Workforce diversity in 2024: An employer’s guide
Businesses are increasingly investing in diversity strategies in the workplace to create workforces that are more reflective of society, where individuality is respected and valued. This guide outlines what it means to have a diverse workforce, including the benefits, challenges, and recommended steps for how to get there.
In recent years, research has identified clear business benefits for workforce diversity, while the social justice case and a sense of moral duty are undeniable.
Businesses are increasingly investing in diversity initiatives in the workplace. The need for focus in this area is clear from the rising number of job titles mentioning diversity, inclusion, or equality. These strategically-focused roles increased by 10% on Totaljobs between 2021 and 2022.
Overall, diversity is considered an advantage for people and businesses. But the path to achieving this, and ensuring diversity comes hand-in-hand with equity and inclusion, can be challenging. This guide is a starting point for businesses looking to find out more about diversity in the workplace and the actions that inform a successful strategy.
What is workforce diversity?
Workforce diversity is the collective result of the variety and uniqueness of human experience represented within a business.
When focusing on diversity in the context of workplace strategy, the concept becomes broader than simply acknowledging the visible and invisible differences between employees.
Diversity in this context is typically focused on how employers can create an environment where employees’ unique lived experiences and characteristics are protected, respected, and valued.
How does diversity relate to equity and inclusion?
A diverse workforce doesn’t automatically mean fairness in terms of access to opportunity or career success. Each person also needs to feel like they belong, so they can thrive professionally and feel empowered to be themselves.
In other words, workplace equity and inclusion must also be part of the conversation. This means that when referring to a workforce strategy, diversity, equity and inclusion are used to collectively refer to actions that aim to create a workforce that is representative of a range of unique characteristics, offers fair access to opportunity, and cultivates a culture where people can bring their whole selves to work.
Types of workforce diversity
Sometimes when people think about diversity in the workplace, they focus on gender and ethnicity. But there are nine protected characteristics outlined in the Equality Act 2010.
Its introduction brought legal protection from discrimination against the following characteristics:
- Age
- Disability
- Gender reassignment
- Marriage and civil partnership
- Pregnancy and maternity
- Race
- Religion and philosophical belief
- Sex
- Sexual orientation
As it stands, the Act does not reference socioeconomic or educational background as protected characteristics, but many employers looking to diversify their workforce would recognise the need to improve employment outcomes for people from less advantaged socioeconomic or educational backgrounds. Totaljobs research chimes with this: almost half (49%) of people who received Free School Meals feel their background limits their career prospects.
It’s also important to remember the role that intersectionality plays in workforce diversity. Each of us has a combination of lived experiences, perspectives, and characteristics. These intersect and influence societal expectations placed on us, and impact how we are treated.
With this in mind, diversity in the workplace can include:
Ethnicity
Ethnic diversity refers to heritage or background and links to racial or geographic origin, and/or shared cultural identity, which can include traditions, religions, and language. Totaljobs research focused on the careers of Black and South Asian women in the UK highlights that they are less likely to feel free to be themselves at work, which is just one impact of being underrepresented.
Religious, philosophical, or political beliefs
A person’s religion (or lack of), and the way they may express their beliefs through their dress or outlook on life can inform a significant part of their identity. Under the Equality Act, a belief (religious or otherwise) affects how a person lives their life, or impacts their outlook on the world, and is therefore protected – unless it infringes on the rights of another person.
Age
Sometimes the ages represented in a workforce are grouped into generations, such as Gen Z, Millennials and Baby Boomers. This can help talent professionals and HR teams to understand overall trends, experience levels or specific recruitment challenges. For example, a business may want to create tailored recruitment campaigns targeted at younger entry-level talent to help futureproof their workforce.
Gender
This relates to gender identity and the way people express this, for example through their clothing or their pronouns. The experiences of cisgender people (whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth) are different to trans people (whose gender identity is not the same as the sex they were assigned at birth). This means tailored support systems and policies should be in place to protect and support all genders.
Sexual orientation
This relates to a person’s romantic or sexual attraction, or lack of it. To foster a LGBTQ+ inclusive workplace, HR policies should be inclusive of all sexual orientations and relationships, being mindful of how these are acknowledged in family or parental policies, including surrogacy and adoption leave.
Physical abilities
Disabilities may be visible or invisible and affect a person’s physical movements, senses, and day-to-day activities. Statistics from the House of Commons demonstrate the diversity of physical and mental disabilities. Of the 14.6 million people in the UK with a disability, 21% are of working age. Of this group, 42% of disabilities are related to mobility, 32% to stamina/breathing/fatigue and 22% to dexterity, while 7% impact vision or hearing.
Neurodiversity
Neurodiversity describes the variety of human cognitive thinking and neurological differences. It is often referred to in the context of neurodiverse conditions, such as autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD. The University of Edinburgh estimates that 1 in 7 people in the UK are neurodivergent, and many more live their lives without a formal diagnosis. Misconceptions about what it means to be neurodivergent can hold people back, or leave them lacking in employment opportunities.
Mental health and wellbeing
One in four people will experience a mental health problem every year in England, according to Mind. Alongside this, it’s important to acknowledge the impact discrimination such as racism can have on a person’s mental health. Totaljobs research shows that almost two thirds of Black and South Asian women say their mental health has suffered while at work. For this reason, it’s important to consider how mental health and wellbeing are embedded into a diversity strategy. This must consider how demographic characteristics may intersect with someone’s mental health.
Socioeconomic
A person’s socioeconomic status or background refers to social and economic factors including occupation, wealth and education. Sometimes this term is used interchangeably with the idea of social class, but experts including The Social Mobility Foundation consider socioeconomic background more objectively measurable. Understanding a person’s socioeconomic background can include whether they qualified for Free School Meals, what school they attended, and the occupations of their parents or caregivers.
Benefits of a diverse workforce
There are multiple benefits to creating a workplace culture where diversity is welcomed, celebrated, supported and promoted. Diversity on its own is not the only goal, however – researchers Robin J. Ely and David A. Thomas highlight that:
“Increasing diversity does not, by itself, increase effectiveness; what matters is how an organization harnesses diversity, and whether it’s willing to reshape its power structure.”
With that in mind, here are the benefits of a diverse workforce:
A wider talent pool
Totaljobs research shows that a diverse workforce would encourage a third of jobseekers to apply for a role – potentially leading to even more diversity.
Considering the recruitment channels your attraction strategy relies on is the first step to ensure you’re reaching a broad audience who have the relevant skills. Programmatic jobs that harness data science to reach talent by demographic and location can surface candidates who are more likely to be underrepresented in your business. By targeting recruitment in this way, the chances of reaching a more diverse talent pool are maximised.
An engaged workforce and improved retention
The pursuit of meaningful work has become more common in the aftermath of Covid-19. McKinsey research suggests that a huge 70% of employees feel their sense of purpose is tied to the work they do.
People looking for meaning in their job are likely to be the same people who want to engage with diversity and inclusion initiatives. This makes for better connections between colleagues and a more engaged workforce. This will also do wonders for employee sentiment towards their employer – as long as the diversity strategy is considered positive. It’s human nature to want things to be fair, and working for a company that is proactively trying to improve diversity and inclusion means staff are more likely to feel proud about working there – and so, they’re more likely to stick around.
Better understanding of customers
A workforce that represents the diverse world we live in means teams are more likely to understand customers, their perspectives, and their challenges. This means better relationships can be forged between the business and consumers, leading to more fitting solutions, products and services.
More innovation and boosted productivity
Teams made up of people who look the same or share similar backgrounds may be more likely to fall foul of one-track thinking. Diverse groups of decision-makers bring dynamic ideas that generate discussion and debate. They’re also more likely to pull each other up on incorrect information, and take more time to listen to all the facts and opinions, according to research.
Better decision-making means more successful projects, boosted creativity and innovative problem solving – a great recipe for higher productivity and effective teamwork.
Higher profits
Taking into account all these benefits, it’s not surprising that a diverse workforce is also a bonus for the bottom line. McKinsey research outlines how businesses in the top quartile of ethnic diversity at senior levels are over a third (36%) more likely to outperform companies lagging in the fourth quartile. Similar success is felt by companies with a more gender-balanced board. These businesses are 25% more likely to achieve above-average profits.
Potential challenges in a diverse workforce
The journey to creating a diverse workforce that fosters equity and inclusion is a challenging one. Being aware of the potential hurdles can help recruiters, talent professionals and HR teams to be proactive in tackling them head-on.
Some of the challenges to bear in mind include:
Setting measurable and meaningful targets
If your business has a lack of employee demographic data, it will be difficult to set appropriate targets. Building a picture through data is key before setting goals. After that, diversity aims should be specific – ‘making the workforce more diverse’ isn’t precise enough as it doesn’t encompass which identities are currently underrepresented.
Avoid relying only on targets related to increasing representation in particular teams or levels. This must be supported by interrogating and rebuilding internal processes. This may include the business’ approach to candidate shortlisting, internal performance reviews, or the allocation of work.
Educating staff and rethinking ways of working
Introducing significant changes to your workforce will mean that ways of working will need to evolve. A more diverse workforce means staff need to be mindful of the lived experience of other people. Those who lack diversity in their personal lives may be unaware of the significance of, for example, a cultural celebration, or may not have considered how a meeting could be adjusted for a colleague with a visual disability.
Training and education are essential to raise awareness of the different needs of social groups within the business. Taking the time to platform members of staff from a variety of backgrounds, celebrate a range of religious events, or encourage the use of pronouns, can foster greater inclusion.
Risk of conflict and discrimination
Increasing diversity may uncover discriminatory behaviour, prejudice or stereotyping. While unconscious bias or cultural awareness training can help to address ignorance in some forms, derogatory and offensive behaviour should never be tolerated.
A clear HR policy should reiterate that diversity, equity and inclusion are a priority and that incidents of discrimination will be met with appropriate disciplinary action against the perpetrator. HR should also ensure employees have confidential channels to report incidents.
Steps to fostering workforce diversity
Fostering workplace diversity requires a multi-strand strategy. The below actions outline the steps that can be taken to create meaningful and sustained change to maximise success.
1. Listen to employees to understand the root challenges to diversity
The first step in fostering workforce diversity is to engage with staff by listening to the experiences of underrepresented groups.
Successful listening can be in the form of focus groups led by HR or an external body (if budget allows), employee experience surveys, or channels where staff can speak their truth anonymously if required. By analysing this information, common barriers and trends can be uncovered and addressed. Challenges raised by employees may include feeling undervalued, microaggressions, discrimination, or a lack of belonging.
By speaking directly to minoritised or underrepresented employees, businesses can be assured that the actions they take treat the cause, not the symptoms, of these challenges.
2. Identify barriers at all stages of the employee experience
Diversity should be mapped across the entirety of the employee experience: attraction, recruitment and retention. This means a joined-up approach is required between HR, recruiters, leadership and line managers.
Interrogate the processes in each stage and consider the impact these have on candidates and employees. For example, you might consider how much space is given to your diversity commitments on your company website. When thinking about interviewing, monitor the demographics of the initial talent pool versus the shortlist to understand if certain demographics are less likely to make it to interview stage. When people leave the business, are exit interviews conducted and data collected so HR teams and managers can understand why, and detect any trends?
Find more detailed attraction, recruitment and retention tips in the Employer’s guide to social mobility and Uplifting Black and South Asian women reports.
3. Develop tailored, scalable solutions to address unique challenges
Considering the entire employee experience, a one-size-fits-all approach will not be successful in making this more equitable. Tailored and scalable solutions to address specific barriers should be developed.
This might include addressing the way job adverts are written. Gender-coded language dissuades women from applying to roles so to address this, use free tools like the Gender Bias Decoder to detect this language.
4. Champion accountability and buy-in from the leadership team to maximise impact
Getting buy-in from senior leaders will enable high-impact change – forward momentum will be difficult without commitment at the highest levels of the business.
Mistakes will inevitably be made when taking steps to diversify the workforce – and so a culture of accountability at all levels is necessary. HR teams may encourage senior leaders to demonstrate this through sponsorship of a diversity initiative, or ‘open door’ conversations with staff about challenging topics, such as discrimination or systemic barriers.
5. Foster a company culture driven by values of belonging and inclusion
The aims driving the business’s workforce diversity strategy should act as cornerstones of a company’s culture. While buy-in from the C-Suite or business owner is needed to set changes in motion, the wider workforce needs to embrace these values too, to foster a sense of belonging and inclusion.
This will ultimately mean more engaged staff who understand the value diversity brings to their teams. Fostering ‘grassroots’ style change in the form of employee-led networks or resource groups can build a shared sense of ownership, as well as forge stronger relationships between colleagues.
6. Set meaningful and measurable targets
Like any business strategy, measurable aims should be set in relation to diversity. Couple numerical targets with qualitative measures, such as case studies and written feedback from employees. This builds a more nuanced picture that includes reactions and perspectives of staff in response to actions taken by the business.
7. Collect data to drive decision-making
Measuring progress against diversity goals relies on data to identify emerging trends as well as changes in the longer term. While there is no legal requirement to capture the demographic data of job applicants or your existing workforce, it is considered a necessary starting point for businesses aiming to increase diversity.
By monitoring the current diversity in your talent pools and workforce, it becomes clearer which initiatives should be prioritised, and ambitious but realistic targets can be agreed on. Collecting this kind of sensitive personal data means that data privacy and protection needs to be taken into account – this includes (but is not limited to) candidates or employees consenting to their information being stored, as well as a clear explanation as to why the business is collecting the data.
8. Monitor progress against goals and course correct as required
Off the back of goal setting, monitoring progress and interrogating blockers will allow businesses to course-correct as needed. Strategies should remain flexible, while leadership and HR teams should be willing to offer transparent communication about changes.
Feedback loops and continued discussion about what’s next for the business’ diversity approach should be actively encouraged. This means the opinions and experiences of staff will continue to feed into the evolution of any diversity-focused strategy.
Further resources
Multiple resources were included in this article. You can also refer to the below to find out more about workplace diversity: