Cultural Diversity in the Workplace: Everything you Need to Know

Everyone deserves to feel safe and welcome at work, and one way you can do that is by understanding cultural diversity. Look around at your colleagues and think about who they are and where they come from? The first thing that you should notice is that they’re all different. If they’re not, this may be a good time to check how you can change this. 

By understanding cultural diversity, you can make massive changes to how you present your company to prospective employees and clients. You may wonder how you can embrace cultural diversity in the workplace, and in this article, we will help you figure out how you can do just that. But first, why don’t we look at what cultural diversity is?

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Understanding Cultural Diversity

The first thing you need to know is that everyone comes from diverse backgrounds. What is the first subject that comes to mind when you think of cultural diversity? You probably think of race, ethnicity, religion, and language. While these all fall under cultural diversity, there are other factors that you need to consider. 

Cultural diversity is represented under a huge banner, encompassing the aforementioned factors but including age, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Every single one of these factors makes up for a significant number of people in the population. 

The main point of cultural diversity is acknowledging the diversity that you see in your employees. Each of them brings in their own personal history represented here. When you hire someone, it’s essential that you bring in diverse backgrounds to help understand how this can help your company and your clients.

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How Does Cultural Diversity Affect Your Workplace?

Cultural diversity is a significant factor in making your company an inclusive and safe space to work. By allowing your company to become more inclusive, you can prevent the dangers of your company from becoming an echo chamber of the same ideas. Your employees will also appreciate this acknowledgement of other cultures. When you only have one person of a particular age, gender, ethnicity, or any of the factors above, it becomes easy to feel uncomfortable. If you don’t hire people from diverse backgrounds, you might end up losing employees if they are the only ones there from a specific background. 

But when you hire from diverse backgrounds, you may become aware of topics that you may not have previously been aware of. You can learn and grow from considering your employees' opinions and understanding the dangers of stereotyping and challenging previously conceived biases you once had. Employing from different backgrounds can help your employees consider possibilities they previously would never have done before.

Let’s consider how cultural diversity can bring different ideas to the table. There can be various viewpoints that you would not have considered before, and you wouldn’t have considered them if there weren’t more diverse voices at the table. Your company can quickly become more innovative by not becoming an echo chamber of the same ideas.

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Celebrating Cultural Diversity

From a business perspective, cultural diversity can have a massive impact on how you run your company. I’ve already mentioned that diverse voices can bring different viewpoints and ideas to the company, but you may wonder how? 

There are so many holidays celebrated worldwide and a multitude of awareness days and weeks that you can celebrate. Your employees will probably be aware of different varieties of these holidays, and if so, it’s possible they even celebrate them. What’s a better way of acknowledgement than by researching and becoming aware of the different holidays and events around the world.

At certain events, you could even bring in different foods to cater for these events to raise awareness and celebrate your employees' cultural backgrounds. If it’s Pride Month, you could lend an ear to your colleagues and consider how you can celebrate this with them. By understanding the events your colleagues care about, you can make this environment more inclusive and help them feel safe at work.

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Cultural Diversity Training

When it comes to cultural diversity, you may realize that you need to help everyone in your company become aware of what this means. I previously mentioned holidays, so certain holidays may likely require time off for your employees. Different amounts of time off could generate some feelings of jealousy with other members of staff who may notice this but not understand why.

You should consider how this can have an impact on your employees. If you offer training for cultural diversity, you can also acknowledge the differences between all of your employees. We’ve mentioned how diverse perspectives can provide learning and growth opportunities for your staff, but this does take time and training.

To help your colleagues understand one another, you can offer training to ensure that they understand other cultures. If one of your colleagues is from another country, they may find that they don’t spend time outside of work with colleagues in their culture. However, in another culture, they might require that employees spend time with one another outside of work. If you want to avoid accidental offense, you should consider what training is necessary for all of your colleagues to help them understand one another to avoid any misunderstandings.

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Establishing a Diverse Workplace

Now that we’ve talked about how you can improve diversity, you may think that you might need to change your hiring practices. You may have noticed that your workplace isn’t as diverse as you thought, but you can change this. 

Take another look at your employees and your colleagues. If they aren’t too different, how can you make your workplace more diverse? Look at your hiring practices, and see if there are any ways you can change this.

If you feel like your workplace needs more diversity, look at who you have on your team. Is your team predominantly white? Maybe your team is younger and fresh out of university or vice-versa? Do you hire both men and women? Do your staff have disabilities, and can they be open about it?

Consider all of these things, and see if you can expand how you hire your staff. You can always look at recruitment fairs and encourage people from diverse backgrounds to apply by hosting them in areas you previously wouldn’t have considered. You just need to change the way you think about your hiring process. Take the time to develop a strategy that will allow your company to become more diverse.

Final Thoughts

Cultural diversity can have a significant impact on your workplace and how it can affect your employees. By understanding what cultural diversity is, you may be able to make your work a much more inclusive and happier place to work. The most important thing to consider is that change can significantly impact the way you and your employees think and can open up a world of possibilities.

Hopefully, by understanding other cultures, you can improve your workplace and help it become more inclusive for everyone. Embracing cultural diversity can have a massive impact on how everyone works, and your environment may even become more productive for everyone.

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