Why cultural diversity is important in the workplace?

For anyone in business or in any job we need to interact with people who are different to us. Cultural diversity in the workplace refers to hiring employees from all sorts of different backgrounds; regardless of race, religion and culture. The practice of diversity in the workplace brings about incredible changes to the company and its employees.

Take a second, and think about the human race as a whole, the different languages, cultures and beliefs across the world, if we have so much of this diversity in the world, why then, should we not focus on ensuring our labour force are just as diverse?

It is increasingly important for today’s business managers to raise their awareness of cultural diversity and the benefits attached to this. Managers should start viewing this concept as an asset, it is a serious competitive edge. Research even confirms you can outperform your competitors and achieve countless profits.

There are many benefits I could share but will only discuss a few:

1 Improves Creativity & Innovation

· Having a large number of different people from different backgrounds, the exposure to such a variety can lead to great ideas and initiatives. Generally, when you bring people together, you get different ideologies, perspective and methodologies that could improve different aspects in the business.

2 Leads to faster problem solving

· It is confessed and proven that companies with a high rate of diversity solve problems faster as they source solutions from various perspective. Each individual is different from the other, which makes them unique and therefore will have different experiences and thoughts which is why they are able to bring miscellaneous solutions on the table.

3 Better decision making

· Diversity plays an active role in better inclusive decision making, diverse teams process facts more carefully because they are considering perspectives of people who think differently than they do. Diverse teams are more innovative – look for different ways of solving problems and are not fond of conformity as this inhibits creative thinking.

4 Enhance Business reputation

· Workplace diversity also make the company look interesting, people from all different walks of life will relate with the company and brand, opening to new markets, clients and business partners.

In conclusion, most business leaders will seek out and surround themselves with people who feel and act the way they do. Diversity is difficult and challenging butut is diversity worth it? From both a human and a financial standpoint, the answer is most definitely.

Nozuko Tikayo

"Align all the elements of your life to support the pursuit of what has deep meaning to you"