Why We Should Care About DEI as Business Owners

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Glassdoor conducted a Diversity Hiring Survey in 2020 and found that 76% of job seekers and employees say that having a diverse workforce is an important factor for them to consider when they are deciding whether or not they want to work with or continue to work with an employer.

McKinsey & Company conducted an analysis in 2019 and found that gender diverse teams were 25% more likely to have higher than average profitability. They also found that ethnically diverse companies were 36% more like to show profitability above average.

However, as I mentioned at the beginning, DEI is more than just adding people of color or women to your team. When you understand that as a business owner, this will help you see how implementing appropriate DEI practices will benefit your business, especially during the recruiting process.

We want to have team members who have diverse ways of problem-solving. This adds to creating a productive collaboration that would lead to solving the problems that your company is facing.

Think about it this way, do you want to hire a bunch of people who look like you and who think like you? If you said no, then you want to keep reading this article.

When it comes to DEI, many employers tend to focus on the 'D' and forget about the 'E' and the 'I.' When it comes to equity, we should ensure that there is equity in how we pay and interact with employees. Having an employee handbook is a start. But we still need to implement and monitor what is written in that employee handbook.

When making decisions, as business owners, we should be including our team members. This will help them share their opinion and feel like they belong to your organization. By doing these actions, we would be addressing the 'I' in DEI. 

DEI and Micro and Small Businesses

There are so many elements to DEI. I have mentioned just a few. As micro and small business owners, we should care about DEI and invest time in identifying the DEI elements that are vital for the success of our businesses. Here are four reasons why micro and small business owners should care about DEI:

1. Customers want to do business with companies who are socially and environmentally conscious. This is especially true for potential customers who are Generation X, Generation Z, and millennials.

2. Having a diverse and inclusive team can lead to you surpassing your financial targets annually.

3. Employees with higher levels of happiness and job satisfaction which translates into higher productivity, higher morale, and retention.

4. Innovation! This is one of the biggest benefits of having a diverse team because your diverse team members have different opinions, world views, upbringings, experiences, and not to mention….different skill sets! When you bring those types of diversity together, your team will be innovative and keep your competitive advantage alive for your business.

These are just some of the benefits of incorporating DEI into our micro and small businesses. You can work in a peer advisory board or with a business coach to learn how to incorporate DEI into your micro or small business. 

As you can see, DEI is not a single thing. It is infused in all aspects of our businesses.

Before I go, I wanted to share this, it is very likely for prospective applicants, especially millennials, to ask you what you are doing about DEI in your company. So be prepared to answer this question!

If you are ready to get started in a peer advisory board or business coaching, submit your coaching application and see if you qualify for a customized coaching program to meet your specific needs.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article.

Regards,

Dr. Priscilla "Dr. P" Kucer

Solutions+Actions=Results! (SoAR!)