5 Reasons Diversity in the Workplace Is a Competitive Advantage
Building a diverse workforce isn't just beneficial; it's a major factor of success in the modern business landscape. Organizations that seek, celebrate, and embrace diversity have several very real advantages over their competitors.
It's not just about building a heterogeneous workforce, though. In order to truly benefit from the myriad advantages diversity in the workplace offers, it's important to understand diversity's many strong points, and how they can help your organization grow.
Want more? Check out 11 Diversity and Inclusion Statistics That Will Change How You Do Business
1. Diverse competencies
Each employee brings a set of skills to the organization. By its very nature, a diverse workforce provides a diverse set of competencies.
What makes that so valuable?
A homogeneous workforce often suffers the disadvantage of a narrow skill set. While that narrower list of competencies may be perfectly suited to the current goals of the organization, it's not going to remain that way indefinitely.
What's more, a homogeneous workforce is not just an abstract future disadvantage an organization may face down the line.
Many homogeneous teams are already missing out on huge windows for growth by failing to recognize opportunities for innovation that might drive their organization forward.
The broad set of skills and perspectives of a diverse team provides a greater chance at achieving breakthroughs like new products and services, new markets to address, or new approaches to existing markets—just to name a few.
2. Diverse perspectives
One of the greatest advantages of a diverse workplace is the host of perspectives it provides.
There are often countless ways to solve a problem, but without varied perspectives, most of those solutions aren't always obvious, or even visible. The more diverse perspectives you can focus on overcoming a particular challenge, the more likely you're going to land on a brilliant, creative solution.
That's not all.
Many of the world's most successful organizations are already aware of this. Research conducted as part of Forbes Insights' Global Diversity and Inclusion: Fostering Innovation Through a Diverse Workforce found that 85% of surveyed companies with over $500 million in revenue either agreed, or strongly agreed that "a diverse and inclusive workforce is crucial to encouraging different perspectives and ideas that drive innovation."
The tricky part about innovation is that it's hard to see coming.
The multitude of perspectives a diverse team provides can have a great impact on the organization's ability to visualize and capitalize on innovative concepts.
3. Diverse candidate pool
This may be one of the most simple, but overlooked benefits of diversity in the workplace. By hiring diverse candidates, an organization has its pick from a much larger pool of highly talented individuals than an organization that isn't.
That's a huge advantage.
Expanding the top of the hiring funnel to include a more diverse set of individuals will almost certainly improve results down the line.
Attending career fairs and choosing candidates from your alma mater might seem like a good idea—you're already aware of the values that institution works to instill in its students, and as an alumni, they're likely in line with yours.
The problem with this approach is that there are a huge number of qualified candidates who didn't attend that school, or who aren't even recent graduates of any school. Don't miss out on them.
How do you do that?
Think globally, and think inclusively as you develop your hiring process. There may be a perfect fit waiting for you in the most unlikely place.
In their article "Rethinking Diversity Recruiting," hiring platform WayUp's team explains that "... diversity is composed of so many factors that a quick glance may cause you to overlook a diverse candidate."
When hiring for diversity, remember that diversity in itself is a very broad term, with many connotations. It's incredibly hard to pin down. The key is considering those myriad connotations as you work to diversify your team.
4. Diverse culture
Hiring for cultural fit is a popular strategy for organizations, but there's a point at which it becomes a barrier to diversity, and growth.
As Celia DeAnca explains in her Harvard Business Review article:
We might be creating a situation in which companies will be very diverse in appearance, but intrinsically homogeneous. They will be hiring the same profile of people even though they might have very different backgrounds. Thus the company will appear diverse—but we know that appearances can be deceiving.
Continually hiring similar candidates isn't a culture building exercise—at best, it's simply culture maintenance.
A truly diverse organization will develop a diverse culture, and a diverse culture provides a sturdy foundation that is the basis for thriving within an ever-evolving business landscape.
Diversity and inclusion help strengthen that foundation with every hire, but once again, the key is to look at diversity from a broad perspective.
Want more? Check out 11 Diversity and Inclusion Statistics That Will Change How You Do Business
5. Diverse market
An organization with a diverse workforce has a huge advantage when addressing constantly evolving markets.
A major element of effectively addressing a market is building a relationship with the people within it. This is particularly important for companies who deal in retail and consumer goods. In their Deloitte Review publication, Alison Kenney Paul, Thom McElroy and Tonie Leatherberry explain that:
Leaders of retail and consumer goods businesses, in particular, will need to take steps to understand and create affinity with an increasingly multicultural and multifaceted consumer base.
The benefits don't start and end with retail. Organizations of all types can benefit from access to an expanded customer base.
As the shape of the market changes, it takes a broader view to see its various movements, and a diverse workforce can help give an organization the perspective it needs to participate.
In conclusion
These are just a few of the countless benefits of diversity in the workplace. In this modern business landscape, it's absolutely crucial to embrace diversity early on, and into the future.
Want more? Check out 11 Diversity and Inclusion Statistics That Will Change How You Do Business
Read Next
The new and improved Rewards page allows companies to highlight their company culture and users to express their unique personalities through a customized reward experience. Bonsuly’s robust reward catalog meets employees wherever they work with 1,200+ rewards in 200+ countries. With reward information at their fingertips, and a WCAG AA accessibility supported interface, employees can spend less time redeeming rewards and more time enjoying them.
Let’s take a look at what’s on the menu!
Streamlined shopping experience
The new rewards experience matches familiar online shopping patterns and pages load faster than ever before for a stellar shopping experience. Redeeming a reward is as simple as 1, 2, 3:
- When a user navigates to the rewards page, they’ll immediately see how many points they have available to spend with a prominent redeemable point balance.
- With their balance in mind, they can browse the updated reward categories to easily find the right reward for them.
- Once they select their desired reward, they’ll be met with a brand detail page highlighting key information they need to confidently claim their reward. After claiming the reward, it’s ready to be redeemed with the selected brand.
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Rewards for everyone
Bonusly’s reward experience is WCAG AA approved and meets the needs of global customers with robust translation capabilities and rewards in 200+ countries. We’re meeting our customers wherever they work with additional content translations supported and purchasing power parity abilities. It’s the rewarding experience heard around the world. 🌎
Built with your employees in mind
Every employee has a unique reward personality. There are the repeat redeemers; employees redeeming from the same reward month after month. The situational shoppers; employees cashing out rewards to line up with life events. The spontaneous purchasers; employees who like to try a new reward every time.
Lucky for our users, Bonusly’s reward refresh is customized to meet the unique needs of employees and companies alike. Now, everyone can quickly find rewards they might like or re-order their favorites. At the company level, admins have the ability to add custom rewards or donations central to their culture. We’ve also made it much easier to represent your company in style with automated swag fulfillment through AXOMO. Last, but not least, we highlighted "Points Boost" on the rewards page to increase peer-to-peer recognition while keeping recognition budgets in check.
The bottom line: employers reward the way they want, and employees are rewarded the way they want.
As if this update wasn’t enough, we’re just getting started! Keep an eye on this blog post to be the first to find out about additional reward enhancements. We hope you and your employees enjoy a more seamless, fun, and accessible rewards experience. Ready to share the news? Our one pager can help. Happy rewarding!
Are employee engagement surveys the be-all and end-all to understanding employee sentiment? 🤔
Though surveys can be a good first step to assess the state of the organization, they need to be supplemented with rich, real-time people analytics in order to be meaningful, trustworthy, and actionable. Let's take a look at the challenges with traditional engagement surveys and how rich people analytics can help fill in the gaps. 📈
The issue with traditional engagement surveys
Surveys without action can create mistrust among employees. If you're willing to ask employees questions, you should be ready to respond to feedback, and quickly. When survey data is mishandled, mistrust among employees increases. Additionally, employees don’t trust that survey results are truly anonymous and fear retribution for unfavorable opinions about the company. That’s why surveys should be supplemented with reliable, real-time people analytics.
Beyond mistrust, surveys often offer temporary solutions to long term problems. HR teams frequently scramble to offer quick fixes to the issues they see in their survey results, when what they need to focus on is implementing permanent solutions. That’s the problem with receiving engagement data all at once instead of regularly, in real-time. Enter Bonusly analytics! Bonusly allows you to understand and react to employee sentiment in real time with powerful people analytics.
How to use Bonusly to supplement survey data
As Walden University puts it, “Surveys provide a snapshot of the moment that’s already passed.” By the time you collect, analyze and take action on survey results it can be too late to move the needle on employee engagement and retention. In addition to employee surveys, it’s essential to monitor real-time people analytics to act on important peoples decisions quickly.
Zero in on problem areas
Identify engagement issues in real-time and quickly understand which parts of your organization need your attention. With Compare Rates analytics, you can consistently compare recognition rates across teams and identify teams that are giving and receiving recognition at a rate below your company’s average. You can make recommendations to boost recognition rates by implementing award programs, encouraging managers to recognize their direct reports, and connecting your Bonusly instance to your preferred chat tool to boost visibility of recognition and encourage add-ons.
Establish benchmarks
Before and after you take action based on survey results, benchmark your company’s current level of engagement with Bonusly. Having quantitative data to improve upon can be a great way to set tangible goals for long term improvement.
Measure adoption of core values
You can use hashtag analytics to regularly measure the adoption of your company values. Understand if there are values that have trended down that may need programming support from the HR team. Were there key events that can be tied to those declines? Regularly reviewing changes in hashtag analytics allows Bonusly customers to proactively implement changes instead of reacting to survey results.
Incentivize survey responses
A key issue with employee engagement surveys is that they’re hard to get employees to respond to given the time commitment. Low response rates lead to inadequate sample sizes which makes meaningful organizational change a challenge. Using Bonusly’s awards, HR teams can incentivize participation in the engagement survey to ensure they have sufficient results to work with.
Next up, let's look at how you can use Bonusly data to make employee survey results actionable.
How to use Bonusly to take action on survey results
Bonusly’s robust people analytics are essential to supplementing survey data. Here are four ways you can use Bonusly analytics to ensure survey results don't collect dust on your HR team's desk:
Survey says: low engagement scores
Bonusly helps build a culture of appreciation and many of our customers have seen their eNPS scores go up as a result of implementing Bonusly. Both Andiamo and Nexthink were able to increase their eNPS scores significantly after implementing Bonusly. 👏
Survey says: lack of DEI education
If you get feedback about a lack of DEI education in the company, start to incentivize educational behaviors like training, courses, and focus groups happening at your organization. Using Bonusly’s award functionality helps increase employees' personal initiative to take part in important learning opportunities and empowers everyone to influence company culture in a meaningfully positive way.
Survey says: retention is an issue
Often, employees flag retention as an improvement area in engagement surveys. Implementing an employee recognition program has a powerful impact on retention. In fact, 48% of Bonusly customers saw an improvement in employee retention after implementing Bonusly. With Bonusly's help, our customers at Pender Veterinary saw their attrition rate stay flat during the Great Resignation.
Survey says: employees are disconnected
Often, HR teams get survey feedback about a lack of connection between employees, teams, and departments. Bonusly can help! Over ⅔ of Bonusly customers reported an improvement in employee connection after implementing Bonusly.
We've only scratched the surface on what Bonusly's powerful people analytics can do for your company. Want to learn more? Schedule an employee recognition demo.
New Custom Feeds: A Dynamic Feed of Recognition
Too much employee appreciation is a good problem to have, but it can be overwhelming to keep track of every piece of recognition flowing through your organization.
To help you and your team stay up to date on recognition that matters most to you, we’ve launched Custom Feeds. Custom Feeds allow Bonusly users to save feeds to their homepage for specific locations, teams, or departments. Everyone has the freedom to decide which feeds they want to see and the flexibility to quickly change them at any time. With easily adjustable views, users can zoom in on relevant recognition without losing sight of the organization as a whole.
What can the update do?
With Custom Feeds, you can view only the recognition you need to see, when you need to see it. Then, when you’re done looking at a specific slice of your organization, you can quickly toggle back to seeing organization-wide recognition. With Custom Feeds you can:
- Create and save new feeds based on teams, departments, and locations
- Keep tabs on several streams of recognition at once
- Add and remove feeds easily and as often as needed
What can the update do for you?
Teams aren’t static, Bonusly’s new Custom Feeds aren’t either. New Custom Feeds support large, international teams like never before all while saving managers and leaders valuable time.
Support companies with multiple office locations
For companies with multiple offices and locations, Custom Feeds allow you to easily follow recognition posts from your location, helping you keep tabs on the team you interact with most throughout your workday, without losing sight of what’s happening company-wide.
Support large and scaling businesses
If you’re working at a large or scaling business, you can use Custom Feeds to create visible feeds of the most relevant teams, departments, and locations. Then, when you’re done zooming in on specific teams, you can quickly return to viewing the organization as a whole.
Keep track of the team’s key milestones
Gone are the days of missing important work milestones like birthdays and anniversaries. With Custom Feeds, you can view recognition by teams or departments to keep track of recognition and interactions flowing between the people you work with most.
Quickly change your perspective
Custom Feeds saves you time and makes catching up on and engaging with relevant recognition simple. Need to switch up your feed view to get some new perspective? You can change your recognition view in a matter of seconds by adding feeds to your homepage. You can set them and forget them, or make changes as often as you’d like.
What’s next?
Custom Feeds are now available to all new and existing Bonusly customers. 🎉 If you’re new to Bonusly and want to see Custom Feeds in action, request a product demo or take an interactive tour of Bonusly.