Fond of my college years at Berkeley, I remember learning the return on investment (ROI) formula during my Haas finance class. While this was not too long ago, I recall learning the importance of analyzing the data before making a business decision. Interestingly enough, I remember being one of the few Hispanics sitting in a Berkeley classroom taking industrial engineering, marketing, and accounting classes. Connecting this to my core business of inclusion, I would like to introduce the real return on inclusion.
To what extent should we over-focus on the “good feeling” of workplace diversity? If we are talking business terms, we should focus on the business benefits about inclusion and cultural intelligence. Let’s let data do the talking.
For example, a Boston Consulting Group Study discovered that businesses with more inclusive/diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues due to innovation.
McKinesy reports that companies with more than 30% female executives were more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from 10 to 30.
In terms of ethnic and cultural diversity: in 2019, top-quartile companies outperformed those in the fourth one by 36% in profitability, slightly up from 33% in 2017 and 35% in 2014.
While we cannot force people to embrace an inclusive mindset, we can certainly show them the business data and how their company would financially benefit from embracing a cultural intelligence strategy set by the CEO & leadership.