What Are the Benefits of Diversity in the Workplace?

Companies are increasingly being encouraged to promote diversity in the workplace, but what is it exactly?

What is Diversity in the Workplace?

In business, diversity means hiring a wide range of people from different backgrounds and making sure that they are treated equally. It has to do with accepting each other’s differences and working together as a team.

Examples of Diversity Issues

There are many forms of diversity found in society at any given point. However, in South Africa, organisations are traditionally judged on the following aspects of diversity, or diversity issues:

1. Gender
2. Race
3. Language
4. Age
5. Disability
6. Religion or Faith
7. Culture
8. Poverty
9. Inequality
10. Education

What Are the Advantages or Benefits of Diversity in the Workplace?

It can be difficult for people from different backgrounds to understand each other and work peacefully together, but when they do, it has many benefits for the company, the employees, and society at large.

Here are some of the benefits of diversity in the workplace:

1. A diverse workforce improves the business’s ability to solve problems.
2. Employees learn to appreciate each other’s differences, and to communicate to a broad range of people.
3. Diversity in the workplace improves morale and motivation.
4. Employees show more loyalty to the businesses because they feel more accepted.
5. Employees from different backgrounds can bring different perspectives to the business.
6. Showing respect for other people’s differences makes good business sense.
7. A diversified workforce is able to identify more customer needs and therefore satisfy more customers.
8. Diversity can give the business a competitive advantage because it is able to provide better services.
9. Having a diverse workforce creates a good public image for the business and attracts more customers as a result.
10. Customers and other stakeholders increasingly evaluate businesses on how they manage diversity in the workplace.

Other Useful Articles

Here are articles that will help you successfully prepare for your examination.

• Definition of Human Rights and their Implication in the Workplace
• Examples of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in South Africa
• How to Deal with Diversity Issues in the Workplace
• How to Promote Social and Cultural Rights in the Workplace
• What is the Triple Bottom Line in CSR?

Test Yourself

Are you now confident about your knowledge of the advantages of diversity in business? Would you be able to name them if you were asked to? Download these quiz cards and test yourself. Share them with your friends and use them to prepare for your Business Studies NSC exam.

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1. Analyse the benefits of a diverse work force to businesses. (8)

2. Discuss the benefits of diversity in the workplace. (8)