Is Your Slow Business Growth Related to a Lack of Diversity?
While there are blanket statements that good growth rests between 2 and 4 percent each year (excluding the tech industry), only you can determine how fast your company will need to grow. Your growth should surpass inflation and should be competitive with the standard growth rate across your industry. The struggle that many companies experience with low growth rates is a lack of innovative thinking, and that stems from a lack of diversity.
Employee Referral Programs Could Kill Your Innovation
There’s a problematic argument when it comes to employee referral programs because relying on your all-star staff to bring in people has been a method of recruiting top talent for decades. But your employees are working within their network, and they give you access to people with similar world views, life experiences, and backgrounds in both education and work experience.
Employee referral programs limit your flavor of employee. It creates a staff of people that share the same ideas, support the same solutions, and don’t challenge the status quo.
A Lack of Diversity Drives Away the Top Talent
Are you struggling to bring in the top talent? If you’re looking for the best and brightest, then you’re trying to rope in people that are looking for diverse and forward-thinking workplaces. Regardless of age, educational background, or past work experience, people are looking for companies that encourage new perspectives, and you only get that through diversity.
When you lack diversity, the best applicant’s out there will go to another company. If your lack of diversity is driving away top talent now, then you need your brand ambassadors to begin recruiting and promoting that they are attempting to create greater variety within their workforce.
More Diverse Companies Could Be Part of a High Earning Trend
Companies in the top 25% in terms of most diverse ethnically and racially are 33% more likely to earn above their industry averages. Talent professionals have acknowledged this trend, and 89% of them recognize that multigenerational workforces make companies more successful. Then, McKinsey found as early as 2016 that in the U.S., there’s a direct relationship between racial diversity on the senior leadership team and reported EBIT.
Companies Can Develop Diversity Initiatives to Drive Growth
A diversity initiative can help attract top talent, evaluate all possible applicants, and boost company growth. Use a targeted portfolio to ensure that your company accurately represents the makeup of your community in terms of race, age, and other factors such as education level. Ensure that there’s alignment between your recruiting team and the company’s growth strategy.
That plan should have specific goals on what elements of the community your company needs to promote through recruiting. Understanding the demographic data and the needs of the company will help in facilitating growth. Focus on where the growth is stagnant then identify the possible variances in staff that could drive growth.
Diversity over the last few years has grabbed a ton of attention and with good cause, as it will affect a company, whether that’s intentional or not, is up to the recruiting and leadership teams.