Montreal Gazette: Diversity pays dividends in the workplace

Interesting article in the Montreal Gazette about the benefits of building a truly diverse workplace - including ensuring that multiple voices are heard in all departments, like deliberately finding women for your engineering group.

From the piece:

And this isn't just true for minorities. The institute conducted a study that suggested a strong connection between diversity training in workplaces and employee satisfaction -even among Caucasians. In companies with diversity training, 70.1 per cent of white Caucasians were satisfied, compared with 64.6 per cent of white Caucasians at companies without diversity training. For visible minorities, 63.5 per cent reported satisfaction with their jobs when their company offered diversity training, versus 47.5 per cent in companies without diversity training.

Cukier figures diversity training makes companies, "more self-reflective on what their practices and processes are. As a result, (the workplace) becomes more open and transparent for everyone else." And because satisfied employees tend to stick around, improving retention rates, companies benefit. The institute reports that 36 per cent of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning) Canadians who experience discrimination will change careers, for instance.

Having a wide range of backgrounds in a company may also be good for innovation. Some researchers argue that, "if you have people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, they're more likely to come up with 'out-of-the-box' solutions to solving problems than people with similar backgrounds and viewpoints," Cukier says.

Diversity is also about serving customers better. "As the market you're serving gets more diverse . . . your ability to serve and understand and respond to that market is going to be a function of the diversity in the workplace," she says.

Read the full article at the link. 

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Posted by: gisela on 2010-06-29 12:53:05

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