Diversity Examples: How Companies Are Embracing It?
The Facts
Q&A
The characteristics of a diverse company include a workplace where everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute to the company's overall growth. Everyone's opinions are heard irrespective of the background they hail from or other personal attributes.
Benefits of a Diversity in the Workplace
Theoretically, diversity in the workplace has proven to be extremely profitable, financially and in other aspects. These benefits include:
- Financial Gains
Studies show that having a company culture that promotes diversity can be a major selling point of the company's brand to customers and future employees. A study found that companies with diverse executives see 36% more profitability than less diverse ones to corroborate this.
- Improved Leadership
A company should focus on bringing in employees who can lead the company rather than their attributes but their abilities as leaders.
- Better Recruiting
Implementing principles of diversity and inclusion in the recruiting process is a great idea as the company has a larger talent pool to choose from.
10 Companies That Make Perfect Diversity Examples
However, is it possible to be able to create a company culture that completely accepts diversity? Does it have that big of an impact on the success of the company? To answer these questions, it can help to look at real-life diversity examples in multinational companies.
- Sodexo
With around 422,000 and counting employees, Sodexo is known to have an extremely diverse workforce. The company aims to recruit employees to incorporate a balance between the genders present in the office. For this reason, Sodexo's workforce consists almost entirely of equal parts men and women, with 55% of the workforce being the latter.
In general, through its efforts to restore a balance between the genders in the workplace, Sodexo brought significant benefits to the company. These benefits came in the form of improved employee engagement and a gross profit increase of 23%.
- MasterCard
MasterCard holds a strong belief that diversity in the workplace can drastically influence the success of a business because it provides better insights that result in better decisions. In short, they believe that a diverse workplace is the birthplace of innovation.
The company has made it a point to hire employees that belong to an older age group to provide an aspect of generational diversity in the workplace. Because of this, MasterCard has been featured several times in the "50 Best Companies For Diversity" list usually made by Diversity Inc.
- Accenture
Accenture is one of the largest companies in the professional consulting industry, with 569,000+ employees as of 2021. The company prioritizes diversity training in the office to ensure no prejudices towards age, ethnicity, or gender. The company also celebrates to observe the International Day of Disabled People and introduce certain policies that can assist employees with disabilities. In this way, Accenture makes it a point to empower all kinds of employees.
- Sephora
Sephora is one of the most gender-diverse companies in the world. A report stated that around 62% of the total workforce in the company is female. In addition to this, 5 of the 6 members in the digital executive leadership team are women. Although this may seem unsurprising given that Sephora is a cosmetic brand, one aspect makes it a diverse company in general.
The recruitment carried out by the different HR departments emphasizes choosing an individual based on what they will offer upon joining the company rather than their skills. It means that women who may not have superior technical skills can still get a technical job provided they are willing to learn, thus empowering them in the process.
- Kaiser Permanente
This company is among the largest organizations that are involved in healthcare in the United States of America. However, this organization differs greatly from the other organizations as a large portion of the workforce comprises individuals from colored backgrounds. To put that into perspective, Kaiser Permanente states that around 67% of the workforce belongs to racial, ethnic, and cultural minorities.
In fact, in the 75 years that they have existed, the values of diversity and inclusion are "inextricably linked" to their mission of serving people in need. According to this organization, the more inclusion there is, the better they can serve the community's people.
- Johnson & Johnson
Another organization that has been a major name in serving people worldwide, Johnson & Johnson, has been around 130 years. According to the company, one of the major contributors to their success as a transformative healthcare solution was their policies that prioritized diversity and inclusion in the workplace. J&J compiles an annual impact review that reflects its efforts to implement its core diversity and inclusion strategies in day-to-day office life.
- Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young currently employs around 312,000 people all over the world. E&Y has always viewed diversity as an integral part of any company to maximize the results produced by a team. The company introduced a program known as the EY launch through which ethnically diverse college students and transfer students can join the company. The program assists these students in finding their major in accounting services.
In addition to this, the number of women in top executive roles was also the main contributor to creating the EY Launch program.
- Marriott International
Being one of the most recognizable names in the hospitality industry, Marriott has been lauded as the World's Best Multinational Workplace. That is because businesses run by women occupy around 10% of Marriott's supply chain. In 2019, DiversityInc Top 50 Most Diverse Companies, Marriott ranked a formidable No.2 as a token of appreciation for partnering with disabled and veteran-owned businesses. In addition to this, they are now setting their sights on partnering with businesses that include the LGBTQ community.
- Alibaba Group
The Alibaba Group is hailed as one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world today and is continuing its expansion. Many people, including the chairman Jack Ma, state that the company has successfully hired many women. Women in this company are often referred to as the "Secret Sauce" as they are known to balance logic and the instinct required. A major portion of the Group's founders and senior executives are women.
- Novartis
Recently Novartis has publicly stated that they are looking to achieve a gender balance in their management by as early as 2023. Along with this gender balance, the company states they will eradicate the gender pay gap and increase transparency for all their associates, irrespective of the country they may be present in.
According to the company, women now make up 50% of their total workforce, while 45% are management. In addition to this, 25% of the board of directors is women.
Therefore, diversity and inclusion mean a great deal for these multinational companies, which are great diversity examples. A company of this size with so many branches in different parts of the world will only function and progress if each employee is given the platform they require to voice their ideas.