Five Tips for Creating a Solid Diverse Team

Today, diversity is essential in business because it fosters a higher-performing team and boosts innovation, creativity, and success. Diversity includes race, gender, culture, experience, interests, and other characteristics. 

Discriminatory hiring practices, whether they are intentional or unintentional, have a negative impact on the organization and can stifle its growth. When you are unwilling to hire a diverse team, you prevent your company from exploring better talents and limit its success rate.

Many business owners recognize the value of diversity but are unsure how to implement it in their organization. This article includes tips on how to build a high-quality, diverse team while encouraging inclusion in your company culture.

Why You Need A Diverse Team

You need a diverse team to increase employee productivity, enhance creativity and innovation, improve problem-solving and decision making, and increase profits. In fact, Statista reports that 72 percent of full-time workers in the US value working with people with different identities than themself. You can find more details on the value of diversity below. 

• Increased Productivity
• Better Problem-Solving and Decision Making
• Increased Profit

Tips To Build a Diverse Team

Building a team of diverse professionals requires more than simply hiring people. There are different steps you need to take and changes that need to be made to ensure that the team is not merely diverse in outlook but also in actions and inclusion. Below are some tips to help you build the ideal diverse team.

Have a Diverse Company Vision and Culture

Every organization's vision and mission defines its operations and why people should work with them as employees and customers. The vision should show that it encourages diversity and prioritizes inclusion, and the company's culture should prove this.

Reevaluate Your Recruitment Process

When diversity and inclusion have been imbibed in your company's vision and culture, you need to work towards achieving it. This starts from the very first step when you design your recruitment team. 

The recruitment process should be designed such that the company attracts a diverse group of people. The language used to draw out job candidates, and the job requirements should be such that people from different backgrounds can apply for the roles. 

For instance, a typical data science job post will require candidates to have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree. This requirement will push away skilled candidates with only coding bootcamp training and not a college degree, even if they have adequate training for the role. Many bootcamps like General Assembly are more accessible to underrepresented populations in the industry. 

Diversify Recruitment Personnel

The recruiters or hiring managers handling the recruitment process should be a diverse team. This will ensure that various forms of bias are eliminated. It will give all candidates a chance while ensuring that the company hires capable professionals for each role. You should be thorough in choosing this team, as individuals can be subconsciously biased.

Make all Employees Feel Valued

The key to having a solid, diverse team is in employees feeling valued. Each employee should feel like a valuable member of the group. This is where inclusion is critical. You should organize activities that embrace each member's background and not single them out. Those who stand out and perform excellently should be rewarded to increase the team's productivity and loyalty.

Create Opportunities for Leadership and Growth Development

A company where each member sees themselves growing professionally as a group and individual is the dream of many. It is helpful for your company to provide opportunities for each employee to grow through training, mentoring, or coaching, allowing each individual to meet with others regardless of their background.

Conclusion

The importance of a diverse team cannot be overemphasized. Not only does it improve the company's outlook, but it also boosts profits and attracts a wide range of talents. Challenges may come with building a diverse team, but the result is more beneficial to the company and the employees if adequately managed. 

Medinah Aina, a certified Career Coach by the International Association of Professions Career College, is an expert copywriter and web designer, helping people learn more about education and careers in technology. She values in-depth research and providing accurate, helpful information. Medinah holds a BSc in Social Work from the University of Lagos and an Eduonix Certification in copywriting.