Why is it important to have diversity in the workplace

The Importance of Workplace Diversity

Now that its been a month since the UK General Election and David Cameron has been able to form a fresh cabinet, it’s worth taking a look at some of his decisions. Has a concern for diversity influenced his choices and how can we as businesses make the best of an individual’s background?

Before I explore this, first let me firm the definition of diversity in this context. I do not mean meeting a quota of BMEs. Diversity – unironically – encompasses a wide range of attributes, from those we choose to those we can’t. This includes skillsets, career and life experiences as well as the rainbow of backgrounds.

Gender Diversity in Cabinet

From David Cameron’s new cabinet, we can see that it is now made up of around a third women, which is in line with his parliamentary party and an improvement on the previous cabinet. Even when we had a female prime minister, gender diversity was at its worst – Margaret Thatcher didn’t have much choice of women but those she did, she still kept out of cabinet, which was made almost entirely of men across her decade reign.

I use the word improvement when referring to the cabinet’s greater diversity intentionally. Some major studies have shown that gender diversity in the boardroom has a positive impact on boardroom effectiveness. These studies highlight that even when observable characteristics are controlled, female directors behave differently to male ones. It is an important business lesson to learn about why we shouldn’t be ignorant of background when making a promotion. The idea of equality can be a little double-edged – do we ignore traits or acknowledge them?

Encouraging Diversity is Not Anti-Competition

We often surround ourselves with people who are like us because it makes us more comfortable, and for the smoothness of a team we imagine that similarities will help. This is perhaps to explain for how the patriarchy developed. But it is a closed chamber, it is anti-capitalist to do so – if there is no competition of thought, then the market will soon outrun you. If we as businesses aren’t aware of the makeup of our workforce and addressing this at recruitment, we might find that it soon turns into an echo chamber.

The ‘Hire People for Their Skills’ Fallacy

We have to also, of course, be wary of the criticism that you should hire people on their skill rather than their gender. This is a very valid point, but I feel that the people saying this as a counter-argument are misunderstanding the original position – it is not a counter-argument, but in fact an endorsement. People are not currently being hired on the basis of their skills. If this were the case, we wouldn’t see such a vast gulf between one ethnic or gender group than another. If this were the case, there would be more than 3 women leading the FTSE 100 companies.

It is precisely because people aren’t being hired for their skills that we are raising the idea of diversity, because people’s gender, their race and their socio-economic background are currently playing a huge part of whether they are climbing ladders. We are raising the idea of diversity because this should be a statistically natural occurrence. Yes, culture plays a part and people rarely aspire above what they can achieve – women, for example, are going to be less likely to aim to be head of a FTSE 100 company because the odds are not in their favour – it’s self-perpetuating.

Making Choices Despite Diversity

Iain Duncan Smith, the continuing Work and Pensions Secretary, is an example of a choice made despite diversity. IDS has proven himself to be effective at what he does and, despite being a politically alienating choice to many, has continued in his role because of his skill-set. It could be argued that the person in control of welfare should have had personal experience of living on it – and this is a criticism he has faced, as a man of the highest socio-economic class dictating rules to the lowest – but he continues on still, probably because he is effective at his job. The lesson here is to consider diversity but not to be actively led by it – if a person is doing their job well, don’t reshuffle for the sake of the cameras.

New Ideas Come When We Break Down Barriers

In a business environment, we should consider the balance of our team. Are we damaging it by hiring people like ourselves – by hiring those from the same culture, from the same generation? Are we doing our business a disservice by consciously or unconsciously picking those we think will be ‘suited’ to the role simply because they sound like you? This isn’t even going into the area of the Equality Act, it’s further than that.

Rather than seeing these differences as things we ought to be considering, we should be seeing them as things to benefit the business with – as ways to strengthen ideas and deliver completely new ones. Indeed, the risk with the new cabinet is that, no longer being a diverse mix of opinions as was the coalition, it may find itself pursuing policies without enough consideration for the other side or without nearly enough creativity. That isn’t party political, it’s simply a fact of single-party politics.

There are some notable examples of when an acknowledgement of skill has come above party politics, when working together to produce better results. Will Hutton, the Godfather of New Labour, was asked by David Cameron to produce a report on inequality of pay in the public sector. Frank Field, veteran Labour MP for Birkenhead since 1979, was asked by David Cameron in 2010 to be his ‘poverty tsar’, to study how poverty should be measured in the future and the levels of poverty across Britain. While we’re not encouraging directors of Ernst & Young to divulge investment opinions with Deloitte, there is room for co-operation across political boundaries – even when the numbers don’t require you to! The same goes for boardrooms.

As businesses, we can learn a great amount from looking at political decisions. Not just what our corporation tax is going to look like in the coming years, but how we might approach our recruitment and selection too.

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