People in the United States often misunderstand workplace diversity. They sometimes see a concerted effort to bring together people of various backgrounds as a negative behavior that might one day cost them their job. Others see a program of minimum impact. But diversity in the workplace — or and space for that matter — is an important component of success and a problem-solving strategy.
Problems exist within the promotion of a diverse workforce, but this has everything to do with company culture and a reaction to the changes that leadership wants to enact. Workplace diversity itself is a fruitful and cutting-edge endeavor that promises to deliver results over the long term. So what makes an office collective of diverse employee backgrounds, cultural differences, sexual orientation, and ethnicity so strong?
It’s the life experiences that help everyone grow.
Diverse employees draw on a variety of life experiences that guide who they are and how they approach tasks, problems, and even data and analysis. Each person is different, of course, and we all bring our own unique skills, challenges, and experiences to the table when we arrive for work each day. However, a cookie-cutter work environment reminiscent of the 1950s with only white men wearing short hair and a button-down shirt is the fastest way to generate a feedback loop that only produces the information that is comfortable or easily digestible.
No matter what industry you work in, you need to draw on a range of voices and experiences in order to understand your customers and reach out to them in a manner that will engage each one individually. Hiring a diverse workforce unlocks access to these unique experiences and ways of thinking that you simply can’t grasp with a singular-minded office culture. For instance, many Americans have taken offense at the Black Lives Matter messaging, suggesting that they should be advocating that “all lives matter” instead.
It can be hard to understand the issue inherent to this way of thinking — that systemic injustices have in fact tipped the scales and created facts on the ground that don’t value all lives in the same way. An office of similar-thinking individuals can quickly turn a conversation about a social issue into an echo chamber. This is one of the primary problems we are seeing on social media as friends and liked groups contribute to a resounding confirmation bias on millions or billions of personal profiles around the world. Without a diverse group of close contacts, we are liable to entrench ourselves in beliefs that are rooted in fear, misinterpretation, or groupthink.
It’s problem-solving through different lenses.
But working with people that bring a variety of different experiences and cultural norms to the table can shatter this way of thinking. By injecting a diverse set of voices into your office your employees can begin to learn from one another and appreciate the nuances of social movements, societal issues, and current affairs all around the world. This is what firms, like Alamos Gold in Turkey, strive to achieve with their teams. Office staff and ground workers alike come from a wide-ranging tapestry of countries, backgrounds, and ethnicities at Alamos, and that’s the way they prefer it.
Building a strong team takes a commitment to expanding your horizons and testing the limits. Bringing in new talent that hails from far-flung destinations or a smattering of ethnic norms within your own backyard is the best way to begin to solve problems rapidly and with an expanded set of tools for the job. Adding new talent to your reservoir along with the services provided by an outlet like Free Trials will push you along the path toward success in a hurry.
Giving your team members the software they need (with a revolving series of free trials) is a great way to understand the evolving marketplace that you work within. Whether you are a gold mining firm like Alamos or sell bicycle parts in Middle America to clients in the local community, the game is constantly changing, and software packages race ahead of many of the problems we see in business. Working with trial software represents a secondary means of diversifying your problem-solving suite. Not only will your team approach problems with a wealth of experience but they will do it with the latest in software packages designed specifically to take on the problems facing the industry today and many days out into the future.
Recruiting and hiring with diversity and cultural background in mind is something that more and more businesses are subscribing to. Bringing in the “best of the best” means a commitment to search high and low for a diverse pool of candidates. Hiring those that bring the most to the team as a whole package is a no-brainer, and often these are candidates that don’t fit your preconceived notions. Let your hiring process and team guide you to greater success than you may have imagined possible.
