Diversity for Business Growth

Tanya Channing, Chief People & Culture Officer at Pipedrive discusses how evolving diversity strategies can grow business value.

Businesses have many important challenges to tackle, and these are both external and internal. For leaders, diversity may not immediately come to mind when growing businesses at scale, but ambitious organisations must be lean and agile. That means they look for talented, skilled workers who will be engaged enough to use creativity, and dedication to satisfy customers and create value.

This is why a people-first strategy is vital, actively finding power in diversity. This can offer measurable benefits to employees and also employers. One route to success, boosting the creative horsepower of a company, comes from prioritising the drive and determination of a core and diverse team building the product or service, supported by a culture of openness and trust that offers empowerment.

Collaboration is hard to get right. In practice, it’s part of the realm of diversity and inclusion that must become part of business DNA, revolving around how people trust and value each other. For leaders, to help knit teams together, work starts with creating a ‘conscious and evolving diversity strategy.’ Considering this, here are three tips to smooth this process.

First, create positive engagement with the right diversity policy

The basis for diversity and inclusion (D&I) is critical thinking, empathy, and sympathy for others. Starting with the principle of psychological safety shows how diversity is part of the company culture. Then, bolstered by insights from studies, demonstrate to other executives how the strengths of diversity add to a business strategy, supporting long-term creativity, collaboration, and success, with ongoing training and forums wired into official policy.

Gartner’s research showed that organisations who champion D&I find a 12% improvement in performance and a 20% increase in employee’s planning to remain. Prove D&I in action when sharing milestones. If it’s part of the differentiating factors that create success, let stakeholders know that you find the best ways to improve company performance.

Second, our understanding of neurodiversity is growing, allows you to grow, too

Awareness of types of diversity and their strengths as part of an organisation is growing. Age, gender, race, and sexuality merely opened the floodgates. Cultural and neurodiversity are hugely valuable parts of the community that bring strength to the business when properly acknowledged and supported.

According to research from CYPHER Learning, neurodiversity blends with leadership, with 45% of the C-Suite identifying as neurodivergent. There are some industries such as IT, software development, or engineering where some traits appear to have found a welcoming use for their talents.

Neurodiversity is a natural variation in human brain function and behaviour. It encompasses conditions like autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more. It’s part of the modern understanding that neurological differences are natural and diverse ways of thinking and experiencing the world, offering unique opportunities to contribute to society and workplaces. Evolutionarily speaking differences like these across populations may have offered our ancestors a mix of people able to engage with different challenges with different skills and approaches.

Teams with neurodivergent colleagues are 30% more productive, according to consultancy firm Deloitte. The cognitive strengths that neurodivergent individuals bring, potentially including extreme attention to detail, pattern recognition, and creative thinking, can create star teams with skills to cover all their roles and responsibilities.

Third, set up fair and equal representation before scaling

Melding visibility and engagement with commitments to reevaluate, review, and reinvigorate strategies, can really form colleagues into stronger teams, helping them understand and trust each other.

Diverse representation from the top fosters better decision-making, innovation, and financial performance. Research from the Global Parity Alliance found that firms with diverse leadership are 36% more likely to outperform in profitability. It’s been found that varied perspectives contribute to better problem-solving and thus help drive a business’ growth. Inclusive leadership can support attracting top talent from wider pools and reflect the global customer base​ a company may have, contributing to goodwill.

Building stronger

Integrating more mature D&I strategies, and accommodating as well as celebrating neurodiversity, brings academically proven advantages. Diverse teams drive innovation and improve growth. Neurodiverse teams can enhance productivity and creativity when managed well, contributing skills and perspectives that enrich problem-solving.

Inclusive and caring workplaces can improve employee engagement and retention, saving costs, but also build a supportive and dynamic work environment where people want to work and promote to others. By embedding D&I into core operations, companies can achieve greater performance and cultivate a forward-thinking, equitable culture. This provides a real advantage in the market and aligns with positive social values.