Getting inundated with messages about embracing diversity in the workplace? Well, there’s a reason for that -- many reasons in fact. Diversity is a big factor in helping companies succeed, but don’t forget that everything has a price. Keep reading to find out more.

The Advantages of Diversity

When a company really welcomes diversity in its workforce, it is effectively encouraging better decision making and performance. While initially it may be difficult to increase the diversity in hiring practices, it is not something you want to pass up. So encourage your HR department to branch out in the hiring process. But how is it that diversity can make companies better? Diversity leads to various thinking patterns with a different emphasis on the end goals. That means that your employees will be trying to get to the same point, but from completely different directions.

Diversity is essentially embracing all societies and cultures and accepting that their ways of thinking might be different, but they aren’t wrong. This is because different societies produce different thinking and emphasis on what’s important. So go for a diverse workforce, since this will make things better in the long run. You need the the different professional, social, and cultural norms that diversity brings, not just in the different ways of thinking for specific professions/industries, but the cognitive differences from culture. If everyone was taught to think the same way, then those patterns are deeply ingrained for approaching problems and there would be no out-of-the-box solutions. So increasing diversity means bringing in different viewpoints to approaching problems. Since our own thinking can get hidebound, it’s good to have different perspectives to shake things up. Two heads really are better than one, at least when they’re from different backgrounds.

Don’t forget that diversity doesn’t just apply to culture, but also to gender. You want to encourage the hiring of more women since they’ll also have different ideas for the company. Look to build a balanced workforce in both gender and culture so as to get the best of everything. You’ll end up with teams who make better decisions faster, which means your profits will soar.

The Pitfalls of Diversity

We know that diversity is important in your company, and in life. But you also need to keep in mind that it can also mean more work to open helpful avenues of communication to take advantage of the different schools of thought. Yes, your company will get better, but only if everyone can understand each other.

Anyone remember Whoopi Goldberg’s late ‘90s movie, Eddie? It had a great example of how diversity can hinder some things when there is no attempt at proper communication. The Georgian player, Ivan, never plants his feet and so always gets penalized for unnecessary blocking fouls since he doesn’t understand the point. Whoopi’s character is the first to take the time to learn how to tell him all of this in his native language. Instead of repeating everything ad nauseum in English like everyone had done before, she took the time to explain it in a way he was guaranteed to understand. Now, this doesn’t seem like rocket science, but it’s clearly a novel concept instead of being common sense. Not everyone thinks the same way or in the same language, and sometimes you need to adjust your own thinking to understand or explain this to others.

You also need to keep in mind that while diversity is all well and good, it shouldn’t lead to you reverse discriminating against majority populations and missing out on great candidates. Hiring needs to be a balanced process, and you need to hire the best, no matter the background.

So there you have it: diversity will make your company better in the end, as long as you encourage open mindedness and better communication. So embrace multiculturalism and reap the rewards!