What does it take to be competitive in business today?
Here’s a little hint: Put away the spreadsheets.
Companies that are outperforming their competition prioritize diversity.
Employees are more engaged and more productive when they work with people who are different from themselves.
Companies can encourage diversity with team communication software. It builds the operational framework necessary for cross-cultural communication and collaboration for a bigger market share and a thriving workforce.
Statistics Prove Why Diversity Needs to Be a Business Strategy
On a human level, diversity is good for us. Working with a group of people from different backgrounds and with different life experiences fosters collaboration through empathy and understanding. It also makes people smarter, more productive, and more creative in the workplace.
From a business standpoint, these emotional benefits translate directly into business outcomes.
Diversity can increase a company’s competitive advantage by 33%.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg:
- Diverse workforces are more innovative. Different perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds broaden the range of ideas employees bring to the group.
- Companies with a diverse workforce produce, on average, two products more a year than competitors.
- Diversity strengthens a company allowing them to weather financial storms (like the economic slump of 2008).
- Diversity helps with overall recruitment and retention. People want to work for companies that have a diverse environment.
Working for an innovative, forward-thinking, diverse company is what employees want.
Team communication software helps you get there.
Beekeeper’s company chat software was designed for today’s multicultural workforce.
Here are five ways the platform helps every employee connect and communicate and gives leaders the tools they need to include and support them.
Learn how one hospitality company uses visual messaging to communicate with their team.
1) Universal Communication with Inline Translation
Companies in the United States are making a big recruitment push for multilingual teams to increase their competitive advantage. Beekeeper’s company chat software enables every employee to communicate in their own language with inline translation.
Here’s why that’s important:
- Legally, employees have a right to speak their native language in the workplace.
- Many frontline workers—like restaurant staff, construction workers, healthcare employees—speak more than one language. In many of these industries, safety is a priority and an app that can translate can ensure the well-being of every employee.
- Nine out of ten companies say they rely on employees who speak a language other than English.
- Cross-cultural collaboration can open new channels of communication, and innovation.
- A company experiences complete transparency when everyone can comprehend internal messaging.
Let’s take a deeper look at the manufacturing workforce as an example. It’s an industry that has always relied on the work of immigrants, and that fact hasn’t changed much in the 21st century.
23 million immigrants currently work in manufacturing. That’s 12% of the industry.
There are currently half a million jobs that need to be filled, and in the next decade, there will be 4.6 million. Many of those positions will be filled by people who represent a global workforce and speak different languages.
Forward-thinking companies need employee communication software that will be ready for them.
Pro Tip: Encourage every employee to participate and contribute with Beekeeper’s translation feature.
2) Visual Messaging for Clear, Inclusive Communication
Another innovative Beekeeper feature designed for diversity and inclusion is the capability to share photos and videos through direct messaging, file sharing, and chats.
Despite any communication barriers, companies can employ visual messaging when they need to ensure every employee understands.
Different ways clients have used visual messaging include:
- Hotel restaurants share photos of seasonal specials so all hotel staff are aware of menu updates and relay the correct product information to the guests.
- Sending emergency notifications about safety hazards on a construction site.
- Companies share visual training materials to support professional growth.
Beekeeper’s photo sharing feature was highlighted (and called “innovative”) in the Gartner Market Guide for Employee Communications Applications, 2019.
3) Promote From Within to Build a Diverse Leadership Team
Hiring a diverse frontline workforce is important. But you need to create diversity at every level of your organization to be successful as a company. Team communication software can be a medium for professional growth.
Offer training over the team app to create opportunities for advancement. Your employees, who know your company well, can be your next management team.
A diverse leadership team will increase retention—employees are inspired when they see a company with leaders they can relate to and see there is growth potential within the company.
Leadership that represents a variety of backgrounds, cultures, genders, ages, and ethnicities also work better together to benefit the entire organization.
2018 McKinsey report, Delivering Through Diversity, found that the composition of a company’s leadership directly affects financial outcomes. In other words, the more diverse the management, the better the financial returns.
It goes back to how different perspectives are better at creative problem solving and collaboration than a more homogenous view.
Pro Tip: Create a diverse workforce at every level of your company. Use communication software for business to upskill employees and promote from within.
4) Diversity Attracts New Talent and Increases Retention
Millennials make up the largest demographic of today’s workforce. As a whole, they are more diverse than previous generations and they want the same in the companies they work for. In fact, they’ll make a job decision based on the diversity (or lack thereof) of a potential employer.
Millennials also have a strong opinion about workplace tech, too.
Millennials are 450% more likely to switch jobs if a company doesn’t have progressive technology.
Employee retention software aligns these workforce priorities, creating an environment and experience employees want in a job.
5) Empower Leaders and Managers to Be Inclusive
Building a diverse workforce is a great start. You also need to have a culture of inclusion and that starts at the top.
A Harvard Business Review study found that the most inclusive leaders do these three things:
- Communicate with employees and asks for their input and feedback
- Take the time to get to know the cultural differences of their employees
- Individual recognition of employees
Beekeeper’s team communication software creates a channel for leaders to take these actions. The platform offers real-time, two-way communication, allowing companies are becoming more transparent and more inclusive.
Leaders are directly connecting with employees to get feedback through messaging and surveys.
They are recognizing employees for hard work over the company-wide messaging. They are offering cross cultural training for leaders and employees to build understanding and empathy to break down barriers and unify their workforce.
From greater collaboration and innovation to a more worldly workforce, diversity is a growth strategy that has benefits for the entire organization and every employee. Create one unified team that celebrates and unifies employees with team communication software.
