Diversity in the Modern Age

Despite being universally comprehensive in its meaning, the word Diversity has often found itself either generally limited to race and gender or a label used by organizations to appear more “woke.” 

Before we dive into how there is so much more to Diversity than just race and gender, let’s talk about Diversity from a different yet genuine perspective. Diversity is merely a metric to see if equity is being fulfilled. Equity is defined as true fairness where instead of providing equal resources to people, different circumstances are recognized, and resources are allocated accordingly to achieve an equal outcome. Naheed Dasani describes it as “Equality is giving everyone a shoe and Equity is giving everyone a shoe that fits.” And, the need for equity is innate, a core need that is in all of us. 

When a core need like equity is threatened, the human brain and body are programmed to trigger stress mode. A continued stress mode leads to chronic stress, and that eventually leads to chronic inflammation. It has been proven that people subjected to continued inequity do indeed face chronic inflammation. And it has severe implications on the human body.  

That is why, in this article, I’ve gathered some factors that also need to be in the mainstream of how we, as a society, view diversity, especially in the modern age. It’s crucial information for any workplace. Then I have stressed the importance of promoting Cognitive Diversity compared to demographic Diversity and how it yields better overall performance.

Essential forms of Diversity in the Modern Age

We know that Diversity promotes a collaborative workspace where people are more accepting, tolerant, and indiscriminate. A collective positive attitude encourages people to perform better, which is what’s most important for any company. Racial and gender inclusiveness are often regarded as the pillars of a diverse environment in a company. However, these are just parts of a much larger and complex structure that aims at housing a better society, or in our case, a healthy and productive workspace.  Here are some of the very crucial forms of Diversity that a company must incorporate apart from race and gender in today’s world.

Ethnicity and Religious Beliefs

Ethnicity, unlike race, isn’t biologically determined. It comes from learned behaviors and is associated with geographical background, nationality, culture, and history. A workplace has people of different ethnicities like Hispanics, Irish, or Native Hawaiians. Likewise, a workplace can be filled with people of different religious beliefs. The conventional thought of treating business as a secular activity is changing. Companies are looking to best accommodate the diverse expression of faiths as employees bring their whole selves to work. For example, Muslims practice their religion by praying throughout the day – at least two times during work hours. A dedicated prayer room or space best caters to their needs. The Christian employees may host voluntary chapel services or prayer meetings in their free time where religious thoughts are shared. It should be acceptable as long as it is not disruptive.

A company that promotes diversity must ensure that, for one, there isn’t any conscious or unconscious bias towards people of different ethnicities and religions – from hiring to firing. Second, people feel comfortable with their ethnic and religious identity. And finally, the different ethnic and religious events are equally cared for, especially when it comes to holidays. Employees will be more committed to companies if they feel accepted and valued, which is the real goal.  

Background and Socioeconomic Status

The background and socioeconomic status play a huge role in developing our perspective towards life, and we bring that to our jobs as well. It is a good practice to hire people with different backgrounds. Then, the employers need to ensure that employees are thriving towards financial stability. They need to establish an unbiased environment and provide opportunities for success. The employer will do even better if the employee is improving financially. 

Age

A workplace is generally filled with different age groups having distinct features morphed by the eras of birth. We are used to classifying these age groups as baby boomers, generation X, Y, and Z – Generation Y, also called Millennials, make most of the modern workforce. Companies need to consider several points to get the most out of different age groups. It’s only natural that all of these have different mindsets – different political and social views. Some saw the world change in front of their eyes, and some were born into it. The difference intentionally or unintentionally invites challenges and biases among individuals. Such bias is called Ageism. Ageism is generally fueled by generation stereotypes and leads to people believing that skill gaps and life milestones affect and limit the excellence of other age groups. 

Companies need to promote an inclusive environment where the difference in psychology is recognized and dealt with in the most healthy way. This includes capitalizing on the qualities that a particular age group brings to the table and providing them the opportunities to grow where they don’t excel.

Disabilities: Physical and Cognitive

Hiring people with different disabilities and experiences doesn’t just build a diverse and inclusive environment. You get unique perspectives and ideas that help reach a wider community.  Employers should check where their organization stands as per the national or international disability index and then ensure a comfortable environment for the disabled. This doesn’t just include having an ergonomically designed office for the disabled but providing comprehensive health packages and employee resource groups as well.

As for cognitive disability, people often have intellectual functioning issues such as dyspraxia, dyslexia, and ADHD. However, it does not put to question the capability of a person as an employee. You will be surprised to know how many famous and successful people have such intellectual disabilities. Although it can be challenging for employers to notice and understand employees with cognitive disabilities, they need to provide various tools and resources that can help them perform optimally.

Mental Health 

It is imperative that organizations regard the mental health of employees with the utmost importance. When employees are not provided with resources to deal with mental health issues, there’s an increase in absenteeism, behavior problems, turnover rate, and even work-family conflict. With improved resources covering mental health in a company, a positive and inclusive environment is promoted that in turn promotes optimal work performance. 

Sexual Orientation

Though the social stigma around sexual orientation or sexuality has reduced a lot in the modern age, many people still keep it hidden out of the fear of harassment, being overlooked, and bias. An organization needs to ensure that the LGBTQ+ community comes to work in a welcoming and accepting environment. Many countries have workplace laws that protect people from discrimination based on their sexual orientation. Still, the company needs to conduct social exercises that not only educate people but empower the community.

Cognitive Diversity

Now that we have covered the major factors of demographic diversity, it’s time to talk about a kind of diversity that ensures optimal performance and is backed by solid analytical data. Cognitive diversity is when people with different problem-solving and critical thinking styles bring in unique perspectives. 

Suppose there is a really thorny problem that cannot be solved with a straightforward approach. In that case, you need to have many points of view that allow you to build on different ideas and reach a solution. The points of view could range from a perspective built from one’s specialized field –such as engineering, medicine, or anthropology – to the type of personality – introverts, extroverts, divergent thinkers, convergent thinkers, etc. 

Exploring intellectual territories from different perspectives leads to cognitive discomfort as you are going outside your own way of thinking. However, just like muscle building, that discomfort leads to growth. Basically, promoting cognitive diversity is joining the forces of different minds – cognitive friction. 

Through conventional wisdom and research, we found that more diverse teams prove to be more productive. However, a study by Alison Reynolds and David Lewis at Havard Business Review (HBR) with more than a decade’s worth of data revealed that the demographical diversity, though a positive thing, doesn’t correlate to performance.  You see a correlation between diversity and performance when you go beyond the demographical differences and consider varying perspectives and information processing styles. 

When put through psychological assessment to see different ways of approaching change, the teams with a more diverse thinking style on board completed the assessment in far less time. This is precisely why high-scale entrepreneur’s interest remains towards cognitive diversity. A company needs to make it OK for the employees to think outside the box and be themselves. It’ll only do them good. 

Conclusion

Everything mentioned above cannot be done in a day. However, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done as soon as possible. What organizations need to do is treat this like every other daunting goal. And the best way to that is, first, verbalize it, second, make it measurable, and third, make it time-bound. 

Don’t say that you care about promoting diversity in your workplace; say that by this time in the near future, you’ll have statistical evidence showing that you have incorporated different forms of diversity and how it has improved the company’s overall performance. This will make you actually push towards achieving a goal that’ll change a “diverse” group of lives for the better.