Revolutionary business leaders like Virgin Group’s Richard Branson, Google’s Larry Page and Starbucks’ Howard Schultz may operate within vastly different industries, but their leadership philosophies all place an equal – if not greater – emphasis on employee development and satisfaction as they do on revenue growth.

That’s certainly smart thinking.

Though often ignored is how intimately revenue growth is tied to and driven by employees’ likelihood of feeling heard, valued, and like a meaningful piece of the larger organization. And among the many factors that support employee satisfaction include a diverse, healthy and inclusive work culture.

So let’s talk more about how diversity and inclusion can revolutionize your business.

In short, diversity means hiring professionals with varied backgrounds, like race, gender, sexuality, age, economic status, and geographical and cultural upbringing, to name a few. But more importantly,an inclusive culture empowers those diverse talents and ideas in a way that improves culture and ultimately innovation and growth.

In a sense, diversity represents the vast points of view that are available given the company’s employee make-up, and inclusivity is the engine that distills those ideas to help a company act upon the broadest understanding of the global market. Diversity and inclusion are both vital, but when operating in tandem, they can have a hugely positive impact on your business.

Diversity and Inclusion Tie to Company Financial Health

In the evolving global marketplace, companies often focus exclusively on the quality and differentiation of their product, and expect their employees to simply deliver. If your career growth, salary and benefit model attracts talented employees, you may find success. But implementing a meaningful culture of diversity and inclusion can take your success level from a 3 to a 7.

From a customer perspective, your prospects and clients represent a diverse group of race, culture and backgrounds. If the diversity of your employees reflect that of your market, you are far more likely to develop a richer understanding of your customer base, and new and innovate ideas that resonate with your target audience.

According to the Center for Talent Innovation, companies with skilled inclusive leaders are 45 percent more likely to see an increase in market share and 70 percent more likely to capture a new market.

Likewise, companies driving innovation by leveraging various perspectives meet product revenue targets 46 percent more often and product launch dates 47 percent more often than industry peers, according to Diversity Best Practices.

This shows the untapped opportunity for your business to take the lead and develop a richer competitive advantage against your more homogenous competitors.

Diversity and Inclusion Tie to Employee Satisfaction and Retention

In order to find success as a company, you need to strive to retain a pool of high-performing, talented professionals. This in turn is driven by a meaningful strategy of employee satisfaction. Particularly for the younger generations, satisfaction comes not just from competitive salaries and benefits, but also from feeling empowered to have a voice, be their authentic self, and to be able to share ideas openly among their team and supervisor.

Pairing your diversity and inclusions efforts creates an environment of transparency and trustworthiness within your culture, which is far more likely to attract valuable employees compared to companies that place less value on the employee experience.

A Gallup poll found that 45 percent of U.S. workers reported not being treated with respect in the workplace in the last 12 months. And 90 percent of those who reported such behavior cited one or more of 35 different forms of discrimination and harassment. Toxicity in your work culture begins at the employee level, affects performance, and ultimately the long-term growth of your company.

On the other hand, companies with more diverse and inclusive teams have a 22 percent lower turnover rate than those with homogeneous teams. Ultimately, creating a diverse culture where each employee feels that he or she feels valued and heard will improve culture, innovation and employee performance, which in turn grows your bottom line.

If you’d like to learn how to transform your company culture with diversity and inclusion, contact speaker, teacher and leadership coach J. Israel Greene whose workshop will provide the information and skills you need to:

• Develop a rich understanding of Diversity & Inclusion (D&I)
• How to expand your talent pool through a proven framework (Attract, Engage, Grow, & Retain)
• Implement a Performance Gap Analysis on where you stand with your D&I programming against industry standards
• Create a sustainable action plan to address the gaps going forward
• Leverage diversity to foster innovation within your organization
• Address challenges on D&I initiatives and how to overcome them