Diversity is essential to a strong, creative, adaptable workplace, and it comes in many forms. Diversity includes socio-economic and ethnicity factors, gender diversity (including trans or non-binary individuals), queer people, varied nationalities and languages and academic backgrounds, neurodiversity, and more. Yet diversity exists not just in where we’ve come from, but in how we think.
How does your agency foster team diversity, including diversity of thought? Background diversity stems from recruitment and onboarding practices. How are you describing job openings? What positions are you creating? Do you have specific roles to support diversity within your HR department? Where do you advertise job openings? How and where do you conduct interviews and what criteria do you prioritize in resumes and CVs?
It’s often helpful to get an outside perspective on such matters, as it can prove difficult to identify internal challenges (diversity-oriented or otherwise). But supporting and celebrating diversity can strengthen and empower teams in any number of ways. More diverse workplaces encourage a broader and more open exchange of ideas. They help everyone learn to express themselves and feel comfortable with who they are. The less someone feels they have to hide in the workplace, the more likely you are to get the most out of them as a team member.
Fostering diversity of thought is partly about recruitment and onboarding practices, but it’s also about what you do once the team is in place. Is your leadership communicating creativity-oriented priorities? How are new ideas handled in your organization? What praise, experimentation, bonuses, promotions, or other tools do you use to reward and validate dynamic and inventive thought?
Diversity, in its many forms, helps an agency reach its full potential. Most agencies lack meaningful diversity and lack a plan to achieve or leverage it. What’s your plan?