Imagine you only had colleagues in your organization that were exactly the same as you. Wouldn’t that be boring? Diversity is important and diversity is not just about gender. It is about much more!
Modern organizations should try to increase diversity, beyond acknowledging gender differences. Diversity can be about age, ethnicity, where you’re from, where you grew up, skills, experience, education, and much more.
There are many reasons why diversity is important. As work becomes more complex, increasing diversity in the workplace will help you. Additionally, it can help your organization to satisfy all clients. Different people can connect differently with various clients.
The good thing about increasing diversity is…
- The organization is able to come up with and more willing to adopt new ideas and insights
- More thoughtful and creative decisions
- And more fun!
Learn more about diversity with the Management 3.0 Module Individuals & Interactions. And read this article to learn why is Diversity and Inclusion is important for teams and organizations.
The Diversity Index can help your team and organization acquire insight into how high the current diversity level is. It also takes into account that your areas of diversity don’t have to be the same as others. It is a simple, and effective tool to gain insight into the diversity climate.
How to use the Diversity Index
- Ask people to decide which diversity areas are relevant for their context.
- Get them to fill out the Diversity Index, you can use our template. On the left, they can write down the areas of diversity.
- When the areas are filled in, ask the team to calculate the score. A point is given for each different answer. For example, in the instance that country would be an area of diversity and everyone was from the same country, they would score one point. If there are four people in the group and they are all from different countries, they score four points. If two people come from country A, and one from country B, and one from country C, they score three points.
- After deciding on the Diversity Index per area, they should write down the number on the right and calculate the total score.
- What can teams do to increase the diversity score? If there are multiple groups, they can perhaps swap people from another group. Teams can also increase knowledge if the diversity area is about a specific skill.
Diversity Index Tips
If an organization wants to organize a session where workers decide on their own team setup, the Diversity Index can be used to review if the diversity is low or high. If they score five, (when they have five diversity areas), you can challenge the team and ask if this is acceptable.
You can also use this as an ice-breaker with a new team in order to get to know each other better.
