Diverse workforce: why they matter now more than ever
Innovation isn’t just a goal, it’s a mindset that allows forward-thinking companies to improve people’s everyday lives and, when embraced properly, create breakthrough business results.
Many organizations have dedicated R&D teams focused on finding new ideas for improving products and services, but is this enough?
Embracing the Culture Add movement – onboarding and enabling talented people who have different points of view to the dominant culture – and expanding the innovation net wider than existing teams is a crucial way for companies to accelerate their growth and accelerate innovation.
More votes for better ideas
In the past, companies focused their efforts on creating teams where everyone fit into the cultural fabric of the company. While this is still important when it comes to hiring employees with certain values, such as a strong work ethic and collaboration capabilities, cultural fit can also emphasize conformity and develop the company into a homogeneous force. This creates the risk of blind spots and is detrimental to innovation and progress.
Alternatively, different backgrounds and life experiences provide a range of perspectives that are more likely to prevent groupthink and encourage employees to feel comfortable sharing their ideas with each other. The more views organizations can bring together on how to improve and innovate, the better.
Especially in this age of rapid AI evolution, diversity among teams takes on a whole new responsibility. Combating bias will be integral to using AI responsibly to ensure outputs are both accurate and fair, ultimately promoting inclusivity and community benefit. As such, a diverse workforce is not only a key factor for effective technology management, but also ensures the best possible results.
Country Head United Kingdom at Cognizant.
Innovation from everyone, everywhere
Companies that leverage the potential of every employee to be an innovator future-proof themselves. By expanding the scope of innovation and improvement across the organization – from HR teams to software development or marketing – they get the most out of their most valuable assets, their employees, and gain access to an ocean of creative ideas.
After all, it is people, not machines, that drive digital innovation and will continue to do so. Thriving in this digital age of promise and uncertainty means increasing the speed of innovation, experimentation and collaboration. The main driver for this is not some magical technology, but talented people.
This is especially true in the age of AI. Soon, AI will allow us to find solutions to problems much faster than we are used to and could have anticipated. As a result, people will spend more time finding problems than solving problems, and this will become the most coveted skill. Successful problem finding requires a highly diverse workforce, in terms of cognitive diversity, but also in terms of education and social background. Non-STEM and humanities roles will become as important as technical roles for companies looking to make the most of existing technologies.
Regardless of advances in traditional and generative AI, there is no near-term prospect that it will replace the creativity, imagination and insight that comes with human work.
How do you get there in practice?
It’s easy to preach about the importance of developing an inclusive innovation culture, but it’s harder to build it in practice. The first step is to put inclusive innovation at the heart of the business and ensure time and energy is invested in its development.
Building spaces for creative collaboration and development can be an effective effort: these can be ideathons, hackathons or design thinking workshops, aimed at bringing people together from different parts of the company to bounce ideas off each other. These ideas can easily be turned into real improvements in markets and solutions to customer problems. Even if the ideas have no immediate application at the time of the ideas workshop, they can be stored in a central repository and made accessible to employees at all levels.
Finally, it’s critical to recognize the creative minds behind the innovative ideas that drive your company’s growth through company-wide recognition and awards. This not only benefits those who have moved the company forward, but can also inspire others to participate.
Having a diverse and inclusive workforce is critical for companies looking to innovate and grow. Creative thinking shouldn’t be limited to R&D or customer-facing teams: all the great minds within a company should be involved in the process of developing the next big thing.
By tapping into the creative potential of all employees and welcoming all voices, companies are much more effective at generating new, innovative ideas and creating real change. When it comes to growth and innovation: the more, the merrier, the more diverse, the better.
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This article was produced as part of Ny BreakingPro’s Expert Insights channel, where we profile the best and brightest minds in today’s technology industry. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ny BreakingPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing, you can read more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro