How diverse is your workplace? It’s a question that’s not always easy to answer. There might be a lot of talk about diversity in your workplace. Although that’s a good start, it’s not the same as actively promoting workplace diversity. So try to answer the question by looking at the facts. Can you describe your business as a place where there is:
- a balance between people of different ages, genders, ethnicities, sexual orientations, cultures, lifestyles, and religions?
- a culture where individual differences are respected, and all employees are treated equally and receive the same career opportunities?
If so, you’ll enjoy all the benefits of workplace diversity. You know – increased creativity, innovation, productivity, profit, and higher employee engagement. A diverse workforce even helps improve your reputation, making your company more desirable for applicants to work for.
But what if there is still some work to be done? How do you promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace? We’ll tell you more about that here.
Five tips to promote diversity in the workplace
With a diverse workforce, people with different backgrounds and experiences work together. They have different perspectives on things, which makes them faster problem solvers, more creative and innovative, and better at decision-making. But how do you achieve more diversity in the workplace? Here are five tips you can use to achieve more diversity in the workplace:
- Ask your employees how diverse they feel their employer is
Who better to ask how diverse your workforce currently is than the employees that work for you? Do they feel that they are treated equally and receive the same career opportunities as their colleagues? And do they see the workplace as a true reflection of society? Because that’s essentially what a diverse workforce is all about. - Educate managers and leaders on the importance of diversity
Managers and leaders need to understand the importance of diversity. They are the ones that hire and manage your employees. Don’t just assume that they’ll understand how critical workplace diversity is. Instead, you should educate them on the importance of growing and nurturing a diverse team. - Respect different cultures and religions
Have you succeeded in building a diverse workplace? Then there will be people working for you from different cultures and religions. It’s important to show them that you respect their backgrounds. You can do so by, for example, allowing employees to take time off work for religious holidays that may not be public holidays. - See how you can learn from other businesses
Do you have offices around the world? Then you can join forces to learn from each other. How diverse is the workforce in other offices? What are they doing right, and what can they improve? Together, you can get insights you wouldn’t have discovered on your own. - Write job ads using inclusive language
To increase workplace diversity, you’ll need to hire people from different ages, genders, and backgrounds. A prerequisite for doing so is that a diverse group of people from your target group apply for your jobs. To achieve this, you’ll need to write job ads using inclusive language. It’s the only way not to exclude anyone.
Appealing to absolutely everyone in your target group is more difficult than it might seem. Unless you use the text optimizer on our platform for text improvement. This tool gives you suggestions on avoiding things like age and gender bias. You’ll write understandable, high-quality job ads that use inclusive language to help you build a more diverse workforce.
The complexity of workplace diversity
There is no one simple solution for achieving more diversity in the workforce. The five tips we shared above might not work for every company. Workplace diversity is complex, and it might take some time to find out what works best for your business. So be patient and experiment to discover what steps can help you to create a more diverse workplace.