Having a diverse organisation could help to lower staff turn-over rates. A survey conducted by Deloitte in 2018 suggests that 69% of Generation Z’s and Millennials are more likely to stay for at least 5 years of more if their employer is considered to have a diverse workforce. Below are 5 suggestions to help promote diversity within your staff networks:
Diversity Training
Research shows that diversity training is the most popular method organisations use to teach staff about diversity within the workplace. If well facilitated, diversity training can create a wealth of positive outcomes for an organisation as well as develop and highlight not so positive diversity issues. For greater impact, additional methods to manage diversity should be put in place when the training is complete.
A Mentoring Programme
Internally developed mentoring schemes can take lots of planning and often lots of resources. If managers have the support from their staff it does make life easier, but this does need to be a top-down initiative in order to have the highest impact. Mentees and mentors should be carefully paired up to make the experience worthwhile for both.
Diversity Audits
This can allow an organisation to gauge the many characteristics of staff within an organisation. When implementing an audit it is important to understand that there may be more characteristics adding to the diversity and organisational culture of an organisation than meets the eye. Dimensions including where staff live, their income, and educational background for example, will all add to the diversity of an individual and to organisational culture. Organisations often take information from new starters and use this information to promote diversity, but sometimes more information is needed for a clear understanding of the diversity landscape.
Develop Employee Networks
Employee Networks can offer a safe space for employees to be open and honest about their experiences and feelings within an organisation. These can have gender, sexual orientation, and race dimensions for example. Employee Networks can either contain allies from outside of that specific diversity dimension or not. Regardless of the Employee Network make-up, a clear focus should be established whether it be for social interaction or sensitive issues for the greatest impact.
Diversity Champions
Diversity Champions are diversity advocates often situated within different departments, offices, or buildings throughout an organisation. These are the employees who drive diversity forward within the organisation in addition to their contracted role at the organisation. Diversity champions can be specifically trained to support colleagues, diversity initiatives, and even diversity queries that arise within the organisation.
I hope these ways to improve diversity within your organisation have helped, or perhaps given you an idea to develop diversity in the future. If you have any questions about the above blog post, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
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