Gender Equality. This is a term that you might have heard a lot in your workplace, among your friend circle, on social media, on news, and in print media.
Everyone agrees that gender equality is important. It is a way to balance the nature of the ecosystem we live in. In a workplace setting, a balanced team is a sign of progress in the organization.
Studies show that teams with an equal gender mix perform significantly better than male-dominated teams when it comes to both sales and profits. Despite this fact, many organizations fail to devote time and attention to creating a more balanced workforce, particularly for higher-level positions.
What does Workplace Diversity mean?
What exactly does it mean to have a diverse workplace? Diversity in the workplace doesn’t mean that your company is actively hiring more female employees. Diversity occurs at the beautiful intersection of different people from different places with different experiences. It includes cultural diversity in the workplace, gender diversity, religious diversity, language diversity, different education levels, different viewpoints, and unique abilities. It’s all of that. It’s people who think differently, act differently, and have different opinions while working together to solve complex problems.
Diversity practice is not only a leveler. It is also an immense possibility for an organization’s growth
Why gender diversity is important for any organization?
→ Helps with recruiting and retention across the organization: Gender Parity shouldn’t just be limited to the senior management. In order to build a bench of talented, diverse team members, your company needs to cultivate gender diversity across the board in senior, mid-and lower-level positions.
This helps the company because, when potential recruiters interview you, they see people who look like them in the positions where they’ll be working. This can help your company come across as more welcoming to job candidates because it quietly signals that everyone’s work is valued and rewarded.
→ Improves creativity and innovation: Creativity and innovation are not synonymous. Creativity is the mental ability to develop practical, unique ideas and concepts. Innovation, on the contrary, is the extension of creativity. It is the process of transforming exceptional ideas into new entities.
In this day and age, every organization, be it small or big, is innovating in some or the other thing. Therefore, innovation is very crucial for any organization to grow and sustain.
A diverse workforce helps an organization bring more creativity and innovations.
→ Improves Employer Brand and Global Reputation: It’s pretty impossible to be in the room and not be a part of the discussion. Especially when you run a business, you can’t afford to miss out on what your competitors are doing. So, almost every small/big organization wants diversity in the workplace to be relevant. The criteria are to meet the quota or diversity policies and all the goodwill it brings with it.
Diversity in the workplace plays a vital role in building an excellent reputation for the company. This leads to increased profitability and equal opportunity for the company and its employees. Thus, organizations that commit to diversity enjoy a global reputation. This improves the employer’s brand and respect for their fair employment practices and ethics.
→ Leads to more productivity and performance: The range of experience, expertise, and working methods that a diverse workplace offers can boost problem-solving capacity and lead to greater productivity. In fact, studies have shown organizations with a culture of diversity and inclusion are both happier and more productive.
Diversity can breed healthy competition, stretching a team in a positive way to achieve their best. This atmosphere of healthy competition can lead to the optimization of company processes for greater efficiency.
→ Improves Company Culture: The work culture varies from company to company. Some follow a formal approach, while some have a casual approach. On the other hand, some organizations follow specific do’s and don’ts. Everything depends on the company's size, work ethics, goals, and work environment.
Company culture is the personality of the company. Your employee’s beliefs and actions in internal and external matters tell a lot about your company. Their behavior, feeling, and thinking determines the way they perform.
