When the occurrence of a crisis shifts a business off its course, there have to be plans in place to recover. This is where the business is tested and its virtues are put into the proving ground. All through a business’s life, its leading figures will discuss the various merits that have given them success.

Strong leadership, an identifiable work culture, risk management and teamwork are all solid virtues for any business to have. There are many more – such as diversity and inclusivity – which modern businesses can’t do without. But when it comes to crisis times, these virtues are usually forgotten about in favour of the more pressing, immediate concerns.

But why? The strengths of a business should all be brought together in a time of crisis. Leaving some behind or conveniently forgetting them at the end of a month doesn’t show them off as the strengths they are. Many companies and businesses fall back on the old reliable ideals that are commonplace in the world of business without expanding on their other aspects. They essentially use diversity and inclusivity as marketing, rather than as true business virtues. They do this because they can’t see the benefits of D&I during a crisis time, and that neglect has sunk more businesses during this pandemic than it saved. 

With that said, here are four reasons – to start – why diversity and inclusivity matter more during COVID-19 than they did before:

1. It Leads New Age Workforces

Diverse and inclusive workplaces will bring in not just diversity of background but a diversity of ideas that can help transform their workplace environment to suit the needs of the now and look forward to the future. The pandemic has negatively affected businesses that had no way of changing because the only ideas that came from within were regulated towards finding a way to backtrack and go to what worked before. They were, in a word, old.

A company that focuses on D&I will have new voices capable of bringing in new ideas and ways to work, which can help innovate the work experience and stay updated with the ever-changing world outside. This includes pandemic response and adapting to new regulations and mandates to keep the business going. Without those new ideas, old businesses could not rise to meet new challenges.

2. Inclusive Culture Provides Resilience

A workplace culture can be seen as a foundational aspect, something that can’t – or shouldn’t – change over time from the top down. These include things like environment and incentives, the driving forces which keep people coming back to work for a certain place, or choosing to forward their careers with one business over others in the same sector. Someone can choose to work somewhere because of how it feels. But if all of those incentives and structures are geared toward one specific group of people, it will deprive others of the motivation necessary to flourish.

Growing a diverse and inclusive workplace helps to broaden the culture, which in turn allows more ideas to be accepted into it from outside. An old culture can only work with old problems, and COVID-19 is a very new kind of problem – worse than any other pandemic that came before it – and requires a very different work culture to work with the changes it has made. These include things like remote work, higher workplace regulations and safety measures, and medical incentives to keep employees healthy throughout the event. Fostering a diverse and inclusive culture strengthens a business from within.

3. Include New Talent and Innovation

When hiring back from a major loss, a business must strike up a good balance between experience and new, endearing talent. Hiring the same old types produces the same old results, and the world isn’t the same old world anymore. Whole generations are being shuffled and held back because of the pandemic and the responses to it. And its effects are not equal across the board.

Certain demographics are hit harder by restrictions, regulations and the effects of the pandemic than others. By including them, a business not only forwards a conscious effort to do well by embattled communities, it is rewarded with their perspectives and ideas.

Diverse companies have proven statistical records of being more productive, more agile and more driven overall. It fosters a healthy degree of inside competition when people with different backgrounds exchange ideas. Instead of being seen as the same and lacking the commitment to exceed their peers, diverse teams will be more motivated to do better and lead by positive examples. This lifts everyone up to a higher standard of work and credibility.

4. Diverse Teams Work Harder

Adding to a workplace is challenging. With so many lay-offs and an uncertain future, many businesses are facing the prospect of having to rely on a reduced workforce indefinitely, which many cannot do. Those who can have also had to face the idea of needing new employees as things reopen and regulations change. Business can sink or rise at a moment’s notice, so a flexible team is required to meet these flexible demands. 

A diverse and inclusive team can collaborate more easily with people from a similar background and form more meaningful connections with customers who are similar to them. It’s the nature of business itself for customers to gravitate towards those who seem familiar to them. By uniting a workforce around a common goal or culture, they can bring their individual strengths of their backgrounds to the forefront and use them as talents to understand new problems from complex, identity-based angles. It’s more than just hiring a group of diverse people to look good on a business photo. Each one has ties to different groups, understands problems that others don’t, and by bringing those unique perspectives together it broadens the business’s view of the world as well.

To your success,

Mario

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