Nowadays, companies in the construction and real estate sector, too, need to be up-to-date in order to be successful on the job market. For many executives, committing to diversity is still one of the most delicate aspects of this. There are solutions. In our previous Valdivia Expert Tip (Employer Branding 3: The Glow of Appreciation — Valdivia (valdivia-consulting.com), we presented the foundations: general appreciation. In this issue, we want to show ways in which companies can advance and utilise diversity without having to reinvent themselves.
Optimum Performance from Everybody – More Resilience for the Whole Organisation
Practiced diversity makes a company more productive, more innovative, and resilient. Everybody profits from diverse experiences and perspectives – as long as everybody treats each other openly. However, there is more to diversity than listening to the ideas of the colleague from Syria, the women around the table, or the person in a wheelchair during a team meeting. Diversity is, if you like, the flip side of the coin of non-discrimination: It’s not about lumping everyone together, but much more it is about supporting people as best fits their specific needs… and, this way, enabling them to perform best. One important factor in this is soft skills: When, for instance, the digital natives’ joy of play and an old hand’s gut feeling complement each other in a productive manner, expect more and better results compared to running a project by the book.
6 Tips for Starting Diversity
- Practiced diversity starts with small things – and with practical things: by mixing teams or project groups from different departments, for instance. If you are unsure as to whether this will work, an external trainer can help to kick-start the process, to set up pilots.
- Support exchange between different age groups, the unexperienced as well as the experienced, e.g. with a buddy program. Allocate a time and money budget in order to establish a framework for genuine exchange that goes beyond concrete tasks.
- Encouraging training is a good motivational factor for any employee. Should you expressly mention German lessons in the context, find an elegant way to address your committed migrant co-workers.
- Similarly, promoting corporate health shows all of your staff members that you care and, at the same time and with age-based programs, it demonstrates a positive attitude towards older colleagues.
- Surely, all parents will welcome help in arranging child care, but it is also an important element of promoting women. Among the options are time accounts for young parents or corporate day care facilities. In case your company is too small for this: Why not contact neighboring enterprises and arrange for joint child care?
- An internal diversity calendar has the holidays of every group represented in the company – from Easter and Bayram to Christopher Street Day – with the respective background info provided. This way, a positive sense of diversity will grow with the entire staff.
And do have the courage to make diversity visible: You can do more than just adhere to the legal requirements of gender neutrality in your job advertisements. Highlight any programs you offer as described above – just like good accessibility for the mobility impaired. Use your website and social media to give the floor to people with diverse backgrounds. Even if you start with only a few individual examples: the point is to take a first, unmistakable step!
