As the U.S. population becomes increasingly racially and ethnically diverse, business enterprises have recognized the benefits of and embraced increasing diversity in the workplace as well. It’s not only about reflecting supply chains and markets; studies show that workplace diversity brings a number of additional benefits.
According to Washington State University, benefits of workplace diversity include:
- Helping companies develop more creative and inventive solutions;
- Improving financial performance and margins;
- Assisting in attracting and retaining top talent;
- Improving the quality of decision making; and
- Boosting a company’s reputation and brand.
Professional corporate team building activities foster diversity and inclusion by helping to build workplace relationships, improve communication, and increase collaboration—all in a fun, natural, unforced way. Team building programs can be designed and customized specifically to address a variety of common business challenges, including increasing the cohesion of diverse work teams.
Understanding Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace
“Workplace diversity” simply means having a collection of employees who represent a wide range of humanity in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, ability, sexual orientation, age, and other characteristics. Common categories of diversity include, but are not limited to:
- Physical ability and neurodiversity: Individuals with different abilities such as mobility impairment, blindness, or deafness, and those who are on the autism spectrum or have conditions such as dyslexia.
- Race and ethnicity: Black, white, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, etc.
- Sexual orientation and gender identity: Includes male, female, heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, gender non-conforming, and non-binary (LGBTQ+) persons.
- Age: As with other protected classes (such as race, religion, and gender), discrimination on the basis of an employee’s age is illegal. Yet it’s depressingly common, especially in tech companies. According to AARP, 64% of adults aged 50+ “think older workers face age discrimination in the workplace today. And among them, nearly all (90%) believe that age discrimination against older workers is common in the workplace.” Software maker HubSpot famously found itself in the spotlight for this back in 2016.
It’s also important from a practical standpoint to employ people with different backgrounds, life experiences, and perspectives. One advantage of a diverse workforce is better decision making, based on bringing together a variety of viewpoints. A work group that is racially or ethnically diverse won’t necessarily provide that advantage if all of the members grew up in upper-middle-class homes, near one of the coasts, and attended Ivy League universities.
While “diversity” simply means employing people with a variety of characteristics, “inclusion” in the employment sense is “the practice of including and accommodating people who often face discrimination and exclusion due to race, gender, ability, sexuality, or identity,” per Verywell Mind. It means actively involving those diverse employees in collaborative projects, decision making, and other work-related activities.
Unlike the “team building” of decades past, which included activities like paintball and obstacle courses, modern team building events support both diversity and inclusion by providing roles for every employee, regardless of physical ability or other characteristics. As noted in our expert guide to team building activities that work:
“Because every employee is a unique individual, each brings specific strengths and capabilities to team building. Depending upon the specific activity, individual team members may play any of half a dozen different roles.”
Improperly managing diverse teams can lead to disengagement, conflict, and poor team performance. Fortunately, as noted here previously, leaders can improve cohesion on diverse work teams with the help of team building and professional development programs.
Personality assessments like our DiSC Workshop and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Training help individuals better understand their own traits and preferences as well as those of teammates, leading to improved communication.
Professional development workshops such as Conflict Resolution Training and Manager’s Guide to Business Coaching help supervisors and managers more effectively and empathetically manage diverse teams.
But Wait — Isn’t DEI Going to DIE?
Despite the many business benefits of diversity in the workplace, corporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs have gotten a lot of negative press recently, from Forbes and The New York Times to ABC News, which reported that, “corporate America is slashing DEI workers amid backlash to diversity programs.”
What’s happening? As the Washington Post has explained, “unconscious bias training (has been) a fixture in corporate DEI programs…since the early 1960s to combat bigotry and comply with new federal laws prohibiting discrimination in the workplace…For years, the curriculum typically emphasized that everyone holds biases and that there are legal risks to not addressing them.”
This was all pretty uncontroversial. But, as the Post reveals, a shift happened in 2020 following the death of George Floyd, from a focus on “anti-bias” to “anti-racism” in corporate DEI programs.
The article explains that, “Though unconscious bias training and anti-racism training share common characteristics, the latter delves into lessons about the nation’s history of slavery, segregation and discrimination, while advancing the idea that society continues to favor White people. The goal is to create awareness about systemic racial inequities…But legal experts say the training runs the risk of singling out White participants and painting them as inherently racist — in contrast to unconscious bias training, which typically highlights the personal biases everyone holds.”
The result has been lawsuits, in the Colorado prison system as the Post reports, by a number of university professors, and others. In response, tech giants like Zoom, Snap, Google, and Meta as well as brand-name manufacturers like John Deere and Ford among other large corporations have announced cuts to their DEI programs.
And consumers increasingly prefer not to hear from corporations about current events and political controversies: “Fewer than four in 10 U.S. adults (38%) believe businesses should take public stances, a decline of 10 percentage points” in the past two years, according to Gallup.
Notably, “Americans of nearly all age groups, genders, races and partisan groups have become less likely to want to hear from businesses on current events…(and) groups who were previously the most receptive to hearing from businesses are now considerably less likely to say so. In 2022, three-quarters of Democrats thought businesses should take a stance on current events; yet, over the past two years, that support has decreased by 22 percentage points.”
So, what does this all mean? First and foremost, as detailed in the next section, diversity does indeed bring a wide range of benefits to the workplace. And younger employees in particular expect their employers to make a commitment to diversity and inclusion. So that won’t change.
Going forward, companies are likely to focus less on public pronouncements, DEI departments, and controversial—potentially even counterproductive—anti-racism training programs from outside consultants.
They will shift resources to focus on leadership training, personality assessments, unconscious bias training, and other proven professional development programs, as well as team building activities that organically promote inclusion, relationship building, and improved communication.
In short, diversity and inclusion efforts will become woven into the fabric of the corporate culture rather than a separate departmental function.
Four Benefits of Diversity in the Workplace
Diversity and inclusion can bring tangible, long-term benefits to businesses by improving various aspects of the organization, from inspiring innovation and making better decisions to improving the workplace culture and expanding market opportunities. Benefits that show why diversity is important in the workplace include:
1. Enhancing Creativity and Innovation
By bringing together individuals with a variety of perspectives and life experiences, diversity can enhance creativity and innovation while avoiding “groupthink.” To be effective, it’s important to encourage input and openness to new ideas. Diversity helps through:
■ Multiple Perspectives: Employees from different backgrounds, cultures, and professional and educational experiences bring unique viewpoints to bear on various types of business decisions.
■ Creative Problem-Solving: Diversity of various types generally leads to diversity of thought, which produces more creative solutions as individuals approach challenges from different angles.
■ Innovation through Cross-Cultural Ideas: A diverse workforce can combine ideas from different cultures, life experiences, and viewpoints, leading to novel ideas and solutions. Furthermore, exposure to these new and varied ideas encourages thinking outside conventional norms.
■ Openness to Risk-Taking and Experimentation: Diverse teams are generally more open to experimenting, taking risks, and challenging conventional ways of thinking, all of which are essential for innovation.
Many different team building activities encourage creative problem solving and collaboration among diverse groups. One example is Pipeline, a collaborative event where individual teams each build sections of a larger marble delivery system, all of which must be assembled at the end to successfully move the marbles. Communication and coordination between teams is vital to achieve the final goal.
2. Improving Decision-Making
Diversity improves the quality of decision-making by incorporating a variety of viewpoints. Bringing together individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives leads to a wider potential set of alternatives. Benefits for decision-making include:
■ Broader Insights: Diverse teams develop more ideas and a greater variety of potential solutions.
■ Comprehensive Solutions: By bringing together a wider range of perspectives and insights, diverse groups are less likely to overlook important considerations or the potential for unintended consequences.
■ Avoiding Groupthink: When teams consist of people with similar backgrounds or viewpoints, they are more prone to “groupthink,” where creativity can be stifled. America’s economic progress is fueled, and many times led, by the diversity of its immigrant workforce.
Again, there are numerous options for team building exercises that facilitate diverse perspectives in decision-making processes. For instance, in the team building program Bridge to the Future, individual teams, using only cardboard and duct tape, build sections of a bridge representing the future goals of their organization.
The teams must also collaborate so when all of the sections are assembled at the end, they form a bridge with the strength to hold the weight of the entire group!
3. Increasing Employee Engagement and Retention
Numerous studies—including research from Harvard, Deloitte, and McKinsey—show a range of benefits flowing from diverse and inclusive workplaces, from higher employee satisfaction and engagement to lower turnover rates.
Diversity and inclusion promote employee engagement, productivity, retention, and other benefits. Research shows a range of advantages for diverse workplaces including:
■ Higher Job Satisfaction: Workers in diverse and inclusive environments tend to be happier because they feel comfortable being their authentic selves and that their ideas and efforts are valued.
■ Reduced Turnover: Because workers are comfortable and feel a sense of belonging at work, as well as forming strong workplace relationships, they are less likely to leave.
■ Increased Engagement: Employees in diverse and inclusive environments are more likely to feel engaged and motivated because they see that their contributions matter, and feel that their voices are heard.
■ Psychological Safety: Inclusive environments create a sense of psychological safety where employees feel comfortable expressing ideas, voicing concerns, and taking risks without fear of judgment or negative consequences—which boosts confidence and creativity.
■ Positive Workplace Culture: Inclusive environments typically foster a culture of respect, collaboration, and open-mindedness, making the workplace more enjoyable for everyone, and employees happier.
Many types of team building events can boost morale and engagement among diverse employees, but charitable corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs can be particularly powerful.
Activities such as Autism Awareness Sensory Donation—in which teams assemble sensory support kits for donation to autism therapy programs and non-profit organizations while learning about the effects, behaviors, and challenges of the disorder—create an emotionally powerful shared experience for participants that transcends racial and cultural differences.
4. Expanding Market Reach
Employing a diverse workforce can help a company expand its market reach due to several factors. Among the benefits of diversity in expanding sales potential are:
■ Better Customer Understanding: A diverse workforce that includes employees with different cultural backgrounds, languages, and experiences enables a company to not only better understand the preferences and behavior of ethnic submarkets within North America but also global markets, so it can adapt product features and messaging more effectively.
■ Access to New Networks and Partnerships: Employees from diverse backgrounds often have access to different professional and social networks, which can open doors to previously untapped new partnerships, business collaborations, and customer bases.
■ Enhanced Cultural Sensitivity in Marketing: A diverse workforce helps ensure marketing campaigns are culturally sensitive and tailored to resonate with different demographic groups, avoiding missteps in advertising that could alienate certain groups while also creating more effective campaigns for diverse audiences.
■ Improved Brand Reputation: Companies known for embracing diversity and inclusion often build stronger reputations, not just with customers but also with investors, partners, and other stakeholders.
There are many corporate team building options that help employees from different backgrounds connect and communicate more effectively. One great example is Total Recall, in which each member of five-person teams is assigned a specific role in working together to duplicate an existing structure in a separate location using only a chain of precise verbal communication—no pictures!
Promoting Diversity and Inclusion Through Team Building
Regular, periodic team building activities play a vital role in cultivating and maintaining a healthy, high-performance workplace culture. They help employees build new relationships and can be adapted and even customized to meet a wide range of business challenges, from managing growth and integrating remote teams to improving cross-functional collaboration and fostering innovation.
Their effectiveness and flexibility make team building programs a powerful resource and ideal tool for promoting diversity and inclusion. This can be achieved through several different approaches, including:
Creating Employee Resource Groups
Per Wikipedia, employee resource groups are “groups of employees who join in their workplace based on shared characteristics or life experiences.” They are generally formed organically by employees who take the initiative to start a group, though supported by human resources (HR) and leaders who provide resources and guidance.
A variety of team building events can strengthen the formation and development of these groups, such as a City SmartHunt®. These technology-enabled corporate scavenger hunts, offered in more than 100 cities across the U.S., encourage teams to strategize and delegate specific tasks in order to find landmarks, solve clues, answer trivia questions, search for items, and complete various challenges while maximizing their points within an allotted time.
Promoting Inclusive Leadership
Leaders can support and model how to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace in a number of ways, such as leading by example, fostering open communication, acknowledging and rewarding inclusive behaviors, and offering training on inclusive leadership.
Specific team building and professional development programs are designed to teach and build inclusive leadership skills. For example, in Igniting Team Performance®, participants complete a series of progressively difficult challenges designed to align with specific, prearranged needs and goals. Guided conversations uncover team strengths and areas for improvement. These debrief lessons are then immediately put into action during the next introduced challenge, empowering the group to deliver a better teamwork performance.
Ensuring Transparency and Accountability
It’s vital for leadership to maintain transparency in diversity initiatives and measure their impact by:
- Defining specific objectives;
- Making diversity and inclusion goals public;
- Tying goals to business strategy;
- Using data to track progress; and
- Regularly reporting on that progress.
It’s likewise essential to collect feedback to make sure goals are understood and accepted by employees, and not perceived as imposing quotas or tokenism. Data collection must be done carefully to avoid privacy issues.
Team building activities intrinsically enhance open communication, but can also promote accountability. One great example is our engaging trademarked program, Competition to Collaboration®. As explained in our post on how to teach collaboration through competition, this activity starts with two teams competing against each other…then introduces a twist in which the teams have to work together in order to maximize the total score.
As noted in that post, “The business benefit is the mindset those employees take back to the workplace. They look for opportunities to collaborate, and are excited about it. They focus more on how their activities and communications impact the overall organization, not just their own roles.”
Fostering Allyship and Advocacy
Though some employees have valid concerns about its risks, allyship simply means being an “advocate on the behalf of others…An ally stands up for others and brings voice and visibility to the struggle of the marginalized.” It’s about supporting and celebrating coworkers of all races, ethnicities, abilities, and gender / sexual identities.
Again, many different types of team building activities can help encourage allyship and advocacy. Professional development workshops like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Training, Emotional Intelligence Training, and our DiSC Workshop help people better understand how their own innate personality traits as well as those of their coworkers impact their decision making and communication styles.
And as noted above, charitable CSR programs like Build-a-Wheelchair® not only improve communication and help build stronger workplace relationships, but also create powerful shared emotional experiences that transcend race, ethnicity, or other demographic characteristics.
Providing Ongoing Education and Training
When it comes to diversity training and education, “the kind of training which institutions tend to favor the most, such as ‘short, one-shot sessions that can be completed and the requisite diversity boxes ticked’, are unlikely to make a difference in the habits or long-term behavior of participants,” according to BBC reporting.
To be effective, organizations need to make diversity training sessions and workshops more regular and recurring, and to choose programs carefully. While “certain types of training can be harmful and even reinforce stereotypes” and ultimately, “You kind of get what you pay for: low cost, low pay off,” per the BBC, their research also shows that “the most productive kind of session is one that encourages empathy and interaction with other groups.”
Again, professional development workshops that teach participants how to better understand their own traits and biases as well as those of coworkers can be enlightening without being boring—or worse, threatening. CSR activities can help build emotional bonds that transcend race or other characteristics.
And team building activities that include educational components on diversity and inclusion can be highly effective because they are focused on teaching through fun, collaborative activities—not a lecture.
A great example of fostering creative expression and group collaboration is Corporate Canvas, a program in which each participant paints and signs one section of a large, colorful company mural. All of the individual sections are assembled at the end into an artistic representation of the company’s culture.
Sustaining Diversity and Inclusion Efforts
Achieving the potential benefits of a diverse workplace requires an ongoing commitment to diversity and inclusion. It’s easy to backslide, especially when businesses are going through challenging times.
That means having methods in place for continually assessing progress of diversity initiatives, being transparent with them, and working towards improvement. It also means avoiding a focus on the wrong metrics and focusing instead on what actually matters to employees.
Being effective with diversity efforts requires doing the right things at every stage of the employee journey, from recruiting to coaching to promotions to collecting and acting on feedback. Regularly incorporating professional development and team building events helps to improve leadership as well as to sustain and enhance diversity efforts.
Taking Action for a Diverse and Inclusive Workplace
As detailed above, diverse workforces deliver a number of impactful, measurable business benefits. Leaders who prioritize diversity and inclusion through actions like supporting employee resource groups, promoting inclusive leadership, and regularly scheduling training and team building activities are more likely to create and sustain a culture of high performance.
To learn more about how Best Corporate Events can expertly deliver professional development workshops and team building programs that support workplace diversity, contact us for a consultation.
