- March 9, 2021
- By Joshua Reid
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
- black lives matter , business , company , corporate , corporate transformation , DEI , diversity , inclusion , progress
What Happens When You Don’t Have Diversity in Your Company
Diversity and inclusion within a company is still being discussed and debated today in the United States. With companies continuing to implement diversity and inclusion initiatives in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, and coming to terms with their own history of diverse inequality, the question that comes to my mind is: what about the companies that choose to not have a diverse management team?
Throughout much of America’s history, the corporate world has been dominated by white males, but now, in the 21st century, much of the landscape for companies has changed, progressed even. Start-up companies and businesses are now being created by people of different ethnic, gender, and societal backgrounds. Others must transform pre existing businesses to fit a more diverse environment, and that creates a struggle. How are they to feel when they are now required to create a diversity and inclusion team as a part of their company for fear of being fined (Bell)? What benefits do these changes offer?
Diversity within the workplace is no longer seen as a checkbox one can tick off, saying “we hired this person in the company, so we fulfilled our [fill-in-the-blank] quota.”We now recognize that if a company doesn’t have an array of people from diverse backgrounds, they become stagnant, not only in the workplace itself but also in their thinking and productivity. They are unable to move towards a better future.
In a post by Gayle Markowitz and Samantha Sault for the World Economic Forum in June 2020 titled, “What companies are doing to fight systemic racism,” they mentioned that, since the protests against George Floyd’s killing last year, many companies are now speaking up for “racial diversity, equity and inclusion in the business community” (Markowitz). However, it’s a quote by Vijay Eswaran, the executive chairman of QI Group. a World Economic Forum partner, that stuck out to me.
“Business has the transformative power to change and contribute to a more open, diverse and inclusive society. We can only accomplish this by starting from within our organizations. Many of us know intuitively that diversity is good for business. The case for establishing a truly diverse workforce, at all organizational levels, grows more compelling each year. The moral argument is weighty enough, but the financial impact – as proven by multiple studies – makes this a no-brainer” (Markowitz).
Diversity within a company is good business.
When you choose to not have a diverse group of people within your company, you are actually hurting your company, not helping it. It will remain stagnant and unable to progress because you’re not allowing for a new range of perspectives to shape your company. When that happens, you lose customers.
Diversity gives you the ability to draw on a wide range of experiences to better market your business to both the younger and older generations. It even allows you the option to revamp existing products to better market them to a wider demographic than before. But these things can only happen if you choose to allow diversity within your company.
Sources
Bell, David A., and Dawn Belt. “New Law Requires Diversity on Boards of California-Based Companies.” Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 10 October 2020.
Markowitz, Gayle, and Samantha Sault. “What companies are doing to fight systemic racism.” World Economic Forum, 24 June 2020.
