<Insight

Workplace diversity is the rich mix organizations get by bringing a variety of people together, reflecting individual differences across backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.

As we come to understand more about diversity, our descriptions of workplace diversity evolve. There's diversity not just across categories, but also within categories, because categories comprise unique individuals: shared identity does not equal shared experiences. And at the individual level, as a person's perspectives, experiences, skills, and identities evolve, the unique contributions they are able to make in a workplace continue to evolve.

Many organizations have had success in building and leveraging some types of diversity, such as functional diversity. Yet many struggle with building, sustaining, and leveraging social and cultural diversity, as reflected in data on workplace diversity. But there are effective approaches to diversity management that can increase an organization's ability to grow and capitalize on workplace diversity.

Here are two important ones:

Work Shoulder-to-Shoulder

Research demonstrates that increasing contact among people from different backgrounds helps to increase workplace diversity and mitigate unconscious bias, which can negatively impact an organization's ability to build, sustain, and benefit from diversity.

Learn through Diversity

And when organizations adopt an "integration-and-learning perspective" on cultural diversity, viewing diversity as a valuable learning resource for moving an organization forward, they increase their ability to achieve a competitive advantage through diversity, including enhanced creativity & innovation, team performance, employee engagement, and business performance.

Let us help you grow and capitalize on workplace diversity by using the combined power of inclusive leadership, effective diversity management, and teaming to increase contact across differences and foster an atmosphere of learning through diversity.