The significance of a Diverse Workforce

I was going through an article about affirmative action policies adopted in US about half a century ago. One of the basic premise and foundation about the policy was the feedback from the US Industry that a diverse workforce tends to be more professional, effective and a better decision maker.

I think this is absolutely true .

I have worked through teams on both ends of the spectrum. With a diverse background comes richness of Ideas , culture , perspectives , behaviors which tends to foster a professional , tolerant culture which is open to fresh thinking and calculated risk taking .I have always loved to work in such an environment so will most ….

I am a firm believer in the policy of diversity and would go at length to maintain it. To put it simply , I would prefer a diverse and above average team to a homogeneous and most competent one.

Now consider the opposite side of the spectrum.

People from same background and culture will generally have same line of thinking and risk taking ability . The work culture is more of a family , a bit like mom and pop office with little room for accountability and professionalism. Only certain type of ideas will generally accepted and resistance to change will be a big hurdle.

Just look at Indian cities . Mumbai is a very cosmopolitan place with people from all possible diversity . On the other spectrum lie places like Delhi , Kolkata and Chennai in lower diversity order. Can you make the difference in the work culture ? I do…

India has so much diversity be it language , regional , racial , caste ( genetic diversity basically) and religion . I think sharpest cultural diversity in India is regional and then language , caste , racial and religion in downward order though language and region are very related in India and diversity based on religion is I think a debatable subject.

HR in most Indian companies have realized the importance of a diverse workforace and are working towards making diversity an important component of their HR policy .But with the experience that I have about Indian industry lot needs to be done to really foster and internalize diversity. I can see a typical problem here . People at the top know the importance and want to implement it and person(s) doing actual implementation has either no clue about it or simply unwilling to do it because it benefits him/her to keep it that way.