Diversity Workforce and the Technology Sector

Diverse workforces include people of many skin colors, a variety of genders, and widely divergent backgrounds.

Companies with a diversified workforce offer the opportunity for staff to express “out of the box” ideas, ideals, and beliefs based on their extensive and diverse education, environment, culture and past accomplishments - a place where people are free to express their cultural backgrounds, ideas, and beliefs without being afraid of being judged or retaliated against.

In the world of technology, the synergy created by staff with a variety of past life experiences generates unique, advanced and potentially untried or unfamiliar designs and concepts for analysis.

Diversity appears to drive creativity, innovation, and personal/professional growth. Companies in the technology sector that have a diverse community has an array of different knowledge bases to access (such as when problems arise in a project). In this context, a group of diverse individuals may find creative solutions to solve a problem faster. A team with different knowledge bases and abilities on a particular subject can learn from one another, benefiting their overall cause. That being said, in order for diversity to live and thrive in a workplace environment, people within that environment need to be open to understanding and appreciating each other’s differences.

Now, consider a more homogenous group of people; people who all think and work the same. It appears more difficult to maneuver around a problem because everyone with the same mindset and techniques try to solve a problem similarly. This is due to people all having the same tools in their personal “toolbox”. A diverse team, on the other hand, has various different

ways of handling the issue due to the variety of tools to choose from in their toolbox. Therefore, companies that include diversified personnel are better prepared to understand and serve the diversified requirements of their diverse clients. This increases the client base and companies’ profits.

Homogenous technology innovators face increased obstacles. Their predicament is based on similarity of mindset, techniques, education and experience. Examples of difficulties might include the inability to communicate with overseas corporations requiring language skills, knowledge of country-specific legal procedures, current technological advances in any specific

country to be used as a basis for advancing their technology, morals and cultural differences.

This essay update includes my observations from my first corporate position as an information technology intern in a large architectural firm. Architects constantly converse and meet with diverse clients to discuss planning and design for a variety of projects. Working in IT for this architectural company has given me insights on evaluating why diverse teams are successful.

The following are my major observations from 2018 to date.

• Lack of diversity may be due to hiring practices that select graduates from a small sampling of colleges, which limits the diversity of teams. This company is enhancing their recruitment process to increase their workforce diversity.

• The number of male employees still outnumbers the female employees.

• As I interact with architectural teams with both small amounts of diversity and teams with greater diversity, I have personally validated that diversity increases creativity and innovation and enhances problem-solving ability. This decreases the time required to complete projects.

• The greater the diversity in each team, the more pleasant the workplace becomes.

Diversity should increase profits by;

• shortening the time required to complete projects; by solving issues more quickly

• creating a happier workplace through improved morale

• enabling a company to serve more diverse clients with greater sensitivity, and thereby increasing their client base

• giving employees a natural environment that enables both professional and personal growth, which increases an employee’s value to their company

• having teams exposed to greater creativity and innovation

The world is filled with a diverse group of people and it is only right that any workplace reflects the people they are serving and working with. Only in doing so is a workplace uniquely position to be great.