Why You Should Diversify Your Team

These days it’s pretty fair to say that everybody at some point in their lives has taken a personality test, either just for personal knowledge or when employed with a new company.

In a workplace environment, it’s common for many companies to look at these different personality types within a team to help support and embrace how they all work, learn and communicate together. While this is still useful in a team setting, when recruiting it’s important to look far beyond just personality types and to create teams built with broader diversity.

Compared to teams that are made from similar types of people, teams that are built from a varying mix of genders, races, ages and nationalities are often higher achieving. This is for two main reasons. We’ve highlighted just why it’s proven that your team and wider company will benefit from diversifying your staff when hiring below. 

Innovation

Try and name a company that doesn’t want to be more innovative. We’re not sure that one exists. It can be really easy to hire people that you think will instantly match your existing team or wider company. Whether it’s a friend of a friend, a relative, or Karen from Finance’s niece. While hiring these types of people you already know can and often do work out, by not hiring outside of this group you miss the opportunity to enrich your employees with the opportunity to work directly with people who will think differently, work differently and challenge them intellectually. In fact, hiring people that are all very similar is proven to actually discourage innovative thinking. 

As discussed and shown in research by Rock & Grant in the Harvard Business Review, making sure your talent pool includes a wide mix of different genders, nationalities, ages and races plays directly into your companies joint intellectual potential and the overall ability they have to achieve as a team. 

Teams rich with diversity are far more likely to be critical and double check the work of their peers. This keeps everybody accountable for their own actions and ultimately makes sure they each produce their best work. By hiring diverse people you’ll be helping your team to work with those from a background they may not have worked with before. Additionally giving them the opportunity to become more aware of their own potential biases while looking at how they work in a team, finding opportunities for them to grow individually. 

Creativity

Creativity is one of the most valued and sought after skills in many employees. Several companies will go out of their way to create an environment where teams can think openly and creatively in order to do their everyday jobs better.

When you bring together a group of people from varied backgrounds and experiences, everyone will have their own unique way of thinking about your company’s products or services. By sharing past knowledge and working with a diverse group of people, it’s been proven again and again that it improves creativity amongst teams.

Rampton from Entrepreneur Magazine found this when speaking to Duke Energy Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Joni Davis, with her clearly stating ‘The main reasons you’ll gain productivity and a boost in creativity is that you’re bringing together individuals from different walks of life.’ 

All in all, by looking outside your existing talent pool and diversifying your hiring process, you’ll do nothing but benefit your employees, help them work better, expand their knowledge and produce more innovative, creative work. 

Looking to diversify your team and hire your next employee? Get in touch with the Discovered People team here for a chat to find out more.