Do you ever wonder why companies push to hire people from different backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, cultures, and religions? Why publicizing is becoming inclusive and designers hire plus size models?
Is it a marketing tactic or does this help? Well, stats show it actually works.
Companies with diverse leadership teams are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors. Moreover, these companies are 35% more likely to attract top talents and 70% more likely to capture new markets.
Additionally, diversity impacts work culture, helping in retaining the staff and building a safe environment where innovation is fostered.
So, what is the perfect recipe for building a diverse work culture and what is the competitive advantage?
This write-up addresses all these questions. So, if you are a small business owner aiming for success, here is how your company can benefit from diversity.
Why Do Businesses Need to Embrace Diversity?
Seamless Communication
For any business to become successful, effective communication is very important. A report by SHRM states that miscommunication costs companies a staggering $37 billion annually in the US and UK alone. While most businesses fail to communicate the right message internally, others fail to understand the context due to translation, eventually resulting in failure.
For example, Coor, a successful American beer manufacturer, failed to impress the audience in the Spanish market with its “Turn it Loose.” The tagline of the company was translated into Spanish expression “suffer from diarrhea.” This miscommunication caused a lot of stir.
To avoid similar issues, brands recruit multilingual employees from diverse backgrounds so they can help communicate the right message to the audience.
Boost Employee Retention
In the world of business, instant hype and instant loss is quite common. Most businesses create a lot of hype but fail to meet customer expectations, resulting in them exiting the market. This is the reason big brands focus on post-purchase service, customer care, and customer service. However, customers now prefer brands that can go to greater lengths just to make them feel included.
For instance, Xfinity offers its services in the US. However, with more than 43 million Spanish speakers, Xfinity has a dedicated número de Xfinity, so the customers can communicate in their native language without any setback.
If you own a brand that targets a broader audience, diverse teams can be very helpful. Diverse teams cannot just improve communication, increase reach, and influence users but also retain these customers.
Successful Marketing Campaign
Marketing sits at the core of any business. Most big brands spend billions on marketing. Global brands like Coke, Pepsi, and McDonald’s spend billions on their marketing. However, things can backfire when a marketing campaign fails to make an impression or ends up offending people.
A prominent example of bad marketing is Kendal Jenner’s Pepsi ad was pulled after being Accused of Trivializing Black Lives Matter. Therefore, for any brand to survive, understanding the sentiment of the audience is very important.
This is where diversity comes in. With diversity comes a large pool and suggestions that are more relatable and well-informed about cultural, religious, and regional sentiments. This is the reason global companies recruit area managers, country heads, regional heads, and marketing teams for each site.
Opportunity to Scale
Every business dreams of global reach, scalability, and success. However, regardless of the budget, opportunities, or strengths, even the biggest and most successful brands falter when they scale. This is the reason, we see business doing well in one country but becoming a flop in another.
A relatable case is American retail giant – Walmart. The company failed to make its mark in Japan. While Walmart is famous for offering low prices and has become a household name in the US, Japanese people associate cheap with low quality.
To ensure that companies do not make similar expensive mistakes, hiring diverse teams is very important. Diverse teams can especially help businesses understand the cultural perspective better so they can scale seamlessly without facing any drawbacks.
Accessibility to Top Talent
The workforce is the blood of any company. Successful businesses go to great lengths just to recruit top talents. However, when companies have filters that are more background, ethnicity, religion, and zip code-focused, brands struggle to recruit people based on merits.
For instance, big brands like Google, Apple, Facebook, and nearly every notable tech company have diverse teams. These companies focus more on work and less on the background. As a result, these companies have much better output compared to their competitors.
Most businesses today choose to recruit people from different backgrounds just so they can benefit from the strengths of people coming from different cultures. For instance, people of the sub-continent are famous for their tech knowledge, helping them become top contenders in tech-savvy jobs.
America’s Best Employers for Diversity
- Citi
- Merck
- JP Morgan Chase
- CocaCola
- American Express
- Dell
- McDonald’s
- PepsiCo