By Andrew Woods

As diversity becomes a major differentiator for the world’s leading companies, organizations increasingly see having a diverse workforce as critical to creating and executing new products and processes and generating new ideas from within.

Finding, building diverse teams will be a top challenge and key area of opportunity for HR in the coming years. Different viewpoints and opinions lead to innovative ideas, products and services. For HR leaders in charge of diversity and inclusion, this creates a sustained value proposition which engages all parties while serving the organizational goals.

Diversity is a Differentiator
In Canada, our diverse multi-cultural workforce is an incredible differentiator on the world stage and could be utilized more effectively to unlock ideas otherwise overlooked. Diversity is being leveraged on a global level should by now be known. After all, with their differing viewpoints and collaborative potential, diverse teams carry an inherent competitive edge into the arena of innovation.

A recent Forbes study, Fostering Innovation Trough a Diverse Workplace, found a direct link between diverse teams and innovation.

The study tracked 321 executives with direct responsibility or oversight for their companies’ diversity and inclusion programs. All respondents worked for large global enterprises with revenue of more than $500 million and more than 40 per cent worked for companies with annual revenues of $5 billion or more. The respondents were evenly split between the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe/Middle East/Africa.

The final report overwhelmingly concluded that a diverse and inclusive workplace is essential for driving innovation and guiding business practices. Moreover, when asked how their organizations would be leveraging diversity to achieve their business goals—including innovation—‘significantly more’ was the response of 40 per cent.

Global Mindset Encourages Innovation
For Ambrosia Humphrey, VP of talent at the Vancouver-based HootSuite, the link between the diversity and success has been the key to their culture from day one.

“At HootSuite, we started with a global mindset. As a social media company we look to the events that touch our world, such as the Egyptian revolution and the Japanese tsunami, and we see how social media affects these events to create a global knowledge transfer,” said Humphrey. “At HootSuite, we understand the importance that diverse teams play in creating innovation. Our employees are encouraged to work at our offices around the globe and learn from those experiences to share with our team.

“Innovation has to come from different perspectives. We actively look through our HootHire program to attract and retain talent with huge diversity in their skill sets. We value innovation and opinion and strive for this by putting on events—such as our hackathons where employees are encouraged to focus on innovative ideas that are later tested internally to continuously drive innovation.”

The Makeup of Innovation
At L’Oreal the importance of diversity and inclusion is expressed by its formula for diversity management: DIVERSITY+INCLUSION=INNOVATION AND SUCCESS®

Frederic Roze, CEO of L’Oreal USA, says that given his company’s global footprint, it is critical to have executives and employees who represent different regions and ethnicities. “I have worked in Russia, Argentina, and Europe, and it has helped me to understand the different cultures and people,” he said.

Roze added that these insights help inform product development and can also guide business practices. “We have different brands that meet the diverse needs of our consumers, but another benefit of being a player in different regions is that you pick up ideas from the outside and apply them to the business.”

Diversity Reflects Mobility
“Diversity is the fabric of our workplace in the 21st century,” said Suzanne Wright, VP, HR at Commissionaires BC. “It reflects the mobility of qualified candidates to come to Canada and our efforts to welcome new immigrants into our organizations. At Commissionaires BC, a not-for-profit society providing security solutions for organizations throughout the province, we are proud of our strong, diverse workforce and recognize how this fosters innovation.”

For global and local companies, diversity is no longer a simple matter of creating an integrated workforce, but using that workforce to foster innovation and give it a competitive advantage in the marketplace; companies that encourage diverse teams make better-informed decisions and this fosters further creativity and innovation.

The HR Imperative
With the many challenges HR is facing—from a decline in qualified talent to a looming wave of retirements and the challenges of managing a multi-generational workplace—innovation is essential. Such innovations emerge elementally when organizations take diversity and inclusion to heart, mind and to market.

Andrew Woods, MBA, is a professional speaker, university lecturer, trainer and author of BOOM! engaging and inspiring employees across cultures.

(PeopleTalk Winter 2013)