Building the Business Case for Inclusion

By Susan Stinson

Let’s be honest–you may have to attend the February 18, 2017 Learning Community on Inclusion as a requirement for ODKM 740 and your ODKM master’s program. But, why should an organization be concerned about achieving Inclusion?

Take a look at the map and add your “origin” to our Discussion Wall when you arrive Feb. 18, and you will quickly see there is great diversity in where we originate.  Martin Luther King said,  “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” (As seen on WRC-TV, Channel 4, January 15, 2017)

Inclusion is a key to survival in a business environment, too. Each employee’s unique differences and strengths can be leveraged to benefit the overall strength and health of an organization. Organizations (and their leaders) are compelled to increase diversity/inclusion for a number of reasons:

• Legal compliance
• Social responsibility
• Return on Investment (ROI) – financial or otherwise

Simply put, inclusion is a sound business practice. When an organization makes a deliberate effort to hire and truly engage a diverse workforce, it often translates into success by improving the bottom line and other metrics. Inclusion has the capacity to expand the organization’s mission, benefitting employees and their communities.

For example, our D&I subject matter expert Nadia Younes of the International Monetary Fund told us about a rural mine in Australia whose leadership decided to hire typically stay-at-home mothers for their 9am-3pm workforce.  The so-called “Mommy Shift” of part time female truck drivers resulted in less damage to the monster mine trucks; safety standards increased; the mine spent less money on truck repairs and injured worker claims; the mine was more productive by 10%.

Frito Lay now enjoys a $100 million revenue stream tied directly to its Hispanic employee resource group. The cartoon brand Dora the Explorer stems from an attempt to reach the Latino community.  It now delivers Nickelodeon $1 billion in royalties and fees annually. (Kaplan, M. and Donovan, M. (2013) The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off, p. 9)

Your organization’s “inclusion dividend” could be directly related to D&I investments like the examples above, or it could be paid out in the form of improved employee morale, which increases productivity. Having a truly engaged diverse workforce produces more creativity, more innovation, and key business decisions about customers, products, and locations. When an organization is inclusive, profits received by shareholders increase. Inclusion can create an unexpected gain in customer engagement and creates a tangible advantage in the global marketplace.

Now that you know some of the benefits of having an inclusive organization, would you like to learn how to achieve and maintain inclusive practices and behavior in yours?  Join us February 18 to discover how to set your organization’s course for smooth sailing on the Inclusion boat!