leadership.
  2. Trust will lead to employees feeling comfortable in expressing unique viewpoints from their differing backgrounds.
  3. These unique viewpoints will help in two areas:
    • First, it will foster new ideas and innovation.
    • Second, it will lead to better decision making.
  4. Put all of these positives together, and you will have a motivated workforce, who are willing to go the extra mile and therefore increasing work performance, which will result in higher profits.
  5. Even more importantly, Diversity and Inclusion can drastically help with morale and mental health.

Now imagine working for a company with a toxic environment:

  1. Employees will not trust the company.
  2. They won't express their unique viewpoints.
  3. The lack of employee engagement will leave ideas unshared and innovation stifled.
  4. All of this will lead to demotivation where employees do the bare minimum.
  5. The end result will be a company with a high employee turnover rate, inefficient operations, sparse productivity…all which will increase cost, produce a bad product and a negative impact on the bottom line.

To hit the point home, here's a few statistics (by Deloitte, Gartner, BCG, and McKinsey) to validate the importance of "Culture":

  1. Diverse companies enjoy almost 2.5 times higher cashflows from their employees.
  2. Diverse management teams had a 19% increase in revenue.
  3. Ethnically diverse teams are 35% more likely to outperform teams that are not ethnically diverse
  4. Gender diverse teams are 19% more likely to outperform teams that are not gender diverse

With everything we are learning today, it's hard to argue against the importance of company culture and diversity and inclusion. It's our job to keep moving in the right direction. Let's become change makers!

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