The world celebrated Pride Month in June, and stories on professional platforms are still doing several rounds on our feeds.
A Black woman wearing cornrows at the office for the first time as the hairstyle wasn’t appropriate for the workplace all these years. A man in his 50’s sharing his novel contribution at a startup as an employee and not a founder. How did a man reveal his sexual orientation to his colleagues?
Surprisingly, these stories are heart-warming and liberating to hear in 2021! Maybe because these are from regular people who have regular jobs, and not from celebrities.
Corporates are changing their mindset about cultural diversification and trying to be more inclusive. Yet, there is a long way to go forward before we experience equal equality around us because some of us still think equality is still just about race and gender!
Hence, this is a humble try to help you understand diversity, how organizations can be more inclusive & diverse in culture, and why it is so important.
Before we get to the point, here are a few basics one must get cleared about Diversity!
Types of Diversity
1. Internal Diversity : is characteristic with which one is born. It is something that is assigned to a person by his/her birth.
It includes –
2. External Diversity : It is characteristics of a person that come along with time and experience. They are formed opinions or interests over time. The examples includes –
3. Organization Diversity : The characteristics of a person assigned by an organization as an associate of it are called organizational diversity. Here is what it includes –
4. Worldview Diversity : These are the characteristics of a person that change from time to time depending on the experiences. It includes –
Why a diverse environment is important for organizations!
Imagine a group of people from similar backgrounds, lifestyles, and a place. What would happen when these people work together?
It wouldn’t be surprised all of them having a similar kind of ideology. It would be hard to think or relate to a group of people out of their circle. The same perception will hinder creativity and out-of-box thinking!
When people are culturally diverse, they tend to have different life experiences and different ways of thinking. A culturally diverse group brings varied ideas to the table for discussion. It helps to understand various aspects of psychology, society, and cultures. It enables businesses to generate relatable ideas for a larger audience.
Hence a diverse culture in an organization helps to foster innovation and creativity that enables a business to grow and expand globally and not limit itself to a single geographical area.
Sourcing for culturally diverse teams
Diverse recruitment needs dedicated time! When looking for candidates, recruiters need to dig deep into their experience and their interests instead of just skimming through it. Searching for only reputed names of schools and companies won’t help recruiters to learn more about each individual candidate. They need to look for what they have done, not where they have done it.
It is not easy to diversify your recruit pipeline as it takes actionable steps to ensure that you are progressing forward. And, Sourcing being an important part of building a diverse slate of candidates, organizations need to put intentional in their efforts to evaluate candidates fairly, so they don’t unintentionally weed out great talent at any stage.
Hence, diversity sourcing should be definitely considered as a distinct function and start/base of building culturally diverse and inclusive teams!
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