How to Embrace Diversity in the Workplace Through Employment Mentorship & Volunteerism
Diversity makes businesses better because people from diverse backgrounds bring with them diverse points of view and work experiences. However, employees from diverse backgrounds can also clash sometimes, bringing down overall morale and slowing productivity. By providing mentorship and volunteerism opportunities that bring together employees from different backgrounds, companies can foster understanding and ensure that employees feel valued for who they are.
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Definition
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Mentoring opportunities pair less experienced employees with more experienced ones, who are willing to share their work expertise and insights for succeeding in a job, or employees in a company with children or youth in the community who could use a guiding hand. Volunteer opportunities provide employees the chance to work together outside the workplace environment to help their communities or local charities.
Role
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The role of both mentorship and volunteerism opportunities is to expose employees within a company to people from backgrounds different from their own. Through peer mentoring, employees get to know one another, and through community mentoring, they get to know youths in their communities. In both instances, however, the employees get the opportunity to find commonalities and create a bond with someone from a different background. Volunteerism requires collaboration with others too to get a job done, and often being outside of the workplace in a team situation affords people the chance to get to know one another and find themselves working toward common goals.
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Benefits
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When employees from diverse backgrounds respect one another's backgrounds, companies see higher employee retention, because workers feel valued where they are. Additionally, respect for diversity ensures that people can work together on projects and communicate effectively despite racial, cultural or even religious differences. Additionally, companies that value diversity and where employees from diverse backgrounds are respected have a recruiting edge, because they can attract talented minorities.
Challenges
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Few companies make mentorship and volunteerism involvement mandatory, because doing so makes employees feel as if they don't have a voice, which lowers morale. For this reason, it's not always possible to get the employees who could most benefit from these opportunities to participate. Thus, you may have to address disrespect for diversity in other ways as well, such as through company policies and diversity training.
Incentives
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While you can't force employees to take part in mentoring and volunteerism opportunities, you can make it attractive for them to do so. Provide companywide recognition for employees who choose to participate, and offer small but valuable incentives, such as days off for participation or gift certificates to a local coffee shop.
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