As we’re living in an increasingly diverse world today, diversity and inclusion have become two of the most often used words of our time. Diversity and inclusion are key to see and understand how an organization gets perceived by employees, business partners, applicants, interviewees, and other stakeholders that at some point create a significant impact on employer branding strategy.
It’s clear that with the increasing diversity in the labor market, this is an important topic that organizations need to review - now and in the future. Effectively managing workplace diversity has quite a few benefits like increasing productivity, innovation, and creativity, improving employee relations, and effectively working with diverse customers.
There are also several challenges for organizations when implementing diversity management: complexity for organizations and individual managers increased team conflicts or reduced team cohesion. Normally, there are more bangs in mixed teams than in harmoniously homogeneous groups.
Creating a workplace culture that welcomes diverse talent and fosters a sense of belonging doesn’t happen by relying on isolated talent acquisition initiatives. That, for sure, has to be a company-wide effort.
What are diversity and inclusion?
Diversity is not about checking boxes and making sure we recruit candidates based on their identities, backgrounds, or gender. Diversity means to recognize and respect people as individuals and value for their different perspectives.
It’s about understanding, accepting, and valuing the differences and uniqueness between people, including those:
- of different races, national origins, ethnicities, genders, ages, religions, disabilities, and sexual orientations and
- with differences in education, skills, talents, personalities, experiences, opinions, and knowledge bases.
But we also have to be careful, though. Diversity is not the same as women’s promotion - diversity is not a synonym for women's quota.
Often the discussion is less about the open corporate culture than about quotas. Diversity and quotas for women are often used synonymously. Accordingly, diversity measures at the companies surveyed are such that they enable flexible working hours, parents with sick children can spontaneously stay at home, and home offices are offered. When it comes to diversity management, organizations very often think about the compatibility of work and family.
Inclusion is not about just giving an employee a chance to feedback during a survey. Inclusion makes sense of belonging. That means that everybody has to be given equal opportunity to contribute to the company’s success, be their true selves, and feel respected and valued for who they are - regardless of their background.
Inclusion in the workplace is a collaborative, supportive, and respectful environment that increases all employees’ participation and contribution. Real inclusion can remove barriers, discrimination, and intolerance. In the perfect case, it is even natural for everybody to feel included and supported.
To summarize, diversity and inclusion are a mission, a strategy, and a practice to support a diverse workplace to achieve competitive business advantages. Those companies are more adaptable, creative and become more attractive to top talent.
The importance of diversity and inclusion incentives
Building a diverse company means that you don’t discriminate against protected characteristics and that you’re an equal opportunity employer. It will also help build up your employer brand and keep your employees satisfied, creative, and productive. While some companies might be obliged by law to be unbiased when hiring and managing employees, it’s not mandatory to actively build diverse teams. However, some business benefits are associated with diversity in the workplace, which you should also consider.
Diverse companies reflect societies and demographics more accurately, speak to a broader market, and get more creative and even more profitable. PwC found that over 80% of survey participants said an employer’s policy on diversity, equality, and workforce inclusion is an important factor when deciding whether or not to work for them.
Best practices - examples:
- Creating a focus and a strategy at the CEO/COO level
- Reporting goals and measuring progress
- Fair and respectful treatment
- Equal access to opportunity
- Teamwork and collaboration
- Focus on innovation and creativity
- Organizational flexibility
- Representation of diversity at all levels of the organization
- Diversity & inclusion education and training (i.e., https://www.diversein.com)
Overall benefits of diversity and inclusion
Diversity and inclusion were top of mind for recruiting professionals in 2020. As numerous companies pledged to continue introducing these incentives last year, potential candidates and employees, but especially tech talents, will carry on to pay close attention to it in the years to come.
Here is our list of immediate benefits that come with carefully taken diversity & inclusion incentives:
Talent acquisition
- Your business will be more attractive to applicants due to a good reputation.
- Recruiting people from diverse backgrounds also brings more fresh ideas, creativity, and experience to encourage innovation.
Enhancing trust
- Transparency around diversity and inclusion will strengthen your employer brand with all stakeholders.
Diversity and inclusion as an opportunity
In conclusion, if you’re able to implement at least a few of the strategy ideas outlined below, you’ll provide yourself with one of today’s most significant competitive advantages when looking to attract software developers:
- Diversity and inclusion are a mission, a strategy, and a practice to support a diverse workplace to achieve competitive business advantages.
- The full diversity and inclusion priority is the recruitment of diverse employees.
- Diversity and inclusion have to be a top-to-bottom business strategy and not just an HR program to make a successful impact.
- Workplace diversity and inclusion are top of mind these days and will only grow in importance as companies continue to invest in their diversity and inclusion programs and activities.
Diversity and inclusion @ WeAreDevelopers
At WeAreDevelopers, we focus on establishing acceptance and inclusion in the everyday work environment. We value the diversity that each employee brings with their background regardless of ethnicity, culture, origin, gender, gender identity, expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion.
If you are interested to know more about WeAreDevelopers diversity & inclusion incentives, please check out the link.
