Managing Diversity and Inclusion with Employee Management Software

According to the Pulse of the Profession report, 88% of project professionals say having diverse project teams increases value. Diversity, in the form of age, nationality, culture, gender, experience or any other criteria plays an important, but frequently overlooked, role in project success.

Investing, managing, and fostering diversity and inclusion is the key to achieving a competitive-edge in this post-pandemic, digitally intertwined work environment.

Learn why diversity and inclusion are important in project management, get tips on how to foster them, and how employee management software can help.

Importance of Diversity and Inclusion

What do diversity and inclusion actually mean? Diversity refers to all the traits that make a person unique. It also represents the make-up of an identity — like a team’s diversity is based on how many different characteristics and experiences the members bring to the table.

Inclusion is about how varying perspectives and opinions are valued and integrated into the environment. Do the diverse employees actually feel safe and comfortable enough to voice their opinions? Diversity and inclusion are therefore interconnected. In a workplace, diversity and inclusion makes people feel valued, respected, and supported.

Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

Studies, time and time again, have shown that diverse teams and inclusive workplaces have constantly outperformed their competitors. Organisations that value and support diversity are better in their response to challenges, able to surpass customer requirements, and more equipped to deal with overall stress.

Diversity and inclusion also leads to:

• Increased Earning Potential and Return on Investment (ROI)
  Did you know that racially and ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to have higher performance levels? Yes, diverse team members often bring together varying experiences and thoughts which lead to higher financial performance. How? In a diverse and inclusion workplace, members are able to develop and share authentic, unique ideas rather than suppressing them. Also, when your company includes members from underrepresented communities, you are offering yourself a chance to break into a new market segment that shares those cultural values.
• More Engaged Employees
  When employees feel valued, respected, and supported for who they truly are, they are more engaged. Engaged employees are committed and therefore less likely to seek opportunities elsewhere. When employees feel their best, they will work at their best.
• Improved Company Reputation
  When diversity and inclusion are practised across the organisations, employees are performing at their best and delivering strong results. The word quickly spread to competitors and clients and this enhances the company’s reputation and ranking. Improved reputation creates a domino effect —- more clients, more revenue, and access to a larger talent pool as more people want to work for an organisation that is an inclusive industry pioneer.
• Rapid Innovation
  An employee’s productivity and contributions increase when they feel they are on the same footing as their peers. When employees feel their best, they will work at their best. This results in more innovations and quicker problem resolutions. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) comments:

• Better Communication and Collaboration
  Here’s another number to consider. As per a Gartner report, employees in diverse and inclusive organisations show 26% more team collaboration and 18% more team commitment than their industry counterparts. When people feel safe and a part of the team in the genuine sense, they are more likely to highlight if there is an issue with the project. Raising an issue instead of staying silent lends itself to faster problem identification and resolution.

Best Practices for Diversity and Inclusion

Fostering and practising diversity and inclusion is beyond creating posters, taglines, and hashtags. It has to be part of the cultural fabric to deliver positive results. Namesake “diversity and inclusion” themes can instead brew conflict and confusion.

Practices that can help instil and sustain a diversified and inclusive culture include:

• Prioritise diversity and inclusion in company mission and vision statement. Don’t shy away from highlighting the importance of these values to customers, board members, and other stakeholders.
• Organise frequent training sessions on the importance of diversity and inclusion. Make this a program that does consistently through the year and not simply at company orientation. Ensure these training sessions factor in everyone’s culture. If some members are not fluent with the language, provide them a translation or written minutes in their home language. Also, choose training material that is appropriate for all age groups and nationalities. For instance, don’t select case studies that have a strong cultural context that make them difficult to understand for a larger audience.
• Solicit feedback from members of various cultural backgrounds to understand what their needs and requirements are; ask them, “How can you best support them?” During team meetings, actively call on members who might be the majority to share their thoughts and opinions.
• Set flexible schedules so people can pick and work on projects that best suit their experience and value system. Also, distribute projects in a fair manner, so everyone has the same workload and there is no case of favouritism. A employee management software can quickly identify each resource’s current workload capacity and therefore take provisions to ensure that workload is equal.
• Provide avenues for mentorship, networking, and socialising. Hold casual, “get-to-know-you” meetings where team members from different cultural groups or experiences can share their background. For example, if the new members of the team are based in Taiwan and the majority of the team is in India, schedule a meeting where the Taiwanese team can share interesting facts about their culture and way of work. This will not only create cultural awareness but also strengthen the bond between members.
• Create a safe environment to raise diversity based issues. There should be a dedicated channel where employees can voice their concerns if they are facing any discrimination. They need to feel safe and not be penalised for raising red-flags. As a project manager, you can let everyone know that you have an “open-door” policy and they can and should reach out to you immediately if there is a concern. You should also create a discrimination reporting policy with HR.

How Resource Management Software Helps Manage Diversity

One of the best ways to go about creating and sustaining a diverse and inclusive work culture is by leveraging the help of technology. A resource management software is a “one-stop-solution” for managing these beliefs.

An advanced resource management software accounts for all resources within an organisation. As a project manager you have enterprise-wide visibility on all the talent you have at your disposal, regardless of their location. Alongside names, you will have insight into their skill-set, work preferences, country labour laws, availability and capacity —- everything that will aid you in identifying the right resources for billable tasks. This again reduces the chances of an employee feeling discriminated against by not getting the right assignments.

Employment management software also prevents workers from being overburdened. The capacity metre and utilisation metrics ensure work is distributed fairly and evenly.

The enterprise-wide visibility further strengthens communication and collaboration, because all resources can see the role they are playing and how their efforts make a difference. It breaks down individual silos that typically result from location or cultural disparities. Overall, the majority of team members feel valued, respected, and part of the work community.

Employees, through a resource management platform, have the ability to apply for certain projects and roles that are of keen interest to them. Managers will be notified about employee preferences when they are assigning jobs and this scheduling flexibility allows everyone to feel that their lines of career interests are being taken care of.

Finally, employee management software allows managers to track project metrics in real-time. The data transparency will help you make data-based on what’s working and what needs tweaking. For instance, metrics such as time taken per task can identify if a resource is facing an issue. Managers can therefore promptly reach out to understand the problem. This will again make employees feel like they are being supported and taken care of.

Diversity Matters — Make It Happen with eRS

The link between ROI and diversity and inclusion is undisputable. By neglecting inclusion and diversity, your company is simply walking away from money on the table. What can you do to start prioritising diversity and inclusion in your workplace?

We’ll tell you. Invest in an employee management software like eRS.

eRS is equipped to help you understand where and who all your employees are, assign them projects per their preference and skill-set, and then track their performance. The centralised and visual dashboard allows all members to communicate and collaborate easily. The software further breaks down silos and recognises all the team members, regardless of their background or location. Finally, eRS’s robust metrics equip managers to make swift decisions, so “too many cooks don’t spoil the broth.”

Let eRS support your diversity and inclusion endeavours and help your organisation stay ahead of the game. Our 14-day free trial can be started immediately.