Importance of Diversity in a Successful Firm

Imagine yourself waking up one morning to meet a few of your associates for a bite to eat and on this day, everything in your room is the same color. You walk into the closet and every shirt, every pair of pants, and every pair of socks and shoes are the same. Imagine getting into your car and driving down the street to see that every yard, home, and car is exactly the same as yours. Imagine that once you are seated, the menu contains only one selection—meatloaf, lima beans, corn on the cob, one slice of white bread, and a glass of iced tea. With your friends all dressed as you are; all driving the same car; all eating the same meal; all having the same opinion on the weather, politics, and the present state of current affairs; and all with the same family stories, memories, and plans for the future, there is not much conversation or discussion going on among you. Let us question this scenario for a moment. Is it realistic? How exciting is this way of living? And finally, how often do you truly wish for your day to occur in this manner? Some people would honestly enjoy the ease of not having to pick out an article of clothing as much as they would enjoy not having to make a decision as to what sounds good enough to eat. And let’s not forget to discuss the benefit in not having to explain your beliefs and thoughts to those with whom you associate. Would you be one of these people?

On the other hand, what about those opportunities to wear a t-shirt rather than a sweater, shorts instead of jeans, and tennis shoes instead of those uncomfortable work shoes? Would you miss that? Shall I remind you that on occasion you simply have a taste for a sandwich or a salad instead of a full-course meal? And what about those occurrences when you missed the news report or the final score? Who would you call? You and all of your associates have the same history, the same plans, and the same outlook for the future, and you probably have the same agenda each evening. So if you missed the report on the television last night, they were most likely doing exactly what you were doing the night before.

Now imagine that when you wake up the next day to head into work you wake up to different colors on the walls and different textures and fabrics throughout your bedroom. You are able to choose what color and style of outfit you wish to wear since there is now a selection. You decide if you want to ride your bike, take the bus, or drive into work that morning. On the way to work, you either read the paper or listen to the other passengers or to the people on the radio. Like other days, you agree with some of what you read or hear and disagree with the rest. Does it surprise you of the different viewpoints that are in abundance? But do the thoughts, ideas, and philosophies make you ponder your own?

Then imagine that once you finally arrive to work, you are back in the first scenario—everyone is exactly the same as you. They are all in the same outfit, all have the same background and they all have the same exact thoughts on every aspect of life as you. This business is either striving for a nondiverse environment or possibly stifling their diversity components by policies and mandates. Does this business scenario bring you feelings of comfort or discomfort? If it is the latter, you, like this business, may not realize the benefit as well as the extreme potential diversity can bring into any corporation that willingly embraces it. This business is ignoring the benefits and potential of a diverse work environment.

Businesses usually encompass the different dimensions of diversity by accident rather than strategic planning. Diversity includes the following broad categories: age, culture, disability, educational background, employee status, family status, gender, organizational role, physical appearance, race, religion, sexual orientation, and thinking style. For larger firms, the strategic plan for success is based on growing the business, pleasing their clients, and retaining the best employees. A firm’s diversity is not the only component in its ability to succeed, but it is a vital factor.

For a firm to grow, the firm must grow its operations, its market focus, and eventually its resources. Through a firm’s course of growth, it will eventually have to review the policies, practices, and procedures to match this new direction. The firm’s managers will have to question their past rules in order to ascertain the limits and potential barriers of each.

Would a firm that wants to expand into a new technology base its submittal on decades old practices? They would likely educate themselves on that new technology, build the employee base that has the necessary experience, and spend the dollars required to expand accordingly. This is diversity in its simplest form. A firm wanting to grow must diversify themselves in the necessary categories to meet the growing demands of their market, clients, and community.

A firm’s growth is limited by its ability to attract, recruit, retain, and develop key talent. The diversity within a company attracts the people and it also helps with the recruiting of individuals since the source potential is larger. When there is a lack of effort to embrace the need to change and in turn conform to standards of years past, retaining employees is that much harder and it is unfortunate to witness talent not being utilized for the benefit of the company. Without a diverse workforce and environment, the best employees are more likely to seek those firms that are comfortable with augmenting their company’s ways to match that of the changing workforce, community, and client.

In today’s world, people for the most part are born diverse. They are born to either a single parent or two parents who have unique genetics. They are either the only, oldest, middle, or youngest child. They are born in a part of the country that is common to few. And they are born at a single moment in time. Their diversity component increases as they grow, experience different things, and learn a variety of methods and procedures to accomplish a single task. These people meet individuals with their own components of diversity and essentially increase their own diverse background by some factor.

We each live off of the diversity of others—our family and friends are all unique and we become a force of the variety of friends that we associate ourselves with. We benefit from our experiences of others while growing up in our neighborhood. We benefit from our sister, cousin, or uncle who bakes the best cakes and pies this side of the Mississippi. We benefit from our friends who have gone through the experience before us and made it through smarter and wiser. We benefit from the complete stranger who has read that certain book or seen that certain movie.

People tend to promote their diverse background through books, letters, e-mails, and simple conversation. As appropriate, some people are proud enough to display their diversity through the display of pictures, banners, and posters. The ability of a firm and its management to strategically incorporate the diversity of these people—their employees—into the values and focus of the business initiatives would in turn be a major contributing factor to its success. The firm’s strategic plan would then recognize the power that comes from people of diverse backgrounds and experiences coming together around a common goal.

Those are the benefits and strengths that we bring to a company or a firm that is looking to gain and use their employees for the diversity that they bring into the workplace as they walk in the door. Having employees with such a diverse work background enables growth and experiences that will enable a company to provide quality customer service. In today’s advanced market the customer expects a unique solution to their problem. There is a high demand for firms to surpass the cookie-cutter thought process and formulate a deliverable that supersedes both written and unwritten expectations. Clients have become smarter, have demanded more from their respective firms, and have essentially challenged firms to respond accordingly. Clients want firms and their representatives to feel what they feel, to feel the necessity and need as they do, and at the same time, respond unlike anything they have seen previously. Clients want firms to understand the situation and solve the problems in a unique manner. By drawing on a diverse employee base, a company is best equipped to meet its obligations to customers and to the wider communities in which it operates. For this, a company has to be able to utilize their diverse workforce to relate to the client and decipher the best solution to meet the client’s expectations and needs.

This way of thinking is standard among all of us. As the client, we want the restaurant serving us to know we want our food to be edible, tasty, and as described in the menu. We also want food to be prepared in a way that we could not get at any other place, because if we could, we would. We would most likely go to the other place if given the chance of a better experience, one unlike what we can get around our own table or one that we have had over and over and over again. We also expect the restaurant to continue to improve, to continue to provide us with reliable service, and at the same time to diversify their selections to keep our continued interest and excitement.

A firm not utilizing the free commodity of diversity could experience the adverse effect of actually hurting the company. A company most often begins with single idea from an individual. This idea gets nourished; it grows, expands, and finally flourishes through feedback, suggestions, and comments from others that have different experiences and basic beliefs. Imagine if this idea never changed from the single thought by the single individual back in 1945 with the start of the company. This company would still be run with typewriters and not laptop computers. This business would still be operated by males with a wife, two kids named Susie and Billy, and a dog named Spot tucked away in the home surrounded by a white picket fence. This business would still cater to the client whose main focus is limited to, at best, the United States. The business would still expect to retain each individual that starts with the company until the day they retire forty-plus years later, with little to no effort on the company’s part. The reality is that this company would be out of business.

As has been stated numerous times before, the diversity of the company should match that of the clients and community that it serves. The flaw in this theory is that most communities strive for diversity much like firms. Although the terminology might be different, the focus is the same. So with this ever-increasing diversity effort by communities, how about the business’s strategic plan work to exceed the present limit of simply matching the diversity of their client and community?

Communities develop strategic plans to meet their goals just as businesses do. These communities want to be successful and plan for growth in development of resources to fund and match an ever-demanding budget. These communities want diversity in various components of their neighborhood to attract a variety of businesses, neighbors, and visitors. These communities want people that visit to come back again and the neighbors that live in the community to remain there forever. To meet their plan, the communities offer diversity within their programs and develop partnerships with neighboring communities and associations, if necessary, to achieve diversity in what they offer.

Let us go back and imagine that after you go to your place of employment, you are valued for your experiences—all of the diverse components that make you unique and of value to that firm. Imagine that when you are in a meeting, your voice is heard and respected because of what you brought to the table through your diverse being. How would that feel? Now simply imagine the firm continuously examining the components of their strategic plan not because of a law but merely because of the importance of diversity in any sized firm.