Clodagh Murphy, chair of Exeter Chamber and director of Cathedral Appointments shares her take on Diversity in Business
It is estimated that through 2022, 75% of organisations with frontline decision-making teams reflecting a diverse and inclusive culture will exceed their financial targets. Gender-diverse and inclusive teams outperformed gender-homogeneous, less inclusive teams by 50%, on average. This is a striking and in some ways eye-watering statistic.
I grew up in Dublin in the 70s & 80s – white, catholic, homogeneous. Moving to San Francisco in the mid-90s has shaped my whole perspective on diversity. I went from living in a very safe bubble to one of the most cosmopolitan, liberal cultures. It was an amazing experience and taught me so much about listening to and learning from different perspectives.
Roll forward to 2022 and with 30 years of experience under my belt, I have worked within diverse and non-diverse teams. Oh, and when I say diverse, I mean truly diverse – because you need to have three or more diverse members in the team for it to have a “critical mass” and really help drive performance. That means a token person who has some level of diversity just won’t cut it. For example, if you are looking for true gender diversity, that means at least three or 40% of the team must be made up of either male or female.
In my experience, diverse teams are more fun, the discussion is broader and I for one have learned more in these teams than any other. I’ve also had more success and driven higher percentage growth in diverse teams.
Now, we may think diversity is just about male and female – it’s not. There is so much more to it, from cultural background to sexual orientation to age and many more attributes that help us have different perspectives.
For me, it’s about having different lenses and outlooks on challenges and opportunities, pulling in more varied experiences and therefore having a different approach or thought process when it comes to solving a problem. By our nature, we are all different, but there are shades of different and I love working in an environment where there are points of view that make me stop and reflect and often change how we are solving a challenge.
Our challenge, as a business community, is to embrace diversity, in all its forms. Step outside our comfort zone and proactively seek out diverse people from us and our current teams to join our organisations so that their perspective helps us shape how we solve challenges and reach our potential. Is it easy? Sometimes not. Will it happen without us consciously trying? Not unless we are very lucky. Is it worth it? Absolutely! – remember gender-diverse and inclusive teams outperformed gender-homogeneous, less inclusive teams by 50%.
I will be speaking at Exeter Works on Friday 11th March from 8.30am – 9.30am at Recruitment and Retention of the workforce post – Covid event. If you want to find out more about diversity in business, and also hear from other employers in the city who have embraced new approaches to their recruitment and retention such as flexible working arrangements, employee mental health support and managing ideal work/life balance, you can book your free place here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/recruit-and-retain-post-covid-tickets-266827356807. I’m reliably informed the coffee and breakfast will be pretty good too!
