Why should my race, ethnic origin or skin colour determine whether I get a promotion at work or not? Why should the colour of my skin determine what opportunities I can apply for in the workplace or how much salary and benefit I should earn on a job?
Organizations need to be bold and honest about their organizational culture – what they value and accept in the workplace. That way, they can be able to identify the gaps in their workforce and strategize to fill those gaps in their recruitment process. There should be no hidden workplace policies centered on diversity and inclusion that employees or potential employees are unaware of. The gaps may not only be related to finding specific talent. It could be a lack of depth in the culture of their workforce. There may be less persons living with disability, less number of Blacks, Hispanics, Caucasians, Latinos, Arabs etcetera in the organization. An organization that has a general workforce skewed towards a specific cultural trait or belief system is bound to fail when it decides to enter into a new market or country to do business.
Such an organization will be unable to thrive in a different market with varying belief systems and culture because it does not have a workforce that possesses the cultural depth to understand the needs of this new market and will therefore be unable to relate with such a market. An undiversified-cultural-depth-lacking organization cannot globalize.
There are various case studies in international business management that provide substantive evidence on the failure of businesses to succeed in a new market because such businesses lacked cultural depth. Due to their lack of cultural depth, they used the same marketing and management strategies and policies they use in their home countries to try achieve success in these new markets, but that only resulted in their failure. Most of these organizations were only able to turn things around and achieve success in these new markets after they employed a diverse workforce which gave them the cultural depth they needed to succeed and understand the needs of their new markets.
Organizations can also succeed globally in diverse markets if they leverage ideas from their diverse workforce at all levels in the organization. Organizational culture should be focused on bringing together all interest groups (especially all levels of “minority groups” that exist in the organization) into the decision making process of the organization. An inclusive culture should not necessarily be perfect in the beginning. However, as long as stakeholders at all levels in an organization can honestly accept that they don’t “know-it-all” and make conscious efforts to intentionally improve diversity and inclusion in the workplace, the growth of the organization will definitely be a surety. Promoting workplace diversity and inclusivity will climax in employee confidence and improve their overall creative psychology to perform at their very best levels.
