Diversity for a Reason

Now, I’ll be the first to say you shouldn’t do things just to say you’re doing them. Unfortunately, a lot of leaders that say they embrace diversity may be saying that simply because it’s what they think they’re supposed to say, without really managing diversity within their workforce in order to improve their firms. But if you understand what diversity means and how it can help you, you’ll discover just how powerful it can really be.

Diversity doesn’t just mean having a mix of men and women, or having people with different skin colors or different religions. What it really comes down to is having people with different perspectives. The point is not to meet some random quota, but instead to bring a range of viewpoints into your firm which can help you understand a broader cross-section of consumers, or provide a wider range of ideas for your firm. Factors like gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, economic class, marital status, education…all of these contribute to one’s perspective on the world, so finding a mix of these attributes can offer you a diverse mix of inputs to your business as well. Without diversity in your workforce you’re more likely to keep working along a narrow path, missing opportunities as they arise because your focus is so limited. In creative fields, that can spell death for a company.

When you’re hiring, try to look beyond the obvious features that signal diversity and instead listen to your potential employees during the interview process to see what they can bring. While asking questions that are too personal is a no-no, listen carefully to how they respond to the questions you do ask to see what they bring. If they offer a perspective that sounds different from what you’re used to, that should be a point in their favor. Expand your recruiting beyond the "normal" places to increase your chances of broadening your corporate perspective. For that matter, expand your recruiting beyond that which your competitors do, so you have a chance to pick up some of the talent they miss.

So in the end, that doesn’t mean you should try to set and meet quotas of so many men, so many women, so many gay, so many straight, so many Asian, so many Latin American…well, you get the point. What you should do instead is create a corporate culture that is open to all these different groups, that actively seeks out new employees from a variety of sources, and that makes use of these various perspectives, so you’re able to attract new employees, hang on to them, and get the most benefit from them.

Don’t celebrate diversity just because a bumper sticker told you that you should. Celebrate it because it’s good for your creative business. And remember that “celebrating diversity” doesn’t just mean having a statement about it in your employee handbook, it means nurturing a culture that sees diversity as the norm and takes full advantage of it.